Cybersecurity Czar Job Is Useless, Says Spafford

Trailrunner7 writes "It's been about seven months since Obama announced his plan to hire a cybersecurity coordinator, and the job is still vacant. Several prominent security experts have turned the position down, and in an interview on Threatpost, Purdue professor Gene Spafford says that the position is pointless. 'It won't have any statutory authority. It won't have any budgetary authority. That does not give it much authority of any kind. So when I hear that there are supposedly people who have been interviewed for this cyber coordinator job and didn't take it, I'm not surprised. It's not a winning position. I'm not at all surprised by the fact that it's empty. That position is a blame-taking position,' Spafford said."

Comments

Re:Recession

[dikdik]

The second they use the term "Czar", to describe a person in administrative capacity over a regulatory body, they betray the authoritarian and anti-democratic ideology with which they conspire against representative government and individual rights and liberties.

Czar is the Slavic rendering of Caesar. Why anybody sees this as an expediency worthy of trade-off for democratic involvement and oversight is a question I leave you, the dear reader to resolve.

Re:I vote

[swb]

And they're also recruiting from the same talent pool as Google, Microsoft, and the Fortune 100.

Those companies will also sniff around your background, but won't have a hissy fit if you've smoked a joint, own a gun or got a DUI in a rented Escalade with your mistress.

After reading some of the disclosure materials required for government employment I'm pretty sure I will never even bother applying. Way too intrusive and not telling them exactly what they want is some kind of nasty Federal felony.

Re:Recession

[istartedi]

First print off a copy of everything you've ever said online and send it so they can check it for anything embarrassing. I gather that's what one of their pre-screening requirements was. Which is to say, they want people who have never used the internet for their security czar.

How much time will pass before everybody is naked, drunk and stoned on their MyBooooook page, so that we can get over all this nonsense about being persecuted for stuff everybody knows happens?