Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.
"I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. "It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill."
Representatives of other large Internet and telecommunications companies expressed concerns about the bill in a teleconference with Rockefeller's aides this week, but were not immediately available for interviews on Thursday.
A spokesman for Rockefeller also declined to comment on the record Thursday, saying that many people were unavailable because of the summer recess. A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president's power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.
When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. "We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs--from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records," Rockefeller said.
The Rockefeller proposal plays out against a broader concern in Washington, D.C., about the government's role in cybersecurity. In May, President Obama acknowledged that the government is "not as prepared" as it should be to respond to disruptions and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff. Three months later, that post remains empty, one top cybersecurity aide has quit, and some wags have begun to wonder why a government that receives failing marks on cybersecurity should be trusted to instruct the private sector what to do.
Rockefeller's revised legislation seeks to reshuffle the way the federal government addresses the topic. It requires a "cybersecurity workforce plan" from every federal agency, a "dashboard" pilot project, measurements of hiring effectiveness, and the implementation of a "comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy" in six months--even though its mandatory legal review will take a year to complete.
The privacy implications of sweeping changes implemented before the legal review is finished worry Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "As soon as you're saying that the federal government is going to be exercising this kind of power over private networks, it's going to be a really big issue," he says.
Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to "direct the national response to the cyber threat" if necessary for "the national defense and security." The White House is supposed to engage in "periodic mapping" of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies "shall share" requested information with the federal government. ("Cyber" is defined as anything having to do with the Internet, telecommunications, computers, or computer networks.)
"The language has changed but it doesn't contain any real additional limits," EFF's Tien says. "It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)...The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There's no provision for any administrative process or review. That's where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it."
Translation: If your company is deemed "critical," a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network.
The Internet Security Alliance's Clinton adds that his group is "supportive of increased federal involvement to enhance cyber security, but we believe that the wrong approach, as embodied in this bill as introduced, will be counterproductive both from an national economic and national secuity perspective."
Update at 3:14 p.m. PDT: I just talked to Jena Longo, deputy communications director for the Senate Commerce committee, on the phone. She sent me e-mail with this statement:
The president of the United States has always had the constitutional authority, and duty, to protect the American people and direct the national response to any emergency that threatens the security and safety of the United States. The Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity bill makes it clear that the president's authority includes securing our national cyber infrastructure from attack. The section of the bill that addresses this issue, applies specifically to the national response to a severe attack or natural disaster. This particular legislative language is based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks. To be very clear, the Rockefeller-Snowe bill will not empower a "government shutdown or takeover of the Internet" and any suggestion otherwise is misleading and false. The purpose of this language is to clarify how the president directs the public-private response to a crisis, secure our economy and safeguard our financial networks, protect the American people, their privacy and civil liberties, and coordinate the government's response.
Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for an on-the-record answer to these four questions that I asked her colleague on Wednesday. I'll let you know if and when I get a response.
The U.S. president has announced a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy for the federal government, saying Internet-based threats have risen "dramatically" and the country "must act to reduce our vulnerabilities."
A 76-page White House document calls for a new way of looking at Internet and computer security, saying that private-public partnerships are necessary, collaboration with international organizations will be vital, and privacy and civil liberties must be respected in the process.
Sound familiar? The year was 2003, and the president was George W. Bush, who wrote the introduction to what he called a "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace."
On Friday, President Obama announced his 76-page "Cyberspace Policy Review"--with precisely the same number of pages as his predecessor's--at an event at the White House.
While the Bush document discusses centralizing cybersecurity responsibilities in the Department of Homeland Security and the Obama document shifts them to the White House, the two reports are remarkably similar. Perhaps this should be no surprise: Obama selected Melissa Hathaway, who worked for the director of national intelligence in the Bush administration and was director of an Bush-era "Cyber Task Force," to conduct the review.
