Cross Posted from Lee's Weblog
There's been a lot of talk on the Island about the "Cyberwar" term and this is yet another example... The Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA allegedly awarded a contract to Raytheon for an Information Security program called "Perfect Citizen".
The details are sketchy - as they should be - but the idea is that the NSA is going to be placing IDS sensors across the country, primarilly targeting critical infrastructure.
Sounds harmless (and beneficial, to me), but the Raytheon leak used the term "Big Brother", so of course this became newsworthy!
The obvious concerns are that now the NSA is going to be tracking your every move, every website you go to, everything you buy, how much power you use ... and not just you, but everyone in the country!! (please note the sarcasm)
The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed "Perfect Citizen" to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program.
The surveillance by the National Security Agency, the government's chief eavesdropping agency, would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack, though it wouldn't persistently monitor the whole system, these people said.
"The overall purpose of the [program] is our Government...feel[s] that they need to insure the Public Sector is doing all they can to secure Infrastructure critical to our National Security," said one internal Raytheon email, the text of which was seen by The Wall Street Journal. "Perfect Citizen is Big Brother."
Wallstreet Journal: U.S. Plans Cyber Shield for Utilities, Companies
