WASHINGTON-Lawmakers and homeland-security experts last week said the Bush administration lacks a plan to prioritize what critical infrastructure to protect-including wireless and other telecom networks-and that developing such a plan would require better sharing of information by federal, state and local authorities and the private sector.
“Policy makers are reluctant to make hard choices [about critical infrastructure protection]…What you have to do is make them make the hard choices,” Lee Hamilton, co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, last week told the House Homeland subcommittee on intelligence, information sharing and terrorism assessment.
About 85 percent of the nation’s critical infrastructure is in the private-sector’s hands.
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has forced a rethinking about how federal agencies interface with each other and how commercial entities relate to the federal government on national security matters. The post-9/11 government-industry relationship goes far beyond how wireless carriers and others accommodate the FBI and intelligence officials’ requests for wiretaps. In addition to sharing information on wireless networks, government officials are putting a greater emphasis on a range of carrier issues such as location-based enhanced 911, network reliability, emergency alert service, priority access and public-safety interoperability.
Information sharing-largely overseen by the Department of Homeland Security-is written into new laws and executive orders. The idea is to encourage government agencies and private companies to share information by guaranteeing their communications about the matters will be protected from public disclosure.
However, concern has been expressed that the Critical Infrastructure Information Act of 2002 represents a potential huge loophole in federal lobbying law that could enable private firms to discuss policy matters with government officials without having such interactions revealed through the Freedom of Information Act and state and local sunshine laws. In addition, wireless and telecom discussions with government officials covered by the CII Act also is protected from being disclosed in civil litigation.
Cingular Wireless L.L.C., Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc. did not respond to requests for comment.
Promoting better ways to share information among government and industry officials represents a radical shift in how intelligence is handled. There are entrenched cultural barriers that have to be overcome, not to mention legal and competitive concerns regarding sensitive commercial data.
“There’s an issue of trust. This culture of sharing is very difficult to accomplish,” said Rob Simmons (R-Conn.), chairman of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence, information sharing and terrorism assessment.
William Crowell, a member of the Markle Foundation’s Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, said the process of intelligence dissemination has changed drastically since the Cold War.
“This new world is not about need-to-know, but about information sharing,” said Crowell.
Some critics assert the lack of information sharing contributed to an intelligence breakdown regarding the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
