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New Bill Would Put DHS In Charge of 'Critical' Private Networks
GovTechGuy writes "A new bill unveiled Wednesday by House Homeland Security chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) would give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to enforce federal cybersecurity standards on private sector companies deemed critical to national security. The Homeland Security Cyber and Physical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2010 authorizes DHS to establish and enforce risk and performance-based cybersecurity standards on federal agencies and private sector companies considered part of the country's critical infrastructure. Such firms include utilities, communications providers and financial institutions."
I hope they don't require a genital pat down to use the Internet.
Apparently the term "of course" is synonymous with "this is a troll...
You obviously haven't thought this through. Remember, torrent sites steal billions of dollars from hard-working cinematographers. Where do you think that money is going if not to tiny camps in inaccessible parts of distant countries in order to wreak damage and destruction in the heartland of America? Honestly, this stuff is so basic that any junior congressman could understand it...
So we'll have the same policy for fliers as packets? Deep, humiliating inspections?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
"be subject to periodic penetration tests sponsored by the government"
Just like commercial airline passengers.
If you want to get serious about it, it all can be traced to the societal psychosis of celebrity worship that presents life as one gigantic casino: "You *too* can be a WINNER!!" (in tiny print: your odds are 1 in 4 billion, disqualifying conditions will apply, see lawyer before entering etc).
The con-men who benefited from this worked tirelessly for decade upon decade to slowly reshape the entire economy and the "common wisdom" of Americans to the point that things like "Credit Default Swaps" and "5th tier derivatives" are looked upon not only as a serious endeavor but as a legitimate "investment", while some 200 years back they would be seen as a joke of a scam.
Similarly, the average worker has become so confused that he disassociates his lot in life and reality from his make-believe "future" of a billionaire "winner". He is also told (and most amazingly he believes it) that the casino winners are wholly and single handedly responsible for him even having a roof over his head and food to eat and that he should be grateful to them for it and defend them, his current "benefactors" and future "peers" - no doubt in his mind about that, from any and all harm.
In short, America (and most of the "business" world) has become a vicious caricature of what a sane economy looks like and where the least valued activity (and lowest paid) is actual work to produce anything and the most revered kind of activity is high-stakes gambling with con-job money.
Some people believe, and I tend to agree with them, that the pivotal point at which this enormous scam became mainstream (at least in the financial realm) was when the fiat currencies became the norm instead of an exotic weirdness confined to impoverished countries run by "rulers" who sat on their suitcases ready to escape in the middle of the night at the first sign of the populace starting to catch on...