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Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Exceptionally grave damage: NSA refuses to declassify Obama’s cybersecurity directive

The National Security Agency has shot down a Freedom of Information Act request for details about an elusive presidential order that may allow the government to deploy the military within the United States for the supposed sake of cybersecurity.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reports on Tuesday that their recent FOIA request for information about a top-secret memo signed last month by US President Barack Obama has been rejected [PDF]. Now attorneys for EPIC say they plan to file an appeal to get to the bottom of Presidential Policy Directive 20.
Although the executive order has been on the books for a month now, only last week did details emerge about the order after the Washington Post reported that Pres. Obama’s signature to the top-secret directive could allow the White House to send in recruits from the Pentagon to protect America’s cyber-infrastructure.
Because Presidential Policy Directive 20 is classified, the exact wording of the elusive document has been a secret kept only by those with first-hand knowledge of the memo. For their November 14 article, the Post spoke with sources that saw the document to report that the directive “effectively enables the military to act more aggressively to thwart cyberattacks on the nation’s web of government and private computer networks.”
In response to the Post’s report, EPIC filed a FOIA request to find out if the policy directive could mean military deployment within the United States, especially since the sources who have seen the memo say it allows the Pentagon to pursue actions against adversaries within a vaguely described terrain known only as “cyberspace.”
“What it does, really for the first time, is it explicitly talks about how we will use cyber-operations,” a senior administration official told the Post. “Network defense is what you’re doing inside your own networks. . . . Cyber-operations is stuff outside that space, and recognizing that you could be doing that for what might be called defensive purposes.”
“We’d like to see what the language says and see what power is given,” EPIC attorney Amie Stepanovich told RT this week — a matter that will now have to be appealed before any details can be determined.
News of the directive comes just as lawmakers in Congress failed once again to approve a cybersecurity legislation that would provide new connections between the federal government and the private sector in order to supposedly ramp up the United States’ protection from foreign hackers. With the defeat of that bill, though, members of both the House and Senate now say they expect Pres. Obama to sign a separate executive order that will lay down the groundwork for a more thorough cybersecurity plan to be established.
Meanwhile, the commander-in-chief has already signed a secret order — Presidential Policy Directive 20 — that might remain classified unless EPIC can win in court.
“We believe that the public hasn’t been able to involve themselves in the cybersecurity debate, and the reason they can’t involve themselves is because they don’t have the right amount of information,” Stepanovich tells RT.
Responding to the FOIA request, the NSA says releasing information on the directive cannot occur because “disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.”
“Because the document is currently and properly classified, it is exempt from disclosure,” the NSA writes.

Boots on the ground: Obama’s cybersecurity directive could allow military deployment within the US

 

US President Barack Obama (AFP Photo / Jim Watson)
The White House is being asked by attorneys to explain a top-secret presidential policy directive signed last month that may allow for the domestic deployment of the US military for the sake of so-called cybersecurity.
Lawyers with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the office of US President Barack Obama in hopes if hearing more about an elusive order signed in secrecy in mid-October but only made public in an article published this week in the Washington Post.
According to persons close to the White House who have seen the order and spoke with the Post, Presidential Policy Directive 20 (PP20) aims to “finalize new rules of engagement that would guide commanders when and how the military can go outside government networks to prevent a cyberattack that could cause significant destruction or casualties.” Attorneys with EPIC are now demanding that they see this secret order to find out what exactly that could mean, citing the possibility of putting boots on the ground in the United States if the government argues it’s imperative for cybersecurity.
In the FOIA request, EPIC attorneys Amie Stepanovich and Ginger McCall ask to see information about PP20 because they fear it may enable “military deployment within the United States” by way of a “secret law” that lets the National Security Agency and Pentagon put armed forces in charge of protecting America’s cyberinfrastructure and crucial routes of communications.
“We don’t know what’s in this policy directive and we feel the American public has the right to know,” McCall tells Raw Story this week.
On her part, Stepanovich adds that getting to the truth of the matter could be a nightmare given the NSA’s tendency to keep these sorts of things secret.
“The NSA’s cyber security operations have been kept very, very secret, and because of that it has been impossible for the public to react to them,” Stepanovich adds. “[That makes it] very difficult, we believe, for Congress to legislate in this area. It’s in the public’s best interest, from a knowledge perspective and from a legislative perspective, to be made aware of what authority the NSA is being given.”
The potential of martial law became a topic actually discussed by Congress last year when lawmakers first considered provisions for this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA. Before the House and Senate agreed on including a section to the law letting the White House arrest and detain any US citizen indefinitely without trial or charge, another provision was almost put on the books that would have essentially allowed for military rule during some situations.
The NDAA’s S. 1867 would “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a supporter of the bill, said last year.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H) agreed with his colleague’s claim, telling Congress that “America is part of the battlefield” suggesting that the laws of war are applicable anywhere, even in someone’s own backyard.
EPIC writes that PPD 20 “may violate federal law that prohibits military deployment within the United States without congressional approval” if their worse fear prove correct.
According to the Post’s tale on the directive, the Pentagon now has blueprints to wage more offensive cyberassaults on entities that may be jeopardizing the cybersecurity of domestic computer systems. How they do that, however, remains an issue that the FOIA request will have to coerce from Washington.

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