WASHINGTON-Businesses that run networks critical to the nation’s economy are being encouraged to share information with competitors and the federal government about what they do to protect those networks under proposed federal legislation that would shield companies from antitrust and freedom of information laws.
“Nations around the world, including the United States, are currently training their military and intelligence personnel to carry out cyber attacks against other nations to quickly and efficiently cripple a nation’s daily operations. Cyber attacks have moved beyond the mischievous teenager and are now being learned and used by terrorist organizations as the latest weapon in a nation’s arsenal,” said one of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R-Va.).
Critical infrastructures are those systems that are essential to the minimum operations of the economy and government, such as telecommunications, said Davis. These systems are largely owned and operated by private business.
The effort to protect critical infrastructures began with the Clinton administration, but was put aside to address potential problems caused to computers by the date change to 2000.
Rep. James Moran (D-Va.), another sponsor of the bill, said the cyber-security bill is modeled after the Y2K effort. During the earlier stages of combating that effort, companies said they could not share information about how and what they were doing because of antitrust and competitive concerns. Companies said they were unwilling to give the government information if it was going to be available to their competitors through Freedom of Information Act requests.
Similar concerns have been raised about cyber-security protection efforts. The Davis-Moran bill would exclude cyber-security information from FOIA.
“Information doesn’t live with the government … giving us [information] exposes them to FOIA, liability and antitrust violations if they share that information as a group. Information that is shared, once the government has it, once it is in the bowels of government, you can come to us and get that information from us under FOIA,” said Davis.
This year’s bill is less proscriptive than last year’s bill, said Davis. A hearing was held by the House government management, information and technology subcommittee last year, but the bill stalled when the Clinton administration did not take an interest in the issue, said Davis. He and Moran are hopeful the Bush administration will support the bill and that it can get passed before election-season tensions heat up next year.
Davis and Moran introduced their bill in the House of Representatives. A similar bill has been introduced in the Senate.
