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By Declan McCullagh, 1 June 2009 10:57

NEWS

Senators John Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe, members of the Commerce and Intelligence committees, said in a statement that "no other president in American history has elevated this issue to that level and we thank [Obama] for his leadership." The Center for Democracy and Technology said it "is evident that the report's authors listened to the concerns of privacy and civil liberties groups".

Cyber security headaches
The origin of many of the feds' cyber security headaches can be traced back to the process that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) nearly seven years ago. Politicians in Washington, DC decided to glue together a medley of federal agencies to create a massive bureaucracy that would, as one of its new goals, provide a better focus on cyber security.

"The department will gather and focus all our efforts to face the challenge of cyber terrorism," President Bush said when signing the 500-or-so-page bill into law in November 2002. "This department will be charged with encouraging research on new technologies that can detect these threats in time to prevent an attack."

Some tasks might benefit from centralisation in one of the world's largest bureaucracies. But it soon became evident that cyber security was not one of them. By 2005, government auditors concluded that the department failed to live up to its cyber security responsibilities and may be "unprepared" for emergencies; as recently as last autumn, DHS secretary Michael Chertoff said his agency needed to develop a plan to respond to a "cybercrisis".

That led some outside groups to argue that cyber security efforts should be taken over by the National Security Agency, which already is responsible for protecting government computers through its "information assurance" arm, or perhaps the White House staff.

Lending an unusual spice to what would normally be a quiet, internecine power struggle was March's resignation of Rod Beckström, director of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Center. In his farewell letter, Beckström blasted what he said was an NSA power grab, saying the secretive military agency "effectively controls DHS cyber efforts through detailees, technology insertions".

The week before Beckström's resignation, director of national intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair suggested to a House committee that the NSA was ready for the job, saying "there are some wizards out there at Fort Meade". But a few weeks later, after a congressional hearing that was hardly enthusiastic about the idea, NSA director Keith Alexander denied his agency had any interest in the job.

In February, Obama ordered a 60-day review of the federal government's cyber security efforts, and appointed Hathaway - who had worked for the director of national intelligence in the Bush administration - to lead it.

In addition, The New York Times reported on Friday that the Pentagon is preparing a new military command for cyberspace that would operate in parallel with the civilian effort that Obama is expected to announce. He is "expected to sign a classified order in coming weeks that will create the military cyber command" and recognise "that the United States already has a growing number of computer weapons in its arsenal and must prepare strategies for their use", the newspaper said.

During Friday's remarks, Obama noted that his campaign had been the subject of a cyber intrusion in which hackers accessed policy papers and travel plans but not fundraising data.