Slashdot Mirror
Federal Cyberspace Policy Draft Released
mh_cryptonomicon writes "The initial public draft of the National Strategy for Securing Cyberspace was released today. This document outlines the Administration's plan for ensuring that the Net remains a 'good neighborhood.' Following the release of the plan, the Administration's Cybersecurity team will take it on the road for discussions with the people about what can and should be done to protect and defend the net. More information (and the 65 page draft) can be downloaded from the White House's Critical Infrastructure Protection site. This draft is considerably smaller than the 3300 page monster it was reported as being. Commentary is starting to pop up everywhere, including www.cryptonomicon.net/blog/."
Come on. No true thourough review will come from having "town meetings." This is just a public stunt to make people feel like they have input in drafting the policy. My bet is that this thing is already signed-sealed and delivered.
If they really wanted a quality review they'd submit it to 20-30 different universities, think tanks and businesses and individuals who are integral to studying the internet. By doing reviews in a "town meeting" format, they might as well just put it on a call in talk show and have the callers "draft" the policy.
I don't mean to put down the quality of input that ordinary "citizens" can add to this policy, a town hall is just not the way to do it.
hrumph.
tcd004
Read Richard Gere's Ass Zoo, really
Well, in the original Press release, and because one of its chief architects is an ex-M$ employee, the "secure Computing" initation, TCPA, and Palladium are sprinkled generously throughout the document. This is scary, when the federal goverment is serious consdiering M$ Palladium as the legally protocol for all computing within US borders in the future. Imagine, DRM become a legal mandate to "protect us from terrorism" and in turn Hollywood will get everything they want along the way. We all know full well how dangerous and restricting Palladium can and most likely be if it ever becomes the standard - open and free computing will end. If this happens, time to move out of the US where I can exercise my right to freely compute on the computer of my choice.
I don't know about you all, but I'm completely sic and tired of the "war on terror" being used by big gov/big business to get everythng they ever wanted at the expense of everyone else.
www.enthea.org
Gee, how are we going to police something that large? Are we only applying these rules to USA-borne servers and networks? What about networks that span international waters? I mean, there is only so much they can do. The government should worry about -its- network. If the government is that worried about there being instructions for mass terrorism or conversations between terrorists, then they should try and keep it at just an information level.. Secure the places where they can attack, and don't impinge on international, and almost other-worldly, rights.
/seem/ omnipresent in the net, but there are quite a bit of Canadians, Europeans.. you name it, they're all coming online, and they're all going to be out of the jurisdiction of this here United States of 'Merka. (that's Texan for 'America'. Look! I speak George Bush!).
I say other-worldly because the Internet is not bound by the traditional geographic laws. This nation may
Trying to regulate the internet is like trying to catch a fish with a bubble wand.
Yeah. It's not going to work.
It seems that for cyberspace, as for species, the best protection is in diversity. The email worms thrive not only because Outlook is flawed, but because outlook is everywhere. The same concept applies to hardware from chips to the backbone as well.
If anything, the Gov't should play a roll as a supporter of open standards, limited patent abuse and, for starters, fixing or flushing the DMCA
I read the words "good neighborhood" and started to seriously worry. All the "good neighborhood" attempts I've seen in the past were implemented by ruthless Neighborhood Associations, complete with Codes, Covenants and Restrictions (CC&R's) attached to the land. Buy a lot in the "neighborhood," you're legally obligated to follow the CC&R's. Most of which seem to have something to do with what color paint you can paint your house, whether you're allowed to have a basketball hoop out front, or whether the garage door can be open at times other than when you're actually moving a car in or out.
Do we really want the whole Internet to be one big anal-retentive "good neigborhood" controlled by an equally anal-retentive Neighborhood Association?
The reason for this approach is not only obvious, but it's the same reason CC&R's are created. Property values. CC&R's protect the property value, not the human values of living there. They elevate the property above the people. This sounds like the same thing to me, elevating the property values of commercial entities over the human values of the average person who is using the 'net.
Security suggestions are fine, content control (other then legally persued methods) arn't.
As far as I know the article doesn't deal with censorship or porn or anything like that.
And as far as that is concerned, I think censorship is dangerous. Putting one group in control of deciding what is and what is-not appropriate is just a Bad Idea. Tools are already available for you (as an admin, and a parent) to censor, watch, control, and report those areas. A requirement for that to be freely available (from the ISP?) is one thing, but requiring all content providers to be policed by one central group is another IMHO.
A news report that I saw yesterday, prior to the final document release, seemed to indicate that this report does not take insecure software makers to task for their role in the security crisis. If the final draft of the document keeps the kid gloves on like that, then I don't think this is going to be a very useful starting point for the government.
