US DHS set to wipe out government network surveillance records

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is all set to wipe out records that are at least three years old from a contentious network monitoring system, Einstein, following a tentative approval from the National Archives and Records Administration.

Claiming the records of having no research significance, the DHS said that it will destroy information about traffic to government websites, agency network intrusions and general vulnerability, Nextgov.com noted.

The department cited reasons for wiping the records that there is ‘quickly diminishing value for most of the data collected pursuant to intrusion detection, prevention and analysis.’

Records also include email conversations between federal workers and public citizens concerning potential cyber threats to DHS, ‘suspicious files, spam and other potential cyber threats’, signs of known and mysterious malicious activity, in addition to storage of threat sightings and signs.

However, the move is being argued by security experts as it would involve erasing historical threat data and getting rid of evidence that the government-wide surveillance system does not perform as planned.

Further, Einstein data is expected to be goldmine for researchers, as it includes data about attacks against very specific networks in a reliable means over long time.