WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration is considering making the National Security Agency -- famous for eavesdropping and code breaking -- its ``traffic cop'' for ambitious plans to share homeland security information across government computer networks, a senior NSA official says.

Such a decision would expand NSA's responsibility to help defend the complex network of data pipelines carrying warnings and other sensitive information. It would also require significantly more money for the ultra-secret spy agency.

The NSA's director for information assurance, Daniel G. Wolf, was expected to outline his agency's potential role during a speech Wednesday at the RSA technology conference in San Francisco. In an interview preceding his speech, Wolf told The Associated Press that computer networks at U.S. organizations are like medieval castles, each protected by different-size walls and moats.

As the U.S. government moves increasingly to share sensitive security information across agencies, weaknesses inside one department can become opportunities for outsiders to penetrate the entire system, Wolf warned. Attackers could steal sensitive information or deliberately spread false information.
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Source : SiliconValley