Aschcroft annoints "proactive" cyber threat investigations...

Script-kiddies, crackers and hackers beware... some types of computer conduct could spark an FBI investigation in the name of terrorism. Just as our wars have become pre-emptive, it looks like our investigations of abnormal cyber activity are heading that way as well. I suppose everyone's going to be considered a "terrorist" by John Ashcroft someday...

_Ashcroft takes on foreign government hackers

By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Nov 7 2003 5:16PM

How seriously does the U.S. government take computer intrusion? Seriously enough for the threat of foreign hacking to take a prominent role in new rules governing the FBI's national security investigations issued by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft this week.

Ashcroft released a new version [This is a link to the redacted, released document on the DoJ site.] of the "Guidelines for FBI National Security Investigations and Foreign Intelligence Collection" on Wednesday. The new guidelines, billed as a response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, permit the Bureau to engage in the "proactive collection of information on threats to the national security," displacing an older policy that obliged the FBI to have a specific investigative purpose before collecting information on individuals or groups.

Like the older rules, the new guidelines allow the Attorney General to specify anything as threat to national security at any time. But a few threats are specifically hardcoded into the new rules: terrorism, espionage, sabotage, political assassination, and "foreign computer intrusion."

The latter is defined as "the use or attempted use of any cyber-activity or other means by, for, or on behalf of a foreign power to scan, probe, or gain unauthorized access into one or more U.S.-base computers."

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Posted by joebeone at Noviembre 9, 2003 10:32 AM