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Bush Names New Cyber Security Czar
goombah99 writes "The Washington Post reports that Cybersecurity "czar" Richard Clarke has confirmed widespread reports that he is leaving the White House, to be replaced by former microsoft security chief Howard Schmidt. He was also part of the Air Force's 'Computer Crime and Information Warfare division'. In related news, the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace has received Bush's signature and will be released to the public in the next few weeks. Clark's blunt staements on the to the need to avoid erosion of privacy rights is rumored to have rubbed the administration the wrong way, prompting his exit. Anyone know how Schmitt will view the relative security of closed versus open source?"
Nothing says "Security" better to me than "Former Microsoft Security Chief".
Mod me as a troll, I don't care... this is absurd. Microsoft corporation has proven time and time again that they can't grasp fundamental security practices or concepts. Now, instead of having a boss (BillG) whose motivation is profit, we've got a security chief whose boss (GBush / JAshcroft) who wants to rob us of our civil liberties.
Bruce Schneier for Security Chief!!!!
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
1) Microsoft are getting into bed with government through the back door (no pun intended)
2) Bush is short-sighted enough to thing that the person who is head of Microsoft security will bring better security than a team of specialists. Oh wait, one person is better because he can call them a czar. Buzzword-me-do.
Nothing says "Security" better to me than "Former Microsoft Security Chief".
Look, do you want extensive experience or not? I trust this guy to have run into more security problems than just about anyone else out there.
I wonder if he leaned more toward engineering (and the godawful CryptoAPI) or policy (and the signing procedures that let Nimda get out)?
On a more realistic note, in terms of practical security benefit, the recent spending of taxpayer dollars on a set of minimum Windows security standards (the "Gold Standard") is probably one of the most cost-effective things that could have been done for nationwide security. Even if it grates those Linux/Mac OS/etc people among us the wrong way... It beats blowing more money on facial recognition at Super Bowls.
May we never see th
Microsoft Security gets an 'F'...
Whats good for the goose is good for the gander, i suppose.
-v
Was because he wanted more security and no one else did? Maybe?
I've worked for the Dept of the Navy for 6 years now,4 years as an active marine and 2 for a navy contractor and I've seen a trend in the Navy/MC away from microsoft products and their consultation.
But then again, it doesn't mean that everything will be MS because he's a former MS officer, but it is more than possible. If anything he may have a VERY humble attitude toward things because I'm sure he's been the brunt of many criticisms from his past post.
It's no secret MS has had problems with security.
But I wonder what this will mean for upcoming copyright and piracy issues involving computer software and the like. Since he comes from a company where the doctrine is pretty strict in terms of copyrighting and such, we will see a severe change in the laws?
"Clark's blunt staements on the to the need to avoid erosion of privacy rights is rumored to have rubbed the administration the wrong way, prompting his exit"
Well if the previous guy was removed because he was in favor of keeping privacy rights a concern, this may indeed be the case.
Overall, I can't say this is a good sign.
Excuse my above ramblings, I have strep throat and it's driving me crazy.
Day by day, MS is becoming more like one of those boring typical corporations in US. Start-up -> make money -> lobbying -> get people inside Washington and build business around bureaucracy. I don't dare call MS an innovator, but come on, it's not even 20 years since MS started their business, and they are already joining the club of boring bureaucrats.
Just to point out... According to the article, this guy was in charge of Microsoft's network's security, not Microsoft's software's security. The fact that he has been able to keep that web site, which runs on NT, from being cracked for so many years must qualify him as some sort of security god.
(If I am misinformed, and microsoft.com has actually been cracked and defaced at some point in the past, do tell...)
Quoting the last five (short) paragraphs of the story:
Is anyone else disturbed by the way first choice candidates seem to be running away from any involvement with government internet security?
Seems to me that this new IT security person appeals to MS and that is it. So, why lump the rest of us into that paradigm?
Don't get me wrong: I help run a company's IT and whatever pronouncements this new guy will make will have all the impact of a stale cocktail.
I find jokes like these as funny as the concepts they profess to support.
Dawn of the Dead
...that will make it easier for us (well, those of us in the States at least) to scream "Biased!" when he comes up with any closed-source/Microsoft advocacy. This could actually help.
