Slashdot Mirror
Obama Stimulus Pours Millions Into Cyber Security
nandemoari writes "As his administration continues to work on a stimulus plan that can save America's economy, Obama's latest course of action will see millions of dollars being allocated to heighten cyber security. The move will assist government officials in preventing future attacks on the United States.
The President recently addressed his 2010 budget, outlining funding plans that will grant the Department of Homeland Security $355 million to secure the nation's most essential computer systems.
The money will be spent on both government and private groups, with much of the funding going to the National Cyber Security Division and the Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative programs."
...announces the Hope'N'Change Operating System. "Only 30% chance of crashing!"
The Army reading list
Obama's campaign was approached in the fall of 2008 by the NSA, to let him and Axelrod know that either the Chinese or the Russians hacked his campaign systems.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5105027.ece
So, he knows what he's up against. If you run any sort of port knocker or ssh logging at a target IP range, you know that near round the clock brute forcing is going on by Chinese networks. They now are distributing the problem into botnets to prevent being blackholed, but they continue at it.
Obama has Janet Napolitano to run this group. They will work with US-CERT, but their mandate should be defense, not offense. They could start by approaching the US Tier-1 providers and saying, in essence, we want to use tools from companies like Arbor Networks and others that track botnets to isolate better signatures and reject them at the national perimeter, sort of an IDP at the edge of major networks.
The NSA probably has access to all domestic US websites encryption keys, at least the ones that come from Verisign. So, inspect all encrypted traffic headed back to Chinese networks, on any port. If you can't decrypt it, consider it hostile. Shunt it.
I may get modded down as flamebait, probably by Chinese slashdot readers - but the fact is, we are at war with the Chinese.
For example: "stimulus plan that can save America's economy"
"can"? That remains to be seen, and many say it will not. Try being less of a cheerleader and tell the truth. "may save" is a better selection, and much closer to the truth, given several hundred prominent economists (and the CBO) have said this "stimulus" may end up hurting the economy due to the wasteful "political repayment" spending and huge debt load it contains.
Per the CBO a recovery, albeit slow, is predicted for later this year even were no "stimulus" package passed.
Go read up on the Nixon-Ford-Carter economy that used similar big-government Keynesian methods to stimulate the economy, and ended up producing "stagflation", high interest rates, high unemployment and high inflation (the latter two both in double digits).
Then go read Hazlitt and Hayek for why this Keynesian stuff doesn't work as intended.
In engineering terms, most learned this lesson in statics and dynamics class: You cannot push a rope.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
The fact that this has been modded to +5 is prima facia evidence that Slashdot has gone way down hill. Simply googling National Cyber Security Division will show that they are behind US-CERT. While they are not to be confused with CERT, but they do have the same stated objectives. Computer Emergency Response Teams are the bedrock of Computer Security. They don't monitor Internet traffic, they identify security issues and offer solutions. Taking the recent Obama Helicopter P2P fiasco as an example, they would point out that running P2P without verifying the Sharing settings are not exposing your whole system is a Bad Thing(tm).
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Contrary to popular opinion, "creating Jobs" is not always good and is not always entirely different from "throwing money at the problem." "Creating Jobs" only helps when the jobs are useful and produce something else of value.
I don't know anything about how cost effective the Hoover Dam or various bridges and public works projects have been in the past, but assuming that they _were_ cost effective, these are examples where "Creating Jobs" is a good thing that stimulates the economy in a good way, because it not only gives people money to spend, but it adds overall value to the system. The Hoover Dam added irrigation, water supply, and power, while bridges add lower transportation costs.
On the other hand, paying someone to sit like a night watchmen on P2P Networks or paying someone to replace the White House Carpet or repaint the ceilings doesn't really help anyone because nothing of value is being created. You're just shuffling money around, and its really no different economy-wise than just _giving away_ the money. People are going to spend it either way.
This isn't to say I don't support re-carpeting or re-painting the White House if it needs it, I am merely saying that the catch-phrase "creating jobs" doesn't do the system any good unless the jobs are worth doing.