Photo of Mike Vatis, until recently the director of the NIPC:
http://www.mccullagh.org/image/10/mike-vatis-nipc.html
GAO report in question:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d01323.pdf
-Declan
***********
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,44019,00.html
U.S.'s Defenseless Department
By Declan McCullagh (declan_at_wired.com)
12:30 p.m. May 23, 2001 PDT
WASHINGTON -- When the U.S. government created the National
Infrastructure Protection Center in February 1998 to thwart "cyber
criminals," officials couldn't stop talking about how the feds were
finally fighting back against the hacker menace.
Former Attorney General Janet Reno said at the time that the new
agency would "pursue criminals who attack or employ global networks"
-- and that without the NIPC, "the nation will be at peril."
Three years later, it's the NIPC that's in peril -- of being dubbed a
poorly-organized, ill-conceived bureaucracy that more established
agencies routinely ignore and that has not lived up to the promises
its proponents once made.
Instead of becoming a highly-sensitive nerve center that responds to
computer intrusions, congressional investigators have concluded that
the NIPC has turned into a federal backwater that is surprisingly
ineffective in pursing malicious hackers or devising a plan to protect
electronic infrastructures. The NIPC received $32 million in 1999 and
$28 million in 2000, not counting items like office space and
telephones provided by the FBI.
The remarkable 108-page report from the General Accounting Office
that was released Tuesday shows how bureaucracy can defeat the best
intentions of Congress and the White House.
[...]
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Received on May 23 2001
Intro
