"Second, I am activating the following four groups to assist the NSA in their efforts. ECCO, the Emergency Computer Crisis Organ- ization, has acted as an advisor to law enforcement agencies across the country and has been instrumental in providing the technical support to the FBI and the Secret Service in their computer crime investigations.
"CERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team was created by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as an outgrowth of the 1988 INTERNET Worm incident. Carnegie Mellon University where CERT is headquartered has donated the facilities and staff of their Software Engineering Institute to deal with the invasion of our computers.
"The Defense Data Network Security Coordination Center was based at the Stanford Research Institute by the Defense Communications Agency to coordinate attacks against non-classified computer systems.
"Lastly, CIAC, the Computer Incident Advisory Capability manages computer crises for the Department of Energy at Lawrence Liver- more Laboratories.
"These are the organizations and the people who will guide us through the coming adversities. It is they who are responsible to insure that America never again finds itself so vulnerable. So open to attack. So helpless in our technological Achilles Heel.
"The organizations I mentioned, and the government itself have not yet been tested in a crisis of significant magnitude. This is their maiden voyage, so to speak, and it is incumbent on us, the American people, to make their job as easy as we can by offering our complete cooperation.
"And, tonight, that is what I am asking of you. Your assistance. Your government cannot do it alone. Nor can small localized individual efforts expect to be successful against an army of invaders so large. We must team together, act as one, for the good of the entire country. From the big business with 100,000 computers to the millions of men, women and children with a home computer; from the small businessman to the schools, we need to come together against the common enemy: the invasion of our privacy and way of life.
"Americans come together in a crisis, and my fellow Americans, we face a crisis. Let me tell you what my advisors tell me. They tell me without taking immediate drastic steps to prevent further destruction of America's information infrastructure, we face a depression as great as the one of the 1930's.
"They tell me that every computer in the country, most in Canada, a significant number in England and other countries, can expect to be attacked in some manner within two years. That represents over 70 million casualties!
"The international financial and monetary system will come to a halt and collapse. Financial trading as we know it will cease and wild speculative fluctuations will dominate the world curren- cy markets. America is already feeling the change since the ATM networks were removed from service.