Jim Bell sentenced to 10 years in prison

[John Young]

We'll have up this weekend a 180-page report by the Defense
Science Board on "Protecting the Homeland -- Defensive
Information Operations," a study conducted in the summer of
2000, published in March 2001, which describes in detail 
multi-billion dollar proposals for combating threats to the 
US by technologies, if not politics, promoted on this list.

It could hardly be more descriptive of the multi-agency
operations deployed in the Bell, CJ and other cybercrime 
trials and proposes as well what must be done to change 
defense, intelligence, law enforcement and civil liberties 
legislation to assure that defense of the homeland takes 
precedence over long-established rights of the citizenry.

Curiously, the document charges that DoJ and the FBI
are mulishly resisting sharing investigative information
with Defense by citing legal restrictions on allowing
outsider access. (That could be smokescreening.)
The report urges that Defense and Intel be given
ready access to whatever information will assist
their urgent task.

One of the legal advisors to the task force was Stewart
Baker, but there were several dozen industry and governmental
participants.

Here's a policy snippet:

"Following the end of the Cold War, and the subsequent changes 
in the geopolitical climate, the United States now faces a 
different kind of threat. This threat is characterized by the 
ability of numerous potential adversaries to engage in an 
information attack upon the United States, enabled by the 
lower entry costs associated with such an attack. America's 
ability to attribute and respond is woefully inadequate to 
pose a significant deterrent to would be attackers. On 
the other end of the spectrum, early tactical indications 
and warning capabilities are virtually non-existent in 
cyberspace. These factors converge to create a newly 
and differently vulnerable U.S. homeland.

It is the contention of the task force that immediate actions 
can work to decrease the threat and potential damage to 
U.S. national security, including infrastructures, institutions 
and individuals. The United States national security apparatus 
must continue to evolve over time to deal with these emerging 
trans-national threats, including trans-boundary threats where 
the differences between law enforcement and national defense, 
between foreign and domestic, between national and transnational, 
and between government and civilian are increasingly irrelevant."