National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) Introducing the New Cybersecurity Coordinator. Macon Phillips December 22, 2009 07:30 AM EDT Today the White House announced the President’s new White House Cybersecurity Coordinator, Howard Schmidt.
White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity. The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.
(FBI access to e-mail and web records raises fears) The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the "content" of e-mail or other Internet communication. Former NSA executive Thomas A. Drake may pay high price for media leak. F or seven years, Thomas A. Drake was a senior executive at the nation's largest intelligence organization with an ambition to change its insular culture. He had access to classified programs that purported to help the National Security Agency tackle its toughest challenges: exploiting the digital data revolution and countering terrorism.
Today, he wears a blue T-shirt and answers questions about iPhones at an Apple store in the Washington area.