From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Mon Jun 25 2007 - 17:36:18 EDT
June 25, 2007, 3:40 pm President Bush and Estonian leader Toomas Hendrik Ilves talked over the possibility of a new NATO research center - in Estonia - to focus on cyber attacks like the one that crippled the Baltic republic in April. As many as 1 million computers, mostly hijacked, were involved in the attacks against Estonia's highly developed Internet infrastructure, including government, financial, media and other sites. (...) Bush termed the issue of cyber attacks "interesting" and "one that I can learn a lot about." He thanked Ilves for his idea for a NATO center to be located in Estonia that would study the issue. NATO sent an observer to Estonia to monitor its attack, but NATO was designed to counter physical threats and hasn't yet developed detailed plans for cyber warfare. http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/ In January 1999, after three years of research and development, the mi2g Intelligence Unit published an internal memorandum titled, "Cyber Warfare: The Threat to Government, Business and Financial Markets." In the internal memorandum, released in the public domain post the NATO-Serbia first cyber war in April 1999, it was stated, "Historically war has been classified as physical attacks with bombs & bullets between nation states. It was beyond the means of an individual to wage war. Today, in the Information Age, the launch pad for war is no longer a runway but a computer. The attacker is no longer a pilot or soldier but a civilian Hacker. An individual with relatively simple computer capability can do things via the internet that can impact economic infrastructures, social utilities and national security. This is the problem we face in moving from the industrial world to the Information Age, which is the essence of Cyber War." http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2007/05/cyber_warfare_b.html ***** President Bush, without issuing a press statement, on May 4 signed a directive that granted near dictatorial powers to the office of the president in the event of a national emergency declared by the president. The "National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive," with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive, establishes under the office of president a new National Continuity Coordinator. That job, as the document describes, is to make plans for "National Essential Functions" of all federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal governments, as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president's directives in the event of a national emergency. The directive loosely defines "catastrophic emergency" as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions." (...) The directive makes no attempt to reconcile the powers created there for the National Continuity Coordinator with the existing National Emergency Act. As specified by U.S. Code Title 50, Chapter 34, Subchapter II, Section 1621, the National Emergency Act already allows that the president may declare a national emergency, but requires that such proclamation "shall immediately be transmitted to the Congress and published in the Federal Register." A Congressional Research Service study http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/98-505.pdf notes that under the existing National Emergency Act, the president "may seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abroad, institute martial law, seize and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise, restrict travel, and, in a variety of ways, control the lives of United States citizens." http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55824 The unclassified portion of the new directive was posted on the White House website on May 9, 2007, without any further announcement or press briefings, although Special Assistant to George W. Bush Gordon Johndroe (a White House NSC spokesman) answered several questions on the matter when asked about it by members of the press in early June 2007. Johndroe said a loosely-worded definition of national emergency was necessary for the new policy, because the government couldn't be sure what kind of emergency might arise. The new policy says that it "shall be implemented consistent with applicable law," but does not say which laws are "applicable" in the event of a national emergency. The signing of the Directive was generally not covered by the mainstream U.S. media, or discussed by the U.S. Congress. When similar executive security directives have been issued by previous presidents, they have been kept secret; this is the first one to be made public. Public text of the directive: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html
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