NSA Brings Domestic Surveillance to Fruition

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has a new domestic surveillance project in the works called 'Perfect Citizen.' It's reportedly built to monitor and protect national infrastructures such as power grids and transport systems.

Citing unnamed industry and government sources, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the NSA awarded Raytheon a "black" (classified) $100 million dollar contract aimed at installing secret monitoring equipment within U.S. networks of alleged national importance.

Perfect Citizen Could Be Big Brother

According to The Register, the Wall Street Journal quoted an internal Raytheon email as saying that "Perfect Citizen is Big Brother." (Source: theregister.co.uk)

Perfect Citizen is allegedly designed to get a clearer idea of the threats facing the United States IT infrastructure since many of the older monitoring systems have since been connected to the Internet.

Some members of the U.S. defense and intelligence community have claimed for years that unfriendly countries and organizations have already engaged in attacking and probing these systems.

Issues of Government Monitoring

Anonymous sources told the Wall Street Journal that the equipment designed for use with the NSA's Perfect Citizen plan would also be designed to flag unusual network events that might indicate an impending cyber attack.

A few times in the not-so-distant past, U.S. defense and intelligence agencies have warned of impending attacks -- repeatedly noting that America's defenses are 'broken.'

The NSA plans to put Perfect Citizen equipment on many privately owned networks that many critics suggest will open the door for more intrusive monitoring.

The full scope of the project has yet to be determined. (Source: theregister.co.uk)

Visit Bill's Links and More for more great tips, just like this one!