(CBS) The White House may soon ask Internet service providers to give the federal government access to a wide array of data with the purpose of preventing a terrorist cyber-attack — but with the potential to track individual usage of the world wide web, a newspaper reports.

The New York Times says the Bush administration proposal will be made early next year in a report called The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, to be issued by the president's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board.

The plans for a central monitoring system for the entire web would require approval by Congress and regulators. According to the newspaper, the report is vague on exactly how the system would work or what the service providers would be required to share with the government.

The report is a continuation of efforts to strengthen security after the Sept. 11 attacks, and its findings will shape policy at the new Department of Homeland Security.
Administration officials contend the information is needed to protect against attacks on web sites crucial to government functions and commerce.

"We don't have anybody that is able to look at the entire picture," Tina Olson, deputy chief of staff at the Infrastructure Protection Board, told the Times. "When something is happening, we don't know it's happening until it's too late."

The Board issued a draft of the report this fall, but in that version, private companies were to keep an eye on Internet security. In the latest version, according to the Times, the government is in charge.

That worries some Internet service providers because the data the government wants to track could not only be used to prevent attacks, but also to snoop on individuals.

"Cyberspace is essential to both homeland security and national security; its security and reliability support the economy, critical infrastructures, and national defense," the draft argued. "The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace describes initiatives to secure U.S. information systems against deliberate, malicious disruption and to foster an increased national resiliency."

"CEOs should consider forming enterprisewide corporate security councils to integrate cybersecurity, privacy, physical security, and operational considerations," the draft continued.

One official at a data services company told the Times compared the current proposal to Carnivore, the FBI's controversial system of computer monitoring.

"But in fact, it's 10 times worse. Carnivore was working on much smaller feeds and could not scale. This is looking at the whole Internet," the official said.

The Bush administration says the plan is still being finalized, and some security experts caution that monitoring proposals tend to sound worse on the drawing board than they end up being in final form.

Technology is a key area of concern both for counter-terrorism officials and civil libertarians.

One of the more controversial aspects of the Homeland Security bill passed earlier this month was its creation of an Information Awareness Office, led by Reagan administration national security director John Poindexter, that is charged with developing ways to use data mining and other techniques to identify individuals who could pose terrorist threats.

Privacy advocates contend that could permit the government to use databases and credit card transactions to track where people go and what they buy.

The Total Information Awareness initiative wants to create models of behavior that might predict a terrorist attack, which some feel could amount to profiling people based on political or religious beliefs.

By Jarrett Murphy ©MMII CBS Worldwide Inc., All Rights Reserved.

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