Who Would Want To Be Obama's Cybersecurity Czar?

dasButcher writes "President Obama is expected to name a new cybersecurity czar sometime soon. This person will be charged with defending the digital boards from attack by hostile nation-states and terrorist organizations. But the question Larry Walsh asks is: Who really wants the job? The previous three people who held the post barely made a dent in solving the security problems. Government bureaucracy and private sector resistance make it nearly impossible to find any measure of meaningful success in this job, he writes." Reader eatcajun contributes a related link to the long-awaited US cyberspace policy review.

Comments

Spammers are the Cyberterrorists

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever he picks, I hope they are technologically savvy enough to realize that all of the terrorists in the world won't be able to do one millionth of the damage that's already being done by spammers.

RIAA Lawyers

[GigsVT]

Are there any RIAA lawyers left who don't yet have high level Obama positions?

New military branch needed

[religious freak]

We don't need a "czar", we need a new military branch. I am not aware of ANY real and lasting contribution any "czar" has ever made in the United States. The first drug czars came close... if you call that a contribution, but from everything I've seen, they're basically PR and cheerleaders, and don't have much authority or get much done.

If we're serious... and I mean really serious... we need a branch of the military to do the heavy lifting. We don't need to start this in a big way, but we need the security infrastructure to build on should tensions begin rising with nation states. These guys would be the grunts doing the front line lifting and poking around while the NSA focuses it's talent on developing high level techniques. This is what we'd do if we got really serious.

In my view, the position of czar is a joke. Czars are for 19th century Russia and have no place in a modern United States government.

Re:New military branch needed

[Jurily]

In my view, the position of czar is a joke. Czars are for 19th century Russia and have no place in a modern United States government.

I see this as a subtle move to start referencing absolute power. Napoleon called himself "First Consul", and then "Emperor of the French Republic" after seizing total control, for a long time, because the public was not ready to go back to monarchy.

Of course I'm just being paranoid again, and the voters have total control over the government.

Re:New military branch needed

[tehdaemon]

"Czars are for 19th century Russia and have no place in a modern United States government."

It is worse than that. Czar is nothing more than the slavic/russian version of the word Caesar.

T

Czar fetish

[flyingfsck]

What is up with this American love affair with old Russian titles?

The difference

[bonch]

The difference this time is that Obama is a Democrat, so the media will ignore the czar's complete ineffectiveness and never criticize anything he or she does.

Re:Kevin Mitnick

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce Schneier would love to do it, since he would be the center of attention. But since he know he'll never get picked he says we shouldn't have a cyber tzar.

Re:I paid my taxes

[Wonko the Sane]

How sad is it when we start to talk about a presidential administration in those terms?

"Just think about all the hotels they didn't break in to."

"Don't worry, there are plenty of terrorists that received no weapons in exchange for hostages."

"At least he didn't let all of our soldiers get dragged through the streets of Mogadishu."