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To: Rarebird who wrote (39629)	8/26/1999 12:26:00 PM
From: long-gone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116802

OT FIDNET Another Step Closer to Orwell's Nightmare by Don Lobo Tiggre While the public remains fascinated with such important matters as another death in the Kennedy family and another shooting spree (which, some cynics have observed, just happened to take place during New Hampshire Senator Bob Smith?s filibuster in the gun-grabbing debates*), another story is getting far less attention than it deserves: FIDNET. Remember ECHELON? Well, FIDNET is a new U.S. government electronic data collection program that, coupled with existing spy systems like ECHELON, could push government threats to electronic privacy to new heights and bring us one giant step closer to Orwell?s nightmare. What is FIDNET? Right now, it?s just a Clinton Administration proposal?yes, those noble idealists in Washington are just full of ideas for protecting us from ourselves. FIDNET stands for Federal Intrusion Detection Network, and it?s no surprise that the Administration?s National Security Council (NSC) would come up with such an idea in the wake of all the hacker attacks on U.S. government web sites. The plan?not yet released to the public but leaked on-line by Wayne Madsen of the Intelligence Newsletter, and subsequently covered by the New York Times, Wired, and other news outlets?calls for one software system to watch activity on non-military government networks and a separate system to track the banking, telecommunications and transportation industries. A host of new monitoring agencies with a whole new can of alphabet soup names and acronyms is also called for, all under direction of the FBI. Data would be gathered at the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), an interagency facility operated by the FBI, beginning no later than the year 2003. This is necessary because terrorists and hackers are plotting evil things, the NCS assures us. Jeffrey Hunker, the NCS "Director of Information Protection" warns, "A number of nations that are hostile to the [US] and several well-financed terrorist groups, and quite arguably a number of organized crime groups, are systematically developing capabilities to attack US information systems. That's something both new and frightening."(cont) zolatimes.com