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Schmidt Recalled To Cyber Duty
by Sarah Lai Stirland
Former White House cyber-security adviser Howard Schmidt was in the news again last week with reports that he may take a new cyber-security post for the federal government.
AP reported that Schmidt is returning to the public sector by agreeing to become chairman of U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT), an organization jointly run by the Homeland Security Department and private technology groups. Schmidt reportedly will work as a liaison between the public and private sectors, though the exact nature of the job appeared to be uncertain.
US-CERT is the operational arm of the Homeland Security Department's national cyber-security division, and it is overseen by acting Director Andy Purdy. Purdy assumed the duties of Amit Yoran, who resigned at the beginning of the month after a year on the job.
Schmidt has been working as the chief information security officer for eBay. He has worked with Marty Abbott, eBay's senior vice president of technology on information and infrastructure trust and safety issues. An eBay spokesman said Schmidt now will take on "a slightly different position" and that his title at eBay will be chief security strategist.
"This just happened, and it remains to be seen how this will play out," the spokesman said. "We'll look to see how this works with his new responsibilities in Washington."
The management and coordination of cyber-security issues between the public and private sectors is a notoriously difficult issue because private companies are reluctant to disclose security issues to the public. They worry that their records would be subject to Freedom of Information Act rules that govern traditional government operations and thus could be forced to expose sensitive information on security breaches to the public.
But as a former vice chairman of President Bush's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board who helped develop the White House's cyber-security strategy, Schmidt has dealt with such concerns. When asked in late 2002 why he decided to shoulder the task of navigating between the politics of the public and private sectors to craft a cyber-security plan, he said he could not refuse the job after being asked to take it just days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"If you got a call a few days after Sept. 11 asking you to do something, you probably would have done it as well," he said at the time. "We recognize that there are going to be critics. It's just something that we live with."
GAO Official Joins Homeland Security Institute
In other homeland security news, Randall Yim, former managing director of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), joined the Homeland Security Institute this week as its director.
The institute is a federally funded center that provides research and analysis on scientific and technical matters for Homeland Security's science and technology directorate. The research gives the department a way to evaluate homeland security systems and technologies as they are developed. There will be a lot of work for Yim and the institute given the recent approval by Congress of a $32 billion homeland security spending bill for fiscal 2005.
Before moving to the institute, Yim led the national preparedness division of GAO's homeland and justice team for three years. His team at GAO helped coordinate strategic planning for various levels of government.
Yim has some experience on big projects. Before joining GAO, he was the deputy Defense undersecretary for installations. He was responsible for the oversight and policy guidance for the management of the department's military installations. The areas that were under his management added up to 46,000 square miles, and the budget he commanded was more than $30 billion.
In 2001, Yim received the department's medal for distinguished public service.
EPIC Chief Tapped To Head .org Registry Group
The Public Interest Registry (PIR) last week announced that its board of directors has appointed Electronic Privacy Information Center President Marc Rotenberg as its chairman. Rotenberg has been serving as acting chairman since August, when PIR announced that it had tapped then-Chairman David Maher to be its senior vice president of law and policy.
PIR is a nonprofit group that manages the database of .org Internet addresses. About 132 registrars, companies that sell .org domains to the public, soon will offer domain registration services for the .org domain. PIR was created by another nonprofit group, the Internet Society (ISOC), which is aimed at promoting the development and growth of the Internet.
ISOC landed the management of the .org domain after a deal was struck in 2001 between the Commerce Department and VeriSign. The deal allowed VeriSign to continue managing the more popular .com registry if it divested itself of .org. PIR's charter calls for it to use its position to educate and inform the nonprofit world on how to make the most of the Internet.
"Over the past two years, PIR has made significant strides to become an exemplary registry," Rotenberg said in a statement about his appointment. "We established an advisory council to solicit input from leading representatives of the .org community from around the world. We supported the work of the non-commercial user constituency to ensure the active participation of civil society organizations at [the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.] We have taken important stands on privacy protection for the "Whois" directory [of information on Web-site owners] and on Internet security and stability."
New PAC To Focus On Digital Copyright
A group of technologists recently formed a political action committee called IPac to focus on copyright issues in the digital world.
IPac's board includes; David Alpert, a product manager at Google; political consultant, and Ren Bucholz, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and Matt Stoller, a writer for the online journal The Blogging of the President.
The group said it supports politicians who have displayed independent thinking on the issue of intellectual property protection in the digital world. IPac's favored candidates include: House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas; Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va.; Christopher Cox, R-Calif.; John Doolittle, R-Calif.; and Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.; and Brad Carson, the Democratic nominee for the Senate seat from Oklahoma.
The group said it endorsed Carson because he has expressed support for its principles, which focus on achieving a balance among the rights of technologists, innovators and artists in the digital world. The group said it believes that clarifying the rights would foster more innovation and reduce litigation that would have a chilling effect on such innovation.
In an inaugural note about the group, Stoller urged technologists to get politically organized and to take action. "We've got to give money, sponsor candidates, run education campaigns and vote," he said. "We've got to do this repeatedly, for many years, and if we do, we'll win."
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