Bush signs Homeland Security bill

When President Bush signed a bill yesterday creating the Department of Homeland Security, he started a process that will reshuffle bureaucracies, permit greater internet surveillance and refocus the US government's computer security efforts.

The authors of the massive law, which totals about 500 pages, envision a far greater role for the government when it comes to making sure operating systems, hardware and the internet are secure. The law allocates $500m for research into new technologies. It also classifies certain activities as new computer crimes, stiffens penalties and permits internet providers to hand more information about subscribers to police.

"The department will gather and focus all our efforts to face the challenge of cyberterrorism, and the even worse danger of nuclear, chemical and biological terrorism," Bush said during a White House ceremony on Monday afternoon. "This department will be charged with encouraging research on new technologies that can detect these threats in time to prevent an attack."

Bush nominated Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor who's currently a White House advisor, to run the new department.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer warned it will take "a couple years" to integrate the 22 existing federal agencies that will make up the new department and to deal with culture clashes and incompatible computer systems. Together, these agencies - the list includes the Secret Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Coast Guard and the Border Patrol - employ about 170,000 people.

"In the process of bringing people together, there are, of course, going to be wrinkles that need to get ironed out," Fleischer said. "No transition is perfect. [But] this process will lead to enhanced homeland security for the American people."

The final law prohibits the Justice Department's proposed citizen-informant programme called TIPS (terrorist information and prevention system) and rejects "the development of a national identification system or card".

But civil liberties groups are concerned about the impact the law will have on privacy, especially when linked with a pair of controversial projects funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The agency considered and abandoned a plan to curtail internet anonymity by tagging browsing with unique markers for each person, while funding a mammoth database that would feature profiles of nearly all Americans' behaviour and spending habits.

"Is it appropriate for the US Department of Defense to pursue an aggressive program of [technology development] that can be used for surveillance of Americans?" asked Marc Rotenberg, the director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Rotenberg called for the ouster of former admiral John Poindexter, who runs DARPA's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, saying Poindexter's past efforts to create similar databases made him unsuitable to head the project.

Last week, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa asked the Defense Department's inspector general to conduct a "complete review" of DARPA's TIA program. Grassley will become chairman of the Senate Finance committee next year, at which time he'll be in a position to place a check on the program's funding.