He's considered at best to be somewhat wishy-washy regarding both Internet security and privacy. But President Clinton plans a summit Feb. 15 between himself, top government officials, and top Internet players regarding cybersecurity in the wake of this week's rash of spam-bombings which jammed several high-profile Web sites.
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart says the President wants the group to "talk about what our overall long-term plan is and to work through whether we're doing everything we can now." But Congressional Republican leader Dick Armey of Texas - a longtime critic of the Clinton Administration's indifference to privacy issues in general and online privacy in particular - still questions whether the President is willing to consider privacy issues in hand with Internet security.
Clinton wants $2 billion for fiscal 2000 for cybersecurity - but most of the money would go to the Pentagon, CNET says.
This week, hackers used a round of spam-bomb attacks to jam traffic at Yahoo, eBay, Amazon.com, CNN.com, Buy.com, E*Trade, Datek, and ZDNet. The FBI has launched a major investigation into the source(s) of the spam-bomb denial of service attacks.
Attorney General Janet Reno, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, and Secretary of Commerce William Daley will attend the summit, CNET says, as well as representatives from some of the Net's highest-profile players.
The government is reviewing its defense computer networks, making sure they weren't victimized by any tampering which could have made them routers for the spam-bomb attacks, CNET says. The Defense Department says some 10,000 computer networks would be inspected.