To test your political acumen, we've taken excerpts from both and placed them side by side in the following chart. Can you tell which quotations come from which administration? (An answer key is at the end.)
| #1: Privacy and civil liberties | "The United States needs a partnership between government and industry to perform analyses, issue warnings, and coordinate response efforts. Privacy and civil liberties must be protected in the process." | "Work with the private sector to explore how best to apply technical capabilities to the defense of the national infrastructure and what legal framework would be required to ensure the protection of privacy rights and civil liberties." |
|---|---|---|
| #2: Sophisticated attacks | "The attack tools and methodologies are becoming widely available, and the technical capability and sophistication of users bent on causing havoc or disruption is improving." | "The growing sophistication and breadth of criminal activity, along with the harm already caused by cyber incidents, highlight the potential for malicious activity in cyberspace to affect U.S. competitiveness." |
| #3: Public-Private partnerships | "The federal government invites the creation of, and participation in, public-private partnerships...The government will continue to support the development of public-private partnerships." | "The federal government should examine existing public-private partnerships to optimize their capacity to identify priorities and enable efficient execution of concrete actions." |
| #4: Crisis responses | "Providing crisis management in response to attacks on critical information systems...In wartime or crisis, adversaries may seek to intimidate by attacking critical infrastructures and key economic functions or eroding public confidence in information systems response." | "The Federal government's obligation to protect the American people and to provide for the common defense includes a responsibility to ensure that the Nation can communicate and respond in times of crisis. The communications system itself might bear the brunt of such events and must have resilience or the capability to recover." |
| #5: Coordination | "The United States must improve interagency coordination between law enforcement, national security,and defense agencies involving cyber-based attacks and espionage..." | "The United States (must) achieve a more reliable, resilient, and trustworthy digital infrastructure for the future.... It presents the need for greater coordination and integrated development of policy." |
| #6: Critical infrastructure | "Our nation's critical infrastructures are composed of public and private institutions in the sectors of agriculture, food, water, public health, emergency services, government, defense industrial base, information and telecommunications, energy, transportation, banking and finance..." | "They have also become essential elements in the operation and management of a range of critical infrastructure functions, including transportation systems, shipping, the electric power grid, oil and gas pipelines, nuclear plants, water systems, critical manufacturing, and many others." |
| #7: Terrorists | "Malicious actors in cyberspace can take many forms including individuals, criminal cartels, terrorists, or nation states...The speed and anonymity of cyber attacks makes distinguishing among the actions of terrorists, criminals, and nation states difficult." | "A growing array of state and non-state actors such as terrorists and international criminal groups are targeting U.S. citizens, commerce, critical infrastructure, and government...Exploitation of information networks and the compromise of sensitive data...leave the United States vulnerable." |
| #8: International cooperation | "Enabling our ability to do so requires a system of international cooperation to facilitate information sharing, reduce vulnerabilities, and deter malicious actors." | "Only by working with international partners can the United States best address these challenges, enhance cybersecurity, and reap the full benefits of the digital age." |
| #9: International organizations | "We are also ready to utilize government-sponsored organizations such as the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), G-8,the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), and the Organization of American States (OAS), and other relevant organizations to facilitate global coordination on cybersecurity." | "More than a dozen international organizations including...the Group of Eight, NATO, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the Organization of American States, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development...address issues concerning the information and communications infrastructure." |
| #10: Catastrophic attacks | "Providing continuity of government requires ensuring the safety of its own cyber infrastructure and those assets required for supporting its essential missions and services." | "The Federal government's obligation to protect the American people and to provide for the common defense includes a responsibility to ensure that the Nation can communicate and respond in times of crisis." |
Answer key: All of the excerpts from the left column are taken from Bush's National Strategy document from February 2003. The right column represents excerpts from Obama's Cyberspace Policy Review document from May 2009.
President Obama on Friday said the U.S. government is "not as prepared" as it should be to respond to disruptions caused by computer or Internet attacks and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff.
