Tech Lobbyist Named to DHS Top Security Post

An anonymous reader writes "Greg Garcia, a lobbyist for the high-tech industry, has been appointed to fill the new assistant secretary post for cyber security and telecommunications at the Department of Homeland Security. Garcia, a VP with the Information Technology Association of America, will try to resuscitate DHS's flagging efforts to formulate a response plan should the nation's key digital assets come under concerted attack or crumble due to some catastrophic failure. DHS is a little late in filling this post: Congress created it 14 months ago after getting fed up with the agency's lack of progress on cyber issues."

Comments

crumble? resuscitate?

[macadamia_harold]

Garcia, a VP with the Information Technology Association of America, will try to resuscitate DHS's flagging efforts to formulate a response plan should the nation's key digital assets come under concerted attack or crumble due to some catastrophic failure.

But what will he do if the tubes become clogged?

Re:crumble? resuscitate?

[eyeye]

He will get laws passed that make fantastic profits for the companies he lobbies for.

US politics 101

Re:crumble? resuscitate?

[ericspinder]

what are you talking about? what tubes are there to get clogged?

Series of Tubes is becoming a meme. Senator Ted Stephens gave a speech where for the benefit of his audience (well, presumably) he created an analogy for the Internet as a Series of Tubes

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Personally I believe it the "Tim Taylor trap", where someone who has a conversation with someone who presents a good analogy, or complicated explanation of fact. Then completely bungles an attempt to retell the story to another audience. The TV show "Home Improvement" had it as a running gag where 'Tim Taylor' would embarrass himself every time he tried to retell his neighbor's sagely advice.

He knows what to do

[JanneM]

Well, as a tech industry veteran, he has the protocol all set:

"Calm down, sir, calm down. Now, a disaster you say? How so? Uh-uh.. Uh-uh... Uh-uh.. Hmm, yes, it sounds like your country is infected with a virus alright, and a nasty one too. Here's what you do: You shut down the country, reinstall the government and then you restart the whole thing from the beginning. That should take care of it. Have a nice day now!"

Surprise, surprise, surprise!

[RyanFenton]

I wonder how many of these 'former' lobbyists in positions as leadership in governmental agencies get their taxes audited? It would be fascinating to see what kinds of offshore accounts they have, and how their balance changes once they are in a position to 'regulate' the industry they used to represent?

But really - I'm sure this is all done in the purest of intentions. After all, the best people to run agencies are those really familiar with the issue at hand, and cagey enough to know what tricks people out to trick the government are, right? The weight of responsibility of protecting American's safety and well being is best secured when it is in the hands of people who used to press the government to look the other way when industries wanted to maximize... certain negative and positive externalies, shall we say.

Ryan Fenton

Little known fact

[stox]

The Department of Homeland Security was originally created using an alloy of Bureaucratritum and Administrontium. Sadly, the amount of alloy used exceeded the critical mass, resulting in a Black Hole of un-imagined proportions. Our only hope now is to collide the DHS with another Black Hole of unimagined proportions such as the SSA.

Re:By the corporations, for the corporations.

[nido]

Just part of the cycle of power. See The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, a 1987 book about said cycle (summary is last 7 paragraphs). Economic power fosters military power; military power creates special interests, who use their newfound power to accumulate more.

to more directly answer your question:

When exactly did corporate lobbyists BECOME our government?

Post-WWII, certainly, but perhaps earlier. Before then "lobbyists" had to be more secretive... A lot of companies became rich on the second world war trade, and the U.S. has been at war ever since - Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Gulf War I, Yugoslavia, Gulf War II (probably forgetting a couple).

There's also that perpetual "War on (certain) Drugs", which benefits some corporations greatly.

Isn't there a saying about a country with a standing army always needing an enemy to fight?

Re:Public/private is the issue

[planetmn]

Yes, if your email goes down your only inconvenienced, but that's not the "doomsday scenario" envisioned to combat against. There are many areas of our economy and society that now rely on the internet in some way, shape or form. Imagine if all of a sudden all ATMs stopped working, bank tellers couldn't access accounts and credit cards stopped working. On a small scale, it's no big deal really. But on a nationwide scale, it causes panic. Remember, people don't react rationally (hell, I yell at the TV set, and I know that's not rational).

More and more of our telecommunications infrastructure is potenetially vulnerable. And without the ability to check up on friends and family, a physical attack would be magnified by the psychological impact of not being able to see if somebody is ok and the worrying involved.

So an attack on our network infrastucture could be very bad for the US. Do I think it's likely? No. But in 2000 if you asked me if I thought terrorists would be able to hijack four airplanes simultaneously and crash them into buildings, I'd have probably said no. It's not the body count that hurts us most, it's the psychological effects. We were attacked here on our soil by a foreign enemy, and that was something new to us.

I don't think that this lobbyist is going to help us, but then again, I've become more and more cynical about our government being able to accomplish anything (whether it be in regards to rights, terrorism, foreign affairs, or even the tax code) so I'm not exactly unbiased. It's easy to say that cyber terrorism hasn't really caused any problems, and never will. And you'll probably be right for a while. But eventually, there is a good chance that statement will be proven false.

-dave

Re:I suggest taking away the beverages

[ScentCone]

These are unelected officials making law by fiat.

So. You think we should actually include positions like "Deputy Undersecretary Of Transportation for Ice Cream Truck Regulation" part of the general federal election? How about his boss? And his boss's boss? And above him? Oh, right, we already do that. Was the Secretary Of Transportation under Bill Clinton acting according some idyllic democratic principle, but the same role under a different administration is suddenly Junior Ceasar?

Wake up. We elect an executive administration specifically to get things done, and they appoint people into thousands of roles as part of that job. Every administration has different priorities and policies, but if they had to try to get anything done while dealing with - what, thousands of departmental bureaucrats all of whom had to run campaigns to get their office? - you'd have absolutely no ability to focus on anything.

Every four years you get to vote for the person who appoints such people, and every 4 or 6 years, you get to vote for the legislators that fund what they do (or not).

So, what's your problem? Don't like the reality of the structure of the executive branch of government, or just don't like it when you don't like who happens to head it at certain times? Or maybe, as is more likely, you know all of this and you're just trolling in hopes of scoring some lame political points with whatever percentage of this audience actually does not know how it works, and wants to hear you paint some Emperor image of the presidency. Just remember, if you ever to get together enough votes for someone you do like better, whatever FUD you spread about the nature of the office and its interaction with other agencies is going to impact that person, too.

Re:By the corporations, for the corporations.

[tbone1]

This really took off with The New Deal, actually. Back then, the lobbyists were professional do-gooders and charity-beggars who were eager for their place at the trough and saw a government pension as preferable to having to deal with the expectations and egos of the less intelligent children of the wealthy (who, often, were the financial backers of charities back then). I suspect this had always been around, even Lincoln had to deal with it, but FDR allowed it to go from cottage industry to major economic factor practically overnight.

H.L. Mencken, always a good voice for dissent, wrote some profiles of the people that became major power players under The New Deal. Mencken was many things, not all of them comfortable to modern sensibilities, but empiricist was one of them. Check some of his writings on it, such as the collection compiled by Alistair Cook, for some things they don't teach you in history class.