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U.S. Government To Get Cybersecurity Chief
cmason32 writes "The Bush administration is going to create a new Cybersecurity Chief position in the Homeland Security Department. The move is supposed to demonstrate the government's dedication to cracking down on hackers and 'cyberterror.' One of the responsibities of the position is to 'secure cyberspace.' However, critics are already noting the position is not likely to be effective."
I wouldn't just call this position ineffective. I would also call it a waste of taxpayer dollars, a way to abuse power, and a waste of time.
This will simply become a tool of the RIAA/MPAA/etc?
Drug Czar!
Typical of politics, and exemplified by the implementation of "Homeland Security". The politicians just seem to want to get something up and visible to show they're "on the job". Quality isn't Job #1, it usually isn't even on the same list. It is smoke, mirrors & hand waving -- "see we did something"!
What about the FBI's cyber crime investigations? What about all the infrastructure/info that the NSA has? Will either of these agencies be mandated to cooperate? Or, will there be petty "Not Invented Here" and "This is MY jurisdiction" bickering?
The gov't doesn't need a new Czar to secure their part of cyberspace (Milnet, etc.), and do they really think some agency will tell people (civilian companies & individuals) how to configure routers, firewalls and virus scanners?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Talk about a joke job. This might be worthwhile if they made more of an effort to go after spammers, kiddie porn traffickers, and the other riff-raff. But of course, instead they'll spend all their time going after the 15-year old kids who "break into" Pentagon websites or trade Metallica MP3s, making sure to ruin the lives of these "cyberterrorists" and making the Internet safe for the RIAA and the rest of their Hollywood paymasters. Fuck this.
The title says it all. Watch how quickly they try to turn on us as they try to find excuses to regulate and shut down copy promoting technologies.
Ironically, until they let go of copyrights, the forces opposed to true internet security will be too great because they will always want the right to "verify" we have the correct content.
Cool- a new variant on the old election trick of forcing out figureheads as the election comes up; that way you can blame problems on someone who's long gone, and bring in someone new nobody can judge yet. Environmental policy sucks? Make your EPA head resign. People finally pissed off with reporters not being able to get anything out of the White House? Make your press secretary resign!
Can't keep your "Cybersecurity chief" chair filled, because the dudes keep resigning faster than you can appoint them? Why, shift the position into a branch of the government where nbody knows what the hell is going on. Yeah, baby! Keep 'em guessing...
By the way, wanna know why Ridge is head of Homeland Insecurity? Cause the poo baby lost his election for a congressional seat. But, no worries! The GOP sticks up for its people! Loose your election, get a post you're not remotely qualified for in a few months! But that's okay, it's probably a position that doesn't mean anything anyway.
Please help metamoderate.
And while you're at it, define "cyber terrorist". Who decides who's a terrorist and who's not ? Minitru ?
Don't forget to think different.
"Terrorism" in its many forms (I believe in the 50's they were referred to commies instead of terrorists) have been used as an excuse to pass Orwellian-style legislation here in the U.S. I think most of us would agree to as much. I see this whole homeland security program to have been little more than the legislated and executed implementation of more or less random spying on american citizens and it sickens me that this is being done in the name of patriotism. That is not what my father, nor his father fought for.
Chillingly, this mentality is now being brought to be applied to a vague concept... a buzzword. How will this be interpreted by our inadequate, bloated and outdated legal machinery of U.S. Government? Essentially, "securing cyberspace" is conceptually equivalent to "restricting information" or, for the non-slashdot crowd, the monitoring and policing of any and all communications services. Calls to your spouses and parents, its all fair game. When will it be enough? why do you, a good and honest person who has no intention of breaking the law or committing acts of terrorism, become the subject of inquiry? How far will we let this go?
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
"Granny, will you please open up your laptop to make sure you have no software that can be used for harmful purposes."
I guess you can really tell the workers are on vacation for the holiday, because the only ones left to post on Slashdot are the goof-offs.
There are computer networks that run behind the scenes that maintain every utility that runs our lives, whether it be remotely-controllable circuit breakers on the bulk power grid, hydroelectric dam controls for power & water, the multiplexors that run the telephone systems, etc. It's cheaper to put a machine out in the field and run network cable to it, than to have a live person out at the station pushing the same buttons, so more and more infrastructure is getting networked, telemetered, and controllable...
Companies are increasingly relying on VPN and similar systems to allow workers to tunnel through the internet to connect to their business machines. Well all trust RSA encoding, but crack the operating system and you can use the tunnelling to get into a lot of restricted (price sensitive) data. Or maybe the company has a nifty database back-end to their site, and some buffer overruns gets you into schemas that weren't supposed to be exposed... Or it could be passwords on a stolen laptop. For whatever reasons, sites get hacked.
Right now, what do companies do? If they even notice the cyber attack, they fill out some NIPC forms, and the issue vanishes into the beaurocracy. Not exactly the best measure, because the NIPC doesn't have the authority like the FBI to investigate events... or read the NIPC homepage, even they admit that there were 4 government programs that were combined, each in some way did little pieces of the puzzle but noone had the big picture of the events.
My opinion? Appointing a Cyber-Security chief is a good thing, as long as there are additional steps taken to reduce the bloat of governement, by combining the other departments into one sector that can actually be effective in investigation. You have to not only create the position, but you have to give it the proper resources (like contacts at the FBI & NSA) who can properly identify crackers going after government resources, and hunt them down. Adding another level of red tape isn't going to accomplish much, but any step in the direction of securing national & private sector secrets is a good thing.
Why don't they just admit that they now consider all crime and unpopular use of first amendment rights to be acts of terrorism?
The word terrorism has all but lost its meaning now. We used to consider a terrorist to be someone who kills innocent civilians to make a political statement. Now white hat hackers are terrorists. Peace march organizers are terrorists. P2P users are terrorists. And those terrorists and people who know the terrorists may be subject to FISA wiretaps, which are not checked by the judicial system.