Probably the single best thing the government could do would be to set up strong security requirements for software used by any federal government branch, and enforce those requirements. Setting a high standard would force vendors to get a clue if they want to sell to the federal market, and as a by-product consumer and business software would get some help as well.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I wondered when this would finally start to kick off. There are many things that I have doubt about with this government and their obvious manipulations but due to lack of knowledge there is an element of doubt who is telling the truth. As a CCIE, networks are something I consider I know a bit about and this rings alarm bells.
There have been a few articles now in the press that state there could easily be a terrorist attack on the internet which I merly laughted at but it seems that average joe in the street thinks that a bunch of Afganistan cavemen could seriously achive this.
To me, this is an obvious attempt to censor the internet by using fear tactics which work due to peoples ignorance. I'm tired of this annoying propaganda and manipulation by what is meant to be a government of the people and for the people.
This site is very interesting and certainly worth seeing the other side of the story, maybe this is why censorship is so important?
Regardless, the net doesn't need this "protection" and I wonder if this "protection" is for my benifit in any case.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
Am I the only that found all that eye-candy and gee-whiz stuff in the PDF more than a little distracting? The government should concentrate more on publishing the information than on making a pretty wrapper for it.
Let's get this straight: here is one reason and actually one reason alone why the internet is as big a deal as it is. There is one thing that made it grow at the ridiculous rate it has. SEX. Period. Sure, it comes in handy for all kinds of things, (and yes I know it was ARPAnet and some guy in Bern ;) who made it happen) but the only reason the net has grown so fast and so large is pr0n. Only a couple of years back did regular businesses come into the picture. But only because the infrastructure was in place. And why is that? Because porn made it possible. Don't laugh, don't mod this 'funny'...it's true!
So what is this 'good neighborhood' crap? Just because you might be a hypocritical puritan doesn't mean you can deny the past.
BTW, I'm all for a better classification of the net; it's always baffled me that there isn't a TLD .sex or .xxx where all adult/erotic sites must reside by (inter)national law. That would have a direct impact, as censoring (by parents or employers) would be easier to implement...but something like that would be a too easy solution, wouldn't it. (yeah, I can see circumventions too, but that would be exceptions to the rule).
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
But I agree with your main point. There's an epic power grab going on that puts our future at risk, and we're all watching it happen. One of the real tragedies of the terrorist attacks is it was the beginning of the end of freedom in America.
And who regulates the sites from North Korea who get a BeanieBabies.kids domain, goes through the whole review process, and then later change its contents to porn? Who cuts off BeanieBabies.kids?
And who makes the decision about swimsuit models and child models? Selling bathing suits and lingerie, or pornography? Selling diapers, or kiddie porn?
That's the main problem. There is, and can be, no one controlling entity with real enforcement rights.
And yes, I do have kids. AOL, for all its many faults, IS not too bad at regulating and allowing parents to lock down kids accounts.
Yes. I cried on 9-11 deep tears of sorrow - knowing that as people died in the burning/crushing embers, so did our freedom.
Its absolutely sickening how the right-wing christian fundamentalists nuts used this tragedy to push there own agenda, and the Democrats didn't put up any fight at all... instead they asked how high do you want us to jump?
The pace and breath in which this epic power grab is happenening is totally surreal... no questioning of it on ANY of the main media, cover-ups and wagging the dog rule the day, as we watch the greatest criminals in history take over the world and rob us blind (Enron, Worldcom, Halliburton)... And now they are going after $7 Trillion in Oil in Iraq regardless of what the world thinks. The sure proportions of the power grab are enormous and disheartening to the extreme. Personally I don't see ANY serious counter-trends at all, except very bad ones - more real terrorism in our borders, greater world instability, greater hatred for americans. And to think just three years ago, the future looked brighter than ever. Wow, what a turn-around. This New World Order crap obviously has been in deep and secretive planning for years... I suspect ever Sicne George Senior lost the election in 92.
www.enthea.org
Not to be politically incorrect, but the US has probably made some enemies who have a bit more backing (for example PRC, North Korea, organized crime, etc) and a lot more technical savvy. If you think that the only threats are from grass-eating starving cavemen too embroiled in their own local fights, then you're underrating the other players in the the game of global realpolitik.
Maybe most of these aren't directly terrorists (only supporting of same), but they certainly have intelligence aims and wouldn't mind causing the US economy some dislocations. Continuance of Foreign Policy or War by other means and all that jazz.
And organized crime might love to have access to a lot of wonderful law enforcement data, and lord knows they have the money to hire a few good (well, maybe not good but competent) hackers.
Now, I do agree that the US Gov't is taking advantage of the situation to clamp down on some other things - kinda like Canadian authorities using the invocation of the War Measures act at various times to deal with unrelated but annoying things like street-people, vagrants, etc.
But there IS a threat. Just because you're not getting kicked in the groin every day doesn't mean someone doesn't have it on their list of things to do.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."