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Richard Clarke on Microsoft security
hizzo writes "Richard Clarke, former White House cybersecurity and counterterrorism adviser, harshly critized Microsoft's security track record. 'Given their record in the security area, I don't know why anybody would buy from them.' He also called for some regulation of security for ISPs in addition to better industry self-regulation, such as disclosing QA practices and becoming more accountable for secure code. I wonder if anyone will finally start listening to him?"
"Anyone who harshly criticizes Microsoft is ok by me."
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
could you please be more specific. when and where did he let Osama go? If you are going to make such charges, you better have some proof or at the very least some credible sources. I believe it was the Bush administration who didn't heed Clark's warnings nor read his reports. Maybe we should have elected a president who likes to read!
Richard Clarke seems to be turning into a liberal version of your typical (predominantly right-wing media) attention whore who operates solely on negative discourse.
The world knows Microsoft's security record. Clarke really has nothing to bring to the table here.
I support everything he's saying, but he's leaking credibility at an alarming rate.
Can we get that bitch for purjury?
Given his record of watching Al-Queda grow into a major threat under his watch in the Clinton administration, I don't know why anyone would trust him.
See here.
I suppose there is some nievete (however you spell it) regarding Clark. All of the press coverage he got initially - from the 60 Minutes interview forward - were part of a well orchestarted campaign to sell his book. He had a particularly good publicist. Most of the time when someone on the left starts getting a lot of publicity like that, it is really part of a media campaign to sell a book. Same situation with that fraud Joe Wilson whose investigation into yellow cake claims were to simply ask the leadership of the countries in question if they had provided the radioactive material to Iraq.
If you listen to Clark talk, he sounds like a guy who is BSing. The stories about Bush pressing him to connect Sept. 11 to Iraq, etc. They just sounds rediculous and have been refuted by people who were in the meetings that he acknoweldges were present.
The only thing that Richard Clark ever did was approve flights for members of Osama bin LAden's family in the US out of the US and into Saudi Arabia shortly after the attacks. Funny how Michael Moore missed that when he used that as evidence to try to prove some special relationship between Bush and the house of Saud.
If I were a customer of Microsoft, I'd be organizing class-action suits, writing letters, storming Redmond with torches in hand....
...
While that all sounds well and good, if you ran Microsoft products, you'd be way to busy patching systems and rebooting to do anything. I know I am
Oh, good lord. The opposite of "nice" isn't "not nice"? See, when I invert a concept, I'm used to being able to put the word "not" in front of it, in order to express myself. I guess I'm just a fucking moron, though.
On September 11, our government didn't have the first damn thing to apologize for.
Really? Security people at the airports didn't fuck up? (Then why did we completely restructure airport security?) The three-letter agencies shared all of the information they should have? (Then why are we wasting our time talking about a new intelligence director?) Jets scrambled fast enough for your taste? (Then why... oh, forget it.)
Just go do what needs to be done to respond to the situation at hand.
How can we respond to the situation now, if we don't try to figure out if we made mistakes then?
Seriously - how?
Richard Clarke thinks he made mistakes, and clearly thinks that we as a country need to learn from his mistakes. As the former top counter-terrorism advisor (aka "terrorism czar"), maybe you should fucking listen to him.
Clarke's job was to advise the President. That's it.
Why is this a tricky concept for you?
It's not like I think he had terrorist kryptonite, and was the guy who could pray to the moon of Xandor, thus activating it. But of all of the people in the government charged specifically with the task of preventing terrorism in the United States, he had the job at the top of the food chain.
It wasn't his job to investigate terrorism that had already been committed. It wasn't his job to stop terrorism in progress. It was his job to get us to get out in front of terrorism, and actively prevent it.
As to cops preventing crime, I've hard this argument before, and I have a question for you:
Do you think cops walk a beat because it's fun? Do you think they drive around the city every night because it's a joy to burn mileage? No. A large part of the cop job - and they know this very well - is being visible.
Why?
Because when a cop is visible, they prevent crime.
Education is the silver bullet.
and your bitch is the obvious "believe anything bad about bush no matter how ridiculous" response we've come to expect from "progressives".
the memo cited was rpesented late january 2001. it didn't talk about any specific threats and bascially just asked for clarification about what responses we should do against al-queda.
the problem with the view that clarke was disgruntled becasue the administration wouldn't listen to him about al-queda is that clarke wasn't concerned with al-queda when he left. instead he was the "cyberterrorism" czar and he was pissed that the adminsitration wasn't taking "cyberterrorism" seriously enough.
i'm sorry, but noone has ever died becasue of "cyberterrorism" and focusing on military actions against terrorism sponsoring states (like afghanistan and iraq) should certainly take precedence, no matter what clarke thought.
-bk
Bush did NOT demote him to cyberterror. Clarke was the one who kept pushing cyberterror as the "next front in terrorism" to the White House. Most of his coworkers thought he was a wacko. He then quit and rewrote his history when he didn't get a promotion he wanted, and the morons on Slashdot and at the New York Times didn't bother to even interview his coworkers.
The man is a liar. He is also utterly unqualified to be commenting on Microsoft security. What is his computer training exactly?
Are you a tool by trade or by birth?
3cx.org - A truly bad website.