Slashdot Mirror
House Overwhelmingly Passes Cybersecurity Bill
eldavojohn writes "The Caucus, a NY Times Blog, is reporting on the overwhelming majority vote (422 yeas) the House gave a new cybersecurity bill. The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act, H.R. 4061 has a number of interesting provisions. Representative Michael Arcuri, a Democrat of New York who sponsored the bill called cybersecurity the 'Manhattan Project of our generation' and estimated the US needs 500 to 1,000 more 'cyber warriors' every year in order to keep up with potential enemies. The new bill 'authorizes one single entity, the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to represent the government in negotiations over international standards and orders the White House office of technology to convene a cybersecurity university-industry task force to guide the direction of future research.'"
The Federal Food Safety Act of 1921 prohibited bone-in ice cream and all ice cream and ice cream novelties had to be sold boneless after that.
There was an interesting turn of events that led to the Federal Food Safety Act of 1921. Evidently Grover Cleveland , who was the US President at that time, had a daughter named Ruth.
Ruth was very fond of ice cream, which back then was a rarity because electric refrigeration was not yet largely available to the public. They had to haul ice from the frozen lakes on mountains down to where the homes where at, in order to make ice cream. But I'm getting off onto another subject.
Anyway - the ice cream they made back then naturally had bones in it - how else would you make ice cream? Normally this was not an issue - every child back then knew how to hold a drumstick ice cream cone at the bottom and lick around the bone so that they would not accidentally choke on it. Although it was possible to make ice cream with out bones - it was very expensive to do it because only the Chinese craftsmen, who invented ice cream, were clever enough to debone and ice cream drumstick and not make a mess of it.
So anyway - Ruth was eating an ice cream cone at the exact instant her father was elected president of the United States. So shocked was she, that she accidentally swallowed the bone from the ice cream and began to choke.
Luckily, Henry Heimlich Sr. (Father of Henry Heimlich Jr, inventor of the Heimlich maneuver) was nearby and was able to expel the bone from the windpipe of young Ms Cleveland and save her from certain death.
Well - this was a great thing that Henry Heimlich had done, saving the daughter of the President of the United States. However, Grover Cleveland was away for his inauguration while this happened and wasn't aware of it for several months afterward - when his daughter retold the story of how she almost died from an ice cream bone. Grover was pretty busy at the time and really didn't pay much attention to this until around the time of Ruth's next birthday.
Taking time away from the war, Grover Cleveland asked his daughter what she wanted for her birthday. Giving it some thought, young Ruth finally said "Daddy, I want an sweet snack that I can eat that won't cause me to choke again." It was then when President Cleveland remembered the incident she told him of many months earlier.
He asked Ruth - "What kind of ice cream were you eating when you almost died?" She told her dad she was eating a chocolate covered ice cream cone with nuts and caramel in it.
Ruth's father thought about this and called his old friend James Curtis who owned the Curtis Candy Company in Chicago to see what could be done on Ruth's request.
James told Grover that he would get back to him after trying out a few things, and they hung up the phone which only recently had been invented.
While James Curtis was working on a treat in which Ruth would not possibly choke on - President Cleveland was bothered by the fact that if his adorable daughter almost died from eating ice cream with the bone still in - that there must be other children suffering the same fate.
So - President Cleveland called up congress and told them he wanted them to pass a bill to outlaw bones in ice cream in an effort to save the children of the United States the dangers of choking on ice cream bones.
Congress said "say what..??" But they decided there was something they could do and they hung up their phone. Congress and the president and the Curtis Candy Company had phones back then -but not many other people.
So about that time - James Curtis called the President with the news that he had come up with a candy bar, with chocolate and nuts and caramel with NO BONES in it what so ever! And his daughter could eat them and not be afraid of choking on the bones because it had no bones.!
President Cleveland told James Curtis to bring his newly invented confection to the White House and to come as quickly as possible because his daughter's birthday was n
Since this new body is designed to "represent the government in negotiations," I wonder if there's any relation to the ACTA treaty currently discussed behind closed doors.
Q.E.D.
"the US needs 500 to 1,000 more 'cyber warriors' every year in order to keep up with potential enemies."
Hey, there is plenty of skilled cyber warriors in China, India and Eastern Europe.
It's a step in the right direction...
Where do I sign up?
Why did reading this article send shivers down my spine? Especially the last paragraph?
I knew all those years playing Quake would come in handy eventually.
The house overwhelmingly approved? That means it'll add to the deficit, be largely useless, and misused by RIAA.
God help us all.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Come out to playyyyyyyyy
http://www.usajobs.gov/
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Too little, too late.
For more than a decade, effort was done to *weaken* the domestic talent at developing themselves or helping (causing) to harden the existing infrastructure.
see a Text Widget
Why is "cybersecurity" needed? (And does that really have anything to do with cybernetics?) If you've got important data you need locked down, keep it strictly on a closed network or offline. The only government machines that should be online are those to serve up the web site. For everything else, computers are not secure enough.