I gave up sigs almost a year ago.
Perhaps one of the editors could get a Slashdot interview ... i mean .. i think a large number of technical people read this site .. and it would be in his best interest perhaps to have a little Q&A with us
He was canned because he wanted to protect individual rights, and had limits on how far he'd go against the citizen?
That alone should scare the hell out of people. Who is taking his place is minor compared to that.
Or did I mis-read it thru the awful grammar?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So much fear and uncertainty because this man once worked for Microsoft. Tell me, does Microsoft implant microchips in all employee brains to control them? Is the U.S. government suppose to automatically prevent all former Microsoft employees from ever holding a government job? Are we to eliminate the tens of thousands of former Microsoft employees from the job pool? What about fomer Sun employees? Apple? Redhat? So many people accuse Microsoft of FUD regarding Linux. From where I sit, this is a little like the pot calling the kettle black.
I had the opportunity to meet and interview Clarke when he came to my school last year to give a speech as part of a post-9/11 outreach program to CS faculties around the nation. (In fact, I wrote an article about it for our school newspaper, if you're interested.) He really handled himself well. The crowd was more or less 100% engineering and CS faculty, grad students, and the type of smart undergrads that would actually care about such a thing, in other words a tough crowd to play to. And I think everyone was a pretty skeptical at the outset that any government official would know his ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to IT policy, so-called "cybersecurity" (blech), and such. But he did! After he spoke he gave about a 40 minute Q&A where people asked him all sorts of tough and sometimes really esoteric questions concerning software patents, the DMCA, network security, hell, something about quantum computing even came up. His knowledge was impressive and, even more heartening, when he didn't know the answer he just said so rather than bullshitting. All in all I left with a good feeling that this guy was the White House's go-to man for IT policy and would be protecting our computers from the terrorists. Now it sounds like he got fired because he wasn't quite fascist enough for the Bushies, which is really depressing. Guess I should have seen it coming all along.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
About 15 years ago, I was working on for a consulting firm (which shall remain nameless here ;-) that does mostly government contract work. I was one of a small group that was assigned the task of analyzing and reporting on security issues with the growing collection of commercial networked small computers. My task was mostly collecting and/or writing security-test software.
After a couple of months, the security guys discovered some of the things that I'd collected (or written). I was summarily fired.
During the discussions, my boss observed that I was perhaps lucky that they didn't decide to prosecute me. He thought that there were two reasons they merely fired me: 1) I was doing the job that I'd been assigned, and 2) They were afraid that my lawyer would merely demand that all the evidence against me be presented in court.
Within six months, all the rest of the group had quietly resigned. I'm still in occasional contact with some of them. None of us has ever accepted another security-related job.
Computer security is of growing importance. But nobody with much experience in it is likely to accept a government job. I wouldn't avise anyone to take such a job, unless you know that you have the power and money to defend yourself when the inevitable happens.
(It might be interesting to hear from others with similar experiences. Of course, the poster boy for this whole topic is Randal Shwartz. Google him and read all about it.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Wasn't Richard Clarke the guy who predicted the Al Qaeda threat to the Bush team when Clinton left office, and had an aggressive roll-back plan ready, but was basically ignored by Bush, Condi and everyone else? If they had listened to him, they might have averted 9/11...
Iraq *is* chairing the UN conference on disarmament. Seriously.
We don't need guts. We still live in a country governed by a constitution that has a BUILT IN capacity for REVOLUTION. Every 4 years the executive branch can change, and every 6 years the entire legislative branch can be TOTALLY CHANGED. The high court only judges constitutional matters, and since the Democrats have been hog-tying other judicial nominations I wager that the slow-to-change judiciary would change remarkably quickly were there to be a true revolution in the other two branches. In any event, the judiciary only judges according to the laws passed by the other two branches.
There is no lack of guts or will among the American people. The very fact that Ross Perot got as many votes as he did should tell you that the country is hungry for change. How can you claim that a country with an all-volunteer military that sacrifices as it does, with the brave astronauts that so recently sacrificed, with the guys who will risk their lives on a stock-car track, in an avalanche zone, or on a battle field has NO GUTS?
What's missing is LEADERSHIP.
What we need is a REVOLUTIONARY who is not a CRACKPOT.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?