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Proposed Law Would Give DHS Power Over Privately Owned IT Infrastructure
CelticWhisper writes "H.R. 3674, the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness Act (PRECISE Act), would allow the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to require improved security practices from those businesses managing systems whose disruption could prove detrimental to critical life-sustaining or national-security initiatives." As the article points out, this is just "one of 30 or so such bills currently percolating on the Hill."
Republicans all scream for "smaller government" yet they happily sign any bill that gives away rights to the Gubment for "fighting TERRORISIM"
Bunch of hypocrites they all are.
It seems that nothing but evil comes out of washington DC anymore.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
...is how you win elections.
This is really overdue and your a fool if you think it isn't inevitable. We accept regulation for critical infrastructure like electricity and gas distribution. Why should IT be any different than any other piece of infrastructure?
I've worked with ITIL, SOX, HIPAA, SEC and a number of other regulations or standards for years. They are also largely similar in what they require, once you learn one the others are a quick learning curve. Mostly they are nothing more than attempt to codify best practices that you should be following anyways.
It's like the rail companies that cried foul when regulations required that they install safe coupling mechanisms in the 1800's. The railroads cried foul at the new expenses until they discovered that the regulations ended up saving more in labor than they can cost in parts.
The thin edge of the wedge here is in the definition of a "critical system". Things important to sustaining lives and ensuring national security make sense from a high-level perspective, but the grey areas around that can be extended to fit the goals of whoever is in control of the definition.
I'm in one of these "critical" industries that will be most likely be included under the benevolent government security umbrella provided by this bill. I've gotten pretty good at predicting how our loving, caring government is likely to respond to this type of challenge, to wit:
After a competitive bid involving only Cisco, Oracle and Microsoft, they will likely hire Cisco, Oracle and Microsoft to tell them what's needed. Unsurprisingly, the solution will include the requirement to purchase lots of expensive products from Cisco, Oracle and Microsoft.
This new regulatory function will obviously need oversight by the government. The government will expand (bloat?) the bureacracy by hiring an excessivly large number of underqualified, overpaid people to monitor compliance with their byzantine rules, which will constantly change to suit their whims. There will be minor incidents, which will be blamed on laziness and non-compliance by the industry. More regulations will be drafted, new equipment will be purchased and the bureacracy will expand even further.
At that point, we commence the never-ending circle of more regulation, more money paid to a select group of "certified" vendors and the unceasing growth of the bureacracy.
- Pithy comment goes here.
Voting machines have effectively eliminated any pretense of public control over government. Your choices are limited to the corporate-approved labels on the buttons.
And no matter what buttons you push, the tallies from the voting machines will say what the controllers of the voting machines want them to say. You have no way to check the validity of those tallies so they are incredibly unlikely to be valid - there's too much power at stake for such an obvious control point to be left uncorrupted.
Lately some states don't even bother to count write-in ballots any more, and most of them are looking into removing the write-in option from their machines.
We're leaving the Republic stage and entering the Imperial era. If we keep following the classical pattern, the next step is civil war, although hopefully long after you and I are both dead.
"That's not the way the world really works anymore," [Rove] continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actorsâ¦and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."