Panel Urges Obama to Consider Hacker-Response Plan

President-elect Barack Obama should create a new White House office to protect cyberspace from hackers, thieves and foreign agents, coordinating security efforts across U.S. military, intelligence and civilian agencies, according to a new report from a panel of leading government and industry experts.

The report, expected to be made public Monday on Capitol Hill, also urges Obama's new administration and Congress to pass new laws to allow for speedier investigations — and in some cases quicker retaliation once intruders are identified. It proposed online "data warrants," for example, rather than traditional search warrants, which it said "may be increasingly impracticable in the online environment."

Chances are good Obama will be receptive to many of the proposals: At least five members of the panel that produced the report also are working for his presidential transition team. They include former White House official Paul Kurtz, advising Obama on national security matters, and Obama technology advisers Dan Chenok and Bruce McConnell.

"Responding to a cyber attack is a tough issue," said James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think-tank that organized the commission. "Do operators respond with law enforcement, espionage or military actions? The guidelines are really unclear. The rules designed in the 1980s are slow, and the Internet is fast."

The proposals by the Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency were being delivered to Capitol Hill during a period of increasing exasperation within the U.S. government over embarrassing computer break-ins at the Pentagon, White House, State Department, Commerce Department and elsewhere that have been traced in recent years across foreign borders, notably to Russia and China.

"By now, the seriousness of the (information technology) security threat we face should be apparent to all," former Commerce Department official Mark Foulon wrote in a 2006 e-mail to staffers there after a break-in. "It has become clear that Internet access itself is a vulnerability that we cannot mitigate. We have tried incremental steps, and they have proven insufficient."