Google Exception in Cybersecurity Order Questioned as Unwise Gap

Telecommunications companies want the Obama Administration to rethink a decision that may exempt Google’s Gmail, Apple’s iPhone software and Microsoft’s Windows from an executive order on cybersecurity.

The Feb. 12 order says the government can’t designate “commercial information technology products or consumer information technology services” as critical U.S. infrastructure targeted for voluntary computer security standards. “If e-mail went away this afternoon, we would all come to a stop,” said Marcus Sachs, vice president of national security policy at Verizon Communications, the second-largest U.S. phone company. “Hell yeah, e-mail is critical.” Technologies used in personal computers, software and the Internet “are the lifeblood of cyberspace,” Sachs said. “If you exclude that right up front, you take off the table the very people who are creating the products and services that are vulnerable.” Obama’s order is aimed at areas such as power grids, telecommunications and pipelines. The goal is to protect “systems and assets whose incapacitation from a cyber incident would have catastrophic national security and economic consequences,” White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in an e-mail. “It is not about Netflix, Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat.”