The proposal is a requirement of an executive order signed October 7 of last year by President Obama. Executive Order 13587 sets guidelines designed to “to ensure the responsible sharing and safeguarding of classified national security information (classified information) on computer networks.
"
One step toward the accomplishment of this goal is the creation of an interagency Insider Threat Task Force. That group is charged with developing
a Government-wide program (insider threat program) for deterring, detecting, and mitigating insider threats, including the safeguarding of classified information from exploitation, compromise, or other unauthorized disclosure, taking into account risk levels, as well as the distinct needs, missions, and systems of individual agencies. This program shall include development of policies, objectives, and priorities for establishing and integrating security, counterintelligence, user audits and monitoring, and other safeguarding capabilities and practices within agencies.
Reading between the lines it is easy to see what prompted the issuing of this order and the creation of this new bureaucracy: WikiLeaks.
President Obama likely was also motivated by the acts of Army Private Bradley Manning. In what is described as “the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history,” Manning is accused of passing over 700,000 documents and video clips to WikiLeaks, the widely known website devoted to exposing government corruption throughout the world.
Private Manning, 24, from Crescent, Oklahoma, has been detained since he was arrested on May 29, 2010 while on deployment with the 10th Mountain Division in Iraq. While on duty near Baghdad, Manning had access to the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System. SIPRNET is the network used by the U.S. government to transmit classified information.
Manning’s arrest came as the result of information provided to the FBI by a computer hacker named Adrian Lamo. Lamo told agents that during an online chat in May 2010, Manning claimed to have downloaded classified information from SIPRNet and sent it to WikiLeaks.
According to published reports, the material Manning is accused of unlawfully appropriating includes a large cache of U.S. diplomatic cables (approximately 250,000), as well as videos of an American airstrike on Baghdad conducted in July 2007 and a similar attack in May 2009 on a site near Granai, Afghanistan (an event sometimes known as the Granai Massacre).
Of course, the new policy is being promoted by the Obama administration as an attempt to assist law enforcement and intelligence to “connect the dots” so as to prevent future terrorist attacks on the homeland.
A key member of the task force and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, John Swift, is quoted in a recent article as saying that the agencies named in the executive order are committed to conforming to the requirements handed down by President Obama.
"The National Policy on Insider Threat is in draft and will probably move its way to the White House National Security Staff in the next month or two, which is pretty fast in the federal scheme of things," said Swift during a panel discussion on the insider threat at the FOSE trade show in Washington Wednesday. "However, in order to actually implement a program, you will want to have standards. Those standards are being developed now by the task force, and all the interagency members that are working on it. Those standards have to be issued by October of this year."
No comments:
Post a Comment