The still-to-be-named coordinator will oversee a new bureaucracy tasked with digital infrastructure protection, which had previously been handled by the Department of Homeland Security. "We will ensure that these networks are secure, trustworthy and resilient," Obama said. "We will deter, prevent, detect, and defend against attacks and recover quickly from any disruptions or damage."
Obama's announcement, which was expected, came as the president released the outcome of a 60-day review that sought to rethink how the federal government should address cybersecurity. Business groups had sought to raise cybersecurity's profile in the administration but remained wary about regulatory mandates from Washington; security hawks would prefer the new bureaucracy to have more authority over the private sector.
The final report represents a political compromise. It suggests "intrusion detection and prevention systems" and "warning of cyber intrusions and attacks," while stressing that collaboration with privacy groups and industry is vital. New laws compelling companies to share more information with the federal government about intrusions may be necessary, it says, but only "as a last resort."
During his remarks in the White House's East Room on Friday, Obama also seemed to seek a balance between warning of the dangers of terrorists or other miscreants using the Internet and saying the government will not go too far. "Our pursuit of cybersecurity will not -- I repeat, will not include -- monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic," he said.
The report also goes out of its way to recognize the civil liberties concerns that could arise by a greater focus on private networks: the word "privacy" appears no fewer than 69 times in the document.
In a cybersecurity "crisis," the plan is for the coordinator to become the "White House action officer for cyber incident response." That's a similar role to the White House officials who help to monitor terrorist attacks or natural disasters. (The new coordinator's fiefdom will be shared between the National Economic Council and the National Security Council.)
While there has been some private grumbling that the new coordinator will not report directly to the president -- a prized symbol of access in Washington circles -- reaction to the administration's announcement was generally positive.
Senators John Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), 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."
Cybersecurity headaches
The origin of many of the feds' cybersecurity headaches can be traced back to the process that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security nearly seven years ago. Politicians in Washington, D.C. 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 cybersecurity.
"The department will gather and focus all our efforts to face the challenge of cyberterrorism," 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 centralization in one of the world's largest bureaucracies. But it soon became evident that cybersecurity was not one of them. By 2005, government auditors concluded that the department failed to live up to its cybersecurity responsibilities and may be "unprepared" for emergencies; as recently as last fall, 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 cybersecurity 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 cybersecurity 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 cybercommand" and recognize "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.
President Obama on Friday is expected to unveil his administration's plans to deal with cybersecurity threats to federal agencies and the private sector, including the creation of a White House "cyber czar."
It's not yet clear who that person will be, or even whether Obama will name someone during his announcement. As part of a political compromise, the new position is expected to be folded into both the National Security Council and National Economic Council.
The announcement, which is scheduled to take place at 10:55 a.m. ET in the White House's East Room, caps years of criticism of the Department of Homeland Security's efforts and months of speculation about what form the replacement cybersecurity bureaucracy will take.
"It provides the president with recommendations for a White House organizational structure that can effectively address cyberspace-related issues," Melissa Hathaway, acting cyberspace director for the White House's National Security and Homeland Security councils, said recently.
No bureaucratic mandate will satisfy everyone: Security hawks would like the "czar" to have authority -- which may mean new laws -- to direct both federal agencies and private businesses on cybersecurity matters. Business representatives, on the other hand, like the potential for increased high-level attention but remain wary of mandates from Washington.
In February, Obama ordered a 60-day review of the federal government's cybersecurity efforts, and appointed Hathaway -- who had worked for the director of national intelligence in the Bush administration -- to lead it. Two months later, Hathaway announced the report had been submitted to the president along with recommendations; it's expected to be made public on Friday.
Earlier this week, the White House offered a hint about how the restructuring would proceed, and indicated that the "czar" would not report directly to the president. Obama's statement on Tuesday said the national security and homeland security staff would be integrated and new positions inside the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council would "deal with new and emerging 21st Century challenges associated with cybersecurity."
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 cybercommand" and recognize "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.
