Wired News delivered to your inbox or hand-held device. Everybody's got issues in Politics Instead of becoming a highly-sensitive nerve center that responds to computer intrusions, congressional investigators have concluded that the NIPC has turned into a federal backwater that is surprisingly ineffective in pursing malicious hackers or devising a plan to protect electronic infrastructures. The remarkable 108-page report from the General Accounting Office that was released Tuesday shows how bureaucracy can defeat the best intentions of Congress and the White House. The White House staff claim they're directly responsible for NIPC oversight, but the Justice Department approves its budget and the FBI notes that the NIPC director reports to an assistant FBI director. Because of long-standing regulations, NIPC staff can't even share sensitive information with the White House without the Justice Department's permission.
Nobody seems to listen.
Tight-lipped agencies refuse to share information. In Washington, protecting your turf means protecting your databases. NIPC representatives met with the Defense Department and the National Communications System, but couldn't agree on how to share data. The Commerce Department's Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office, which has a related effort, insists that entries in their databases actually belong to individual federal agencies and can't be shared without their permission. But nobody's figured out how to define it yet.