The move will include more of the country's private, civilian-run infrastructure than ever before. Private sector employees, including those at big banks, utilities and key transportation companies, will have their emails and Web surfing scanned as a precaution against cyber-attacks.
As you might expect this is not going down with big business. After all they might be a little worried that some of their illegal activity might get revealed to the government. The move comes as part of last month's White House executive order on cybersecurity.
The scans will use classified information provided by US spooks on new or especially serious espionage threats and other hacking attempts. Homeland Security will gather the secret data and pass it to a small group of telecommunication companies and cybersecurity providers that have employees holding security clearances, government and industry officials said.
Telecom companies will not report back to the government on what they see, except in aggregate statistics, a senior DHS official claimed. The question is, whether the US people and big business trust their government.
Defence in the land of the free
As part of its defence plans the US government is planning to he US government is expanding a cybersecurity program that scans Internet traffic headed into and out of contractors.
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Nick Farrell
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