A private company could be delegated for most of the dirty stuff. OCP, Cyberdyne, and Umbrella Corporation already proposed themselves for that task.
https://www.sfs.opm.gov/
I went through this program. Got a FREE MS in CompSci in 3 semesters, interned at NIST for a summer and ended up working for NSF for a couple years. Started at NSF and a GS-9, was GS-12 within 2 years.
The Klingons are gearing up for a new field of battle. I guess all those ridiculous stories about "Chinese" attacks on various inconsequential web sites had a meaning.
The new bill 'authorizes one single entity, the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to represent the government in negotiations over international standards and orders the White House office of technology to convene a cybersecurity university-industry task force to guide the direction of future research
I wasn't aware that Congress could order the White House to do anything. What part of the Constitution gives it this power? What about "separation of powers"?
Free Martian Whores!
Would it have had as much support without the recent (allegedly chinese) attack against Google and other companies?
BYOCT... (Bring your own conspiracy theory)
now we can get back about the 'business' of surviving the escalating assault on ourselves, by us, & 'them'.
consult with/trust in your creators, providing more than enough security, & everything else we need, with no personal gain motive, using an unending supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?
Since when does using a fuzzer to modify http headers constitute as a l337?
So do I have to give up my computer while somebody that wants to test out their l337 skillz essentially destroying my development server and hard work without compensation?
Where are the bills protections to me as a non-felon, voting, tax-payer?
On thar IntarWebz!
Heh! Moore's law states that I can introduce Hitler into a discussion more frequently than Hitlr was discussed during his entire lifetime! Take THAT, Mr. Godless!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
It's incredibly difficult to do something in an official, bureaucratic capacity without making your plan (and your goals) seem ridiculous, and your knowledge of the problem laughably ignorant. The internet is championed as a communication medium designed to be 'un-patrolable,' and any system that inspires hollywood-type 'hacking' will be immediately, firmly, and justifiably criticized by those who value it for exactly that reason. It sounds like our politicians are convinced that China has a few more 'cyber-warriors' than us, so we need to get in on that arms-race and move some of those crazy xbox kids away from shooting zombies so they can make pew pew at the holes China's punching in the giant 'firewall' UI buried under Nebraska. Why does the language of our policy, the words coming from the mouths of our representatives, have to be so over-simplified? Why can't the media hire somebody who knows what the hell they're talking about, and have him explain it in language appropriate for the content? Aren't the people who actually care about the issue, and so become its audience, the same people who are insulted by the simplified method in which its presented? Honestly, if you want my Grandmother to read an article in your newspaper, fine, if you want her to vote for you, fine, but don't spoon-feed me BS and tell me it's good for me.
Can someone tell me WTF a "Cyber-Warrior" is? Seriously. Like, what is it.. A bunch of script-kiddies running 1337 ha0r tools? Or someone who just knows how to pingflood? If they really want to be concerned about "Cyber Security", why don't they nuke all the computers running Bot nets? Why don't they go after the jerkoffs running the C&C servers? Why don't they set up Honeypots acting as spam traps and go after all those spammers clogging up the pipes? Why don't they go after the RBN equivalents out there? Nobody would dare to sue a military unit, would they? Am I missing something here?
Just saying it does not make it mean something. We need a new congress.
So does this mean that they are trying to wreck havoc on our lives like nuclear bombs have? ...Wars, threats of terrorism, devastating economic sanctions, preemptive wars, and cold wars?
Reminds me of the DEVO song "It's a Beautiful Life"
I wasn't aware that Congress could order the White House to do anything. What part of the Constitution gives it this power? What about "separation of powers"?
In theory, we have rule of law in this country, and the executive branch is bound by law, which congress writes, except the Constitution. The theoretical separation of power lies in the fact that the executive is generally part of the legislative process via the veto/signing power.
In practice, the executive branch has even further freedom pretty broad latitude, arising partly from being the executor of the law, and partly from human sociology (most people have some natural aversion to adversarial actions against high-status individuals) and politics (sure, maybe Bush and Cheney are guilty of war crimes, but you open that can of worms and you're going to start a big fight and potentially find yourself staring down the barrel of similar accusations in the future).
If anything, the executive branch is stronger in practice than it should be.
Tweet, tweet.
Shouldn't treaties be made by people who are responsible to an electorate? Isn't that the point of our entire system of government? This seems really shady to me.
or else!
I give the NIST six months before they're over-ruled by the NSA and DHS. Six months.
Every time I hear a government official -- or, for that matter, anyone else -- refer to a "cyber warrior" outside of the context of a game or movie review, I want to take their television away from them until they're old enough to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. And in the case of this buffoon and his thousand extra cyber warriors per year, he also needs to read The Mythical Man-Month before he's allowed to leave his room.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
about a stupid tv show?
