Poindexter, A Lightning Rod, Resigns; Experts See Broad Hacker Attack on Horizon; Proposed Bill Would Require Feds to Report Data Searches

John M. Poindexter, a retired rear admiral who was President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, is stepping down “within a few weeks,” after the disclosure of a proposal to create a terrorist futures-trading market that outraged lawmakers and embarrassed senior Pentagon officials, according to a story in the New York Times. The Times reports that Poindexter recently he oversaw development of a program at Darpa that proposed spying electronically on Americans to monitor potential terrorists. That program was also killed by Congress.Experts See Broad Hacker Attack on HorizonWashington Post reports that government and industry experts consider brewing hacker activity a precursor to a broad Internet attack that would target enormous numbers of computers vulnerable from a flaw in Windows software from Microsoft Corp. According to the story, experts described an unusual confluence of conditions that heighten prospects for a serious disruption soon.

The

Proposed Bill Would Require Feds to Report Data SearchesComputerWorld. The story reports that the bill would require federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies to disclose when they subscribe to commercial databases of personal information and would prohibit all federal agencies from conducting searches of commercial data to create hypothetical scenarios of future terrorist attacks.

Civil liberties groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), are throwing their support behind a piece of legislation that would require U.S. agencies to report to Congress about the personal information they collect, according to a story in