White House Security Panels Raise Hackles

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

> From WASHINGTON TECHNOLOGY, the
"Business Newspaper for Federal Systems Integrators."


by Neil Munro, staff writer


[Selected dreadful parts presented, to be sure to meet
"fair use" rules]


White House Security Panels Raise Hackles


A White House effort to coordinate security policy for the 
government's classified and unclassified information is sparking 
opposition from the same groups that stopped the stillborn
Clipper chip initiative.


The dispute will slow the formulation of a governmentwide 
information protection plan, increasingly vital to both
commerce and national security. 


In the latest move, the multiagency U.S. Security Policy
Board is trying to draw up a governmentwide security policy
for data, communications and computer systems.  And it is
attempting to build bridges between the policies that govern
the security of classified and unclassified information, said
Peter Saderholm, the board's secretary who has worked for 
many years in the CIA's photograph interpretation branch. ...


[T]he board was barely out of the starting gates when 
information-privacy groups pounced on papers prepared by the 
board .... The Nov. 21 paper, titled "Creating a New Order 
in U.S. Security Policy," also called for creation of a new 
category of information, dubbed national security related 
information. ...


[Ed. note:  didn't Reagan try this and get excoriated?]


[C]ritics may view the board as a "wholly owned subsidiary
of the Pentagon and the CIA," ... said Keith Hall, the
Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary of intelligence...


Also, Hall said he hoped to see a single working group
created to coordinate policies being created by the board
and Vice President Al Gore's National Information 
Infrastructure Task Force.


Mike Nelson, Gore's technology advisor, said the board and
the task force are working on different areas of the 
security problem, adding that the board could contribute
to the task force's decisionmaking.


The U.S. Security Policy Board was created and put under the
control of the White House's National Security Council by the
Presidential Decision Directive 29.  Its 12 members include
John Deutch, the deputy secretary of defense, Adm. William 
Studeman, the director of central intelligence, Janet Reno,
the attorney general, as well as senior officials from other 
agencies...


The controversy over the National Security Agency's Clipper
chip may be a cautionary tale - and many believe a similar
firestorm of protest would be unleashed should the board 
press ahead with its plans to build bridges between the 
security policies for unclassified and classified data. ...


Many of these political issues have already crippled a more
ambitious effort by the Pentagon to win White House approval
for a national information warfare strategy, designed to 
protect military, federal and commercial information systems
from attacks during a war or crisis.  Pentagon officials working 
for Emmett Paige ...have drafted a Presidential Review Directive 
titled "Policy on IW for Presidential Decision Directive," but 
the policy document has not won final approval within the 
Pentagon...  The information warfare strategy - and security
policy in general - raise many difficult technical, legal, 
and even constitutional problems, said Jeffery Smith, a 
Washington lawyer.  Smith headed President Clinton's Joint
Security Commission that helped establish the security board.
The basic question, he said, boils down to, "What is the 
responsibility of a government to protect its citizenry?" 
"It's a hell of a problem (and is) much, much trickier" than
the Clipper problem, he said.




2/23/95