That's really great.
Question:
- Haging mandated this conference and extension to our bloated government, did this knowledgable legislater provide funding for this addition?
If funding was NOT provided and since this clown thinks this is such an important issue, let's take the funding from his budget, and if that is not enough, cut his pay, and if that is not enough, he is going to have to get a 2nd job to cover the difference.
This is called - being responsible.
Hmmm.... this would be related now would it?
Google is finalizing an agreement with the National Security Agency to help the search giant ward off cyberattacks, according to the Washington Post.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
and the government does nothing
a F500 company gets hacked and all of a sudden we need cyberwarriors
good to know those priorities come election day
I'm done fighting this stuff. I have only two questions. [1] Where do I send a resume to be a cyber warrior and [2] do I get an awesome badge?
I'm ready to serve my country. But if you want me on the team I'll need Top Secret clearance, one of those cool James Bond gun pens, a military uniform so I can get laid in bars, and a lifetime supply of Diet Mountain Dew Code Red and Doritos.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
That was a pretty stupid move, now wasn't it? I know a certain 422 members of congress who likely won't be re-elected!
Does anyone else also think its entirely too coincidental for the progress of the new cybersecurity bill, that a large scale hack of a giant US company (Google) was supposedly perpetrated by a comunist country a mere couple of weeks before the bill goes before the house?
Usually a country's post office is given powers to represent the country in international postal negotiations and the UPU. This seems to be no different, except that it deals with standards.
Phft! All you need is Jack Bauer and CTU. THAT'LL teach them not to mess with the US! ;-)
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
NIST is not a new agency and has been around for some time. They are responsible for keeping track of US time and other standards. If the directory of NIST is anything like those I know who work there I do not think this will be anywhere near as bad as you imply. Finally ACTA has nothing to do with "international standards" and everything to do with copyright law.
I have mod points, but this sentiment has been stated several times in this thread, and I haven't seen an adequate response.
All treaties are negotiated by the executive branch on behalf of the president - it's in the constitution. They are then approved by Congress. This bill isn't taking power away from congress - they never had power to negotiate treaties to begin with and will still approve any negotiated by the NIST. If anything, this might be interpreted as taking power from the President as it limits who can negotiate treaties on standards on his behalf. In practice, this is a boring area and he will gladly let the NIST handle it, until a special case comes up at which point it will be within his constitutional power to appoint someone else if he wants, regardless of what this law says.
Good to know that we can finally cyber safely, thanks to the Congress!
Please people, tell your Washington representatives and senators that the term is stupid and sounds like it came from a 1980's GI Joe cartoon. Lets come up with something else other than using "cyber" and "warrior" to describe a technical, professional, information security job function.
...visas issued. How do you say "cyber warrior" in Punjabi?
Politically correct need not reply -- the class war has been in progress for quite some time now....how many CEOs did you off today?
Yeah, just make sure your under 40 before even trying to apply for a government job. They won't hire anyone above a certain age, and won't pay a viable wage to start. There are going to be two classes in this country, those who work for the government and those who subsist off of the government. Reminds me of Soviet Russia. Just wait till the gov takes over student loans completely. They'll decide where you go to school and what your major is, based on your school tests. Long live the party!
for windows put boxes behind hardware firewalls and keep them updated with wu and secunia psi
for linux boxes iptables + filters
for fbsd pf
for passwords keepassx burnt to CD
for banking a VM
for shoping a VM
for taxes a VM
for data a clone backup
The problem is there's no leadership because everyone's become frickin fascists instead of engineers. Allowing laws to be nanny state instead of following the constitution.
'Cyber', 'warriors', and 'troops' are embarrassing and funny, however this bill's focus on educating people about these issues is laudable, and I'm glad malicious behavior in other countries is a growing concern. But the way I see it, computer security laws disincentivize us from innovating technologies that remove known exploits, and instead we patch things up and wait for the same exploit to show up another day. Buffer overflows, injection attacks, spam, denial of service, malware, viruses, these are things we've chosen to prevent by punishment, rather than by enforcing survival of the fittest for the underlying technologies. I will have to deal with spam probably for the rest of my life, because law enforcement can only target so many spammers, and the smaller ones can get by. The responsibility is on the government to enforce good behavior, so there's no incentive for us to make anything better for ourselves.
", the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to represent the government in negotiations over international standards and orders the White House office of technology to convene a cybersecurity university-industry task force to guide the direction of future research.'""
that's really good, actually. It beets the last 8 years of ignoring the professionals.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is stoopid I can't find anything in the text of this bill that says anything about cyberwarriors.
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
Every upmodded post was "funny." Get rid of funny and
Funnily enough, that's also the website where you submit an application to become an astronaut for NASA.