Congress refuses to fund security network

Less than one week before the Clinton Administration's proposed network security plan is slated to be unveiled and discussed, Congress has refused a last-minute request to provide $39 million in funds-including $8.4 million for the controversial Federal Intrusion Detection Network (FIDNet)-until at least January.

Although House Majority Leader Richard Armey, R-Texas, has raised a number of questions about the privacy implications of FIDNet, the principal objection seems to be money. And with the House unwilling to dip into other sources to accommodate the administration's computer security proposal, the lack of funding could further delay the full-scale rollout of critical infrastructure plans.

"The request came as an amendment to the Treasury-Postal appropriations bill after it had been signed into law," said John Scofield, a spokesman for House Appropriations Committee Chairman C.W. "Bill" Young, R-FL. "We didn't have time to give it consideration and will look at it next year."

The administration had proposed funding the programs by using the counter-terrorism fund of the Department of Justice, Scofield said. But he said a Department of Justice program "shouldn't be used as a funding mechanism for something that is administration wide."

Besides money for FIDNet, the request included $17 million for a program to train and recruit students in cyber-security; $2 million for the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Export Administration to support Information Sharing and Assessment Centers (ISACs), a public-private partnership to protect critical infrastructure; $5 million for computer security projects to be run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology; and $7 million for the Department of Treasury to help federal agencies establish public key infrastructures to conduct electronic transactions.

Officials at the General Services Administration said they were prepared to continue bare-bones funding for FIDNet out of operating revenue-something they have done for the related Federal Computer Incident Response Capability (FedCIRC), a program the agency inherited from the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology last year. The agency hopes to that supplemental funding for FIDNet will be found by January.

Without funding, "we can go ahead with the minimum activity as we have for the last several months," said Sallie McDonald, deputy assistant commissioner at GSA's office of information security.

The administration's critical infrastructure plan is expected to be unveiled at a conference next Tuesday. But a pre-release summit involving officials from industry, government, and privacy advocates is planned for Thursday at the State Department, said a panelist for the event.