Re: FBI's InfraGard

[Vin McLellan <vin () shore net>]

At 05:22 PM 4/16/99 -0400, Stout, Bill reported:

> FBI Tries To Protect IT Systems From Intrusions
> Friday, April 16, 1999
>
> "The FBI is set to launch a national rollout of InfraGard, apartnership of
> businesses, the bureau, and its NationalInfrastructure Protection Center.
> The alliance is designed to protect IT systems from hacker attacks and other
> intrusions by providing a network for sharing information about attacks and
> how to thwart them...
                I'm told that InfraGard is simply a networked attempt to
organize the FBI's Ole Boy Network -- the retired ex-FBI agents who are
expected to be more loyal to the Bureau than they are to their current
corporate  employers.  
        
        They wire the old ex-Feebees into a privileged rumor network in the
hope that they will more readily toss in tips and rumors about IT attacks
and threats -- if not about their own employers, then about competitors, the
brother-in-law's firm, stories they heard at the bar, etc.  

        They are getting desperate to hear about the sort of attacks that no
corporate officer in his right mind is gonna report to the Bureau.  

        InfraGard is probably only one of several parallel efforts to get
various classes of professionals to place the FBI's bureaucratic interests
above the interests of their employers or clients.   Things like this are
the price paid for putting the Infrastructure Protection Center in such a
reactive agency,  in the hands of guys always working to boost  their arrest
count-- rather somewhere it could generally enhance and foster strong
security among, respectively, venders and users.

                _Vin 

> ...InfraGard was formed as part of the federal government's effort to
> protect the nation's critical information systems. It's designed to
> ultimately serve as a national clearinghouse of information about security
> intrusions and vulnerabilities, and to offer tools to help detect and
> prevent attacks."
> http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK19990416S0001
> <http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK19990416S0001> 
>
> Bill Stout
--------
  "Cryptography is like literacy in the Dark Ages. Infinitely potent,
for good and ill... yet basically an intellectual construct, an idea,
which by its nature will resist efforts to restrict it to bureaucrats
and others who deem only themselves worthy of such Privilege."
  _A Thinking Man's Creed for Crypto  _vbm

 *     Vin McLellan + The Privacy Guild + <vin () shore net>    *
      53 Nichols St., Chelsea, MA 02150 USA <617> 884-5548