Bureaucratic roadblocks
The origin of many of the Feds' cybersecurity headaches can be traced back to the process that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security nearly seven years ago. Politicians in Washington, D.C. decided to 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 cybersecurity.
"The department will gather and focus all our efforts to face the challenge of cyberterrorism," 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 centralization in one of the world's largest bureaucracies. But it soon became evident that cybersecurity was not one of them. By 2005, government auditors concluded that the department failed to live up to its cybersecurity responsibilities and may be "unprepared" for emergencies; as recently as last fall, 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 cybersecurity 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 internecine power struggle conducted in secret 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.
If any of this sounds familiar, it should. About a year after President George W. Bush took office, his administration announced a highly-anticipated, 76-page document called the "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace" (PDF). Few of its bullet points calling for immediate "response" have been enacted; even fewer people remember what they were.
Acting White House Cyberspace Director Melissa Hathaway addresses the cybersecurity issue during the RSA computer security conference on Wednesday.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)SAN FRANCISCO--The federal official overseeing a 60-day review of the U.S. government's cybersecurity efforts indicated Wednesday that the final report recommends shifting more responsibilities to the White House.
"It provides the president with recommendations for a White House organizational structure that can effectively address cyberspace-related issues," Melissa Hathaway, acting cyberspace director for the White House's National Security and Homeland Security councils, said at the RSA computer security conference here.
At the moment, a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security coordinates nonmilitary cybersecurity activities and is responsible for building a national "response system" for online attacks and creating a "risk management program" for critical infrastructure.
Hathaway said her report--which has not yet been made public--was finished on Friday and has been sent to President Obama for his approval.
"This responsibility transcends the jurisdictional purview of individual departments and agencies because, although each agency has a unique contribution to make, no single agency has a broad enough perspective to match the sweep of the challenges," Hathaway said.
The announcement of the review led to speculation that the White House's National Security Council or the National Security Agency would be handed more cybersecurity responsibilities, along with a larger budget to carry them out. Although the 2002 law creating DHS centralized cybersecurity responsibilities, it has been repeatedly criticized by government auditors who concluded that DHS failed to live up to its responsibilities and may be "unprepared" for emergencies.
On Tuesday, NSA Director Keith Alexander downplayed reports of a power grab by his agency, saying, "We do not want to run cybersecurity for the U.S. government." The NSA has cybersecurity responsibilities for the U.S. military.
Alexander's remarks appeared to be a response to Rod Beckstrom, former director of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Center, whose resignation letter last month blasted what he described as an NSA power grab that could threaten "our democratic processes." That led some members of Congress--including the Democratic chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee--to object to NSA control, which Clinton-era FBI director Louis Freeh echoed a day later.
The RSA conference was punctuated by news reports of a discovery of $1.9 million infected zombie computers in a botnet and a report that hackers stole some specifications from the $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project. (The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin, the primary contractor, said Wednesday that the report was incorrect.)
Any effort by the Obama administration to reshuffle cybersecurity responsibilities will face a significant challenge: the protocols and hardware that make up today's Internet are created and maintained by the private sector. Companies like Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Google, AT&T, and Verizon--not Washington bureaucracies--operate today's Internet, and it's not clear that outside help will be useful.
"Protecting cyberspace requires strong vision and leadership and will require changes in policy, technology, education, and perhaps law," Hathaway said. "Achieving this vision requires leadership and commitment from the highest levels of government, industry, and civil society."
(Credit:
WhiteHouse.gov)
President Barack Obama is turning directly to the public to win support for his economic proposals in ways unseen from any president before him, and on Tuesday he continued that by introducing a new feature on WhiteHouse.gov called "Open for Questions."
The new feature, modeled after the "Open for Questions" tool on Change.gov, allows users to ask a question about the economy, as well as vote for or against others' questions. On Thursday morning, the president will hold an online town hall meeting on the economy, streamed on WhiteHouse.gov, and answer some of the most popular questions from the tool.
"One of my priorities as president is opening up the White House to the American people so that folks can understand what we're up to and have a chance to participate themselves," Obama says in an introductory video at the "Open for Questions" page. "We're going to take advantage of the Internet to bring all of you to the White House to talk about the economy...This is an experiment, but it's also an exciting opportunity for me to look at a computer and get a snapshot of what Americans across the country care about. We may not always agree on everything, but this way, I can get a sense of your concerns and give you some straight answers."
After visitors set up an account on WhiteHouse.gov by submitting their name, e-mail address, zip code, and choosing a password, they can submit or review questions in a number of different categories related to the economy: jobs, health care reform, education, home ownership, veterans, auto industry, financial stability, green jobs and energy, retirement security, small business, and budget.
The terms of participation notify users that the tool is hosted by Google but that WhiteHouse.gov owns and has access to the data related to the questions and voting, which will be treated in accordance with the WhiteHouse.gov privacy policy. It also says Google never receives the e-mail addresses submitted and does not store the IP addresses related to the tool.
The new feature was launched the same day President Obama held a nationally televised, prime time news conference to advocate for his $3.55 trillion budget proposal and other economic plans. Besides making more television appearances than might be expected from the president--his stint on NBC's "The Tonight Show" was the first time a sitting president was a guest on a late night talk show--Obama is making use of the millions of e-mail addresses his team gathered during the presidential campaign to directly appeal for people's support for his budget.
The group Organizing for America, overseen by the Democratic National Committee, has sent out e-mails over the past week and a half asking Obama supporters to mobilize on behalf of the president's agenda.
"In the next few weeks we'll be asking you to do some of the same things we asked of you during the campaign--talking directly to people in your communities about the president's ideas for long-term prosperity," David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager wrote to the e-mail list on March 13.
A tool featured on the DNC Web site allows visitors to submit their address to find the phone numbers for their congressional representatives, in order to make calls in support of Obama's budget. It also provides a script for volunteers to follow during the calls.
Environmental activist and author Van Jones, one of the first to recognize the power of a "green collar" job corps as a tool for social justice, has been tapped by the Obama administration to serve as special adviser for green jobs, enterprise, and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).
Under his new post, which he'll start Monday, Jones will shape and advance the administration's energy and climate initiatives "with a specific interest in improvements and opportunities for vulnerable communities," said Nancy Sutley, chair of the CEQ, in a statement Tuesday.
Van Jones, founder of Green For All, on Monday will start a new post as special adviser for green jobs, enterprise, and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
(Credit: Green For All)The Yale-trained attorney from Tennessee made a name for himself in the San Francisco Bay Area through his work on youth-violence prevention and police- and youth-justice reform with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which he co-founded 11 years ago in Oakland, Calif.
More recently, however, he's been catapulted to the national stage by his push to get national funding for green jobs training. He also launched Green For All, an organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. And his recent book, "The Green Collar Economy," made The New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction hardcover books.
His hope is that low-income, minority communities will be able to share in the potential fortunes of the emerging clean-tech economy.
"We need to be very sure we are not replicating the mistakes from the dot-com days when we set ourselves up for a digital divide," he told CNET News in a 2007 interview. "We should work very hard to avoid having an ecodivide where we have ecological haves and ecological have-nots."
"There's an opportunity here to take a photovoltaic panel and use that not only to push down the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, but also begin to push people up out of poverty," he continued in the interview. "I think it would be very smart for Silicon Valley to think about these technologies as social uplift, job-creating technologies as well as global warming solutions."
Taking the reins at Green For All will be Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, the former executive officer at the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council.
Former CNET News staff writer Elsa Wenzel contributed to this report
The White House on Monday officially rolled out the names of its new-media team, which includes a former Google product manager.
Macon Phillips was officially named the director of new media, though he wrote his first White House blog post in that capacity the day President Obama took office. Phillips served in the same role for the Obama transition team and was responsible for developing its Web site Change.gov and overseeing its online communications.
Cammie Croft was named the deputy director of new media, after holding the same position with the transition team. During the presidential election, Croft was the new media rapid response manager for the Obama campaign, overseeing Web sites like FightTheSmears.com.
Katie Stanton, formerly of Google, joins the White House as director of citizen participation. Stanton was a principal for Google's new business development team, which was responsible for OpenSocial, Google Moderator, and other election-related initiatives. She also managed products like Google Finance, Google News, and Blog Search. Before joining Google, Stanton worked for Yahoo, where she helped build Yahoo Finance.
The White House named Jesse Lee as the online programs director. During the 2008 election, Lee performed online outreach for the Obama transition team and also conducted online communications for the Democratic National Committee. He previously served as senior new media adviser for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Macon Phillips was officially named the director of new media, though he wrote this first White House blog post in that capacity the day President Obama took office.
(Credit: WhiteHouse.gov)A Republican congressman is calling on President Obama to ensure that all business-related e-mails from White House staff are appropriately preserved, including e-mails the staff sent from temporary Gmail accounts.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter to White House Counsel Gregory Craig on Thursday, raising the concern that e-mails sent through personal accounts may not be retained.
"It is incumbent that the new White House implement policies and processes to minimize the risk of losing e-mail subject to the Presidential Records Act," Issa said in his letter.
The Presidential Records Act mandates that all presidential records be preserved as public record. As the letter notes, "The challenges posed by retaining e-mail as required under the PRA have proved vexing for the last two White Houses."
The Bush White House came under fire for apparently losing millions of e-mails from 2003 through 2005. Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee pressed the White House last year to recover the e-mails, including some that were sent through Republican National Committee e-mail accounts. At the time, Issa was skeptical of the Democrats' attempt to recover the e-mails.
"Are we simply going on a fishing expedition at $40,000 to $50,000 a month?" he asked National Archives and White House officials at a hearing. "Do any of you know of a single document, because this committee doesn't, that should've been in the archives but in fact was done at the RNC?"
In his letter to the Obama White House, Issa specifically called into question e-mails sent from Gmail accounts the Obama team used before receiving their official White House e-mail addresses. The Gmail accounts were established so the communications staff could continue to send e-mails after the Obama transition office shut down its press office on Inauguration Day.
"Gmail users on the President's staff run the risk of incorrectly classifying their e-mails as non-records under the Act," Issa's letter said.
The letter asks the White House to answer seven questions by March 4, including what procedure exists for ensuring that messages sent or received on private, non-governmental e-mail accounts are properly categorized as presidential records or non-presidential records, who would make that decision, and what review process has been instituted for the process. It also asks about the status of the White House's new electronic archiving technology, which was still being installed in late 2008.
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the letter.
Updated at 3 p.m. PST with quotes from White House spokesman Bill Burton.
The Obama administration may be considered tech-savvy, but that didn't do much good Monday when the White House was hit with a daylong "server outage."
Most White House aides, the first lady's office, and other executive offices were without e-mail for the day, The Washington Post reported, after the outage blocked all incoming and outgoing messages beginning around 10 a.m. EST.
As of Tuesday morning, the White House was once again sending its regular slew of e-mails.
Press secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged the outage during a briefing to reporters Monday afternoon. White House aides at the briefing had to pass out photocopies of the executive orders signed by the president that day, rather than e-mailing them to reporters. The outage, however, did not appear to cause any major disruptions at the White House.
White House spokesman Bill Burton said the outage was the result of a piece of old hardware in the data center breaking Monday morning.
"This caused a chain reaction with other systems, specifically the e-mail servers," he said. "We began the process of modernizing all of our technology infrastructure last week, and the faulty piece of hardware that broke has been replaced."
"In spite of it all, we enjoyed the opportunity to get out from behind our computers and meet with colleagues and visitors face to face," he added.
