Americans More Worried About Cybersecurity Than Terrorism

TheGift73 tips an article discussing a new study (PDF) which found Americans are now more worried about cybersecurity threats than they are about terrorism. Here's Techdirt's acerbic take: "Well, it looks like all the fearmongering about hackers shutting down electrical grids and making planes fall from the sky is working. No matter that there's no evidence of any actual risk, or that the only real issue is if anyone is stupid enough to actually connect such critical infrastructure to the internet (the proper response to which is: take it off the internet), fear is spreading. Of course, this is mostly due to the work of a neat combination of ex-politicians/now lobbyists working for defense contractors who stand to make a ton of money from the panic — enabled by politicians who seem to have no shame in telling scary bedtime stories that have no basis in reality."

Comments

fearmongering

[nurb432]

Has always been an effective tactic for manipulating public opinion.

He who controls the media, controls the future.

Re:fearmongering

[Dyinobal]

Yep and it comes from some unique sources, one being the new COD Black Ops 2 has a focus of 'cyber security' basically talking about how terrorists are going to take over all our unmanned drones and use them to kill people and such. Plus good old Activision got war criminal Oliver North to do some good old fear mongering for them, something he basically has made a career ever since the Iran-Contra Affair back in the day.

Re:fearmongering

[girlintraining]

He who controls the media, controls the future.

Not really effective unless the population is uneducated. Considering the price of education has risen, er, 270% in the last 15 years... it would seem to indicate a concerted effort to turn an informed citizenship into mindless zombies, which has traditionally been the precursor to the fall of democratic government. I've found in the past 2 years or so people believing all kinds of non-sense that simply wouldn't have been tolerated before then. The anti-vaxxers, the global warming 'skeptics', creationism being taught in schools, homeopathic remedies... and the other day I had someone yelling at me because they thought that hair had nerves in it. It's become politically vogue to be a blithering moron.

Re:fearmongering

[DarwinSurvivor]

And the minute they have even a shred of physical evidence, we'll reconsider the matter. Until then, it can be kept in the phylosophy and debate classes along with all the other religions that catholics seem to think don't deserve to be taught in schools and we'll keep science class limited to things science related..

Re:fearmongering

[thomsonjones]

So why do we teach evolution as the only answer?

Because evolution has actual evidence. And probably for the same reason we don't teach people about invisible magical pink unicorns living on mars in schools.

Re:fearmongering

[Sperbels]

I'm talking a creator in a very generic system which is a fundamental thought process in the study of Philosophy. Very much like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes arguments. There is no particular Religion involved in the logic.

A creator is plausible. But there is no evidence for one so it's not science. It's pure speculation.

Re:fearmongering

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

SHUT DOWN THE NET! FOR NATIONAL SECURITY!

The psyop seems to be working - but tell that to MLB. They post their WEP passphrase on national TV!

Re:fearmongering

[steelfood]

You are confusing Jewish the people, and Jewish the religion. They often appear together, so it's not uncommon to make this mistake. But they are two separate things. Judiasm is a belief system. But you don't have to believe in Judiasm to be Jewish. Being Jewish is also an identity separate from the religion. There are plenty of Jewish people who are secular, agnostic, or even atheist, as well as believers in Judiasm who are not Jewish (converted).

Einstein may have identified with the people, but he did not identify with the religion.

Re:fearmongering

[Ironchew]

There is not a single shred of evidence to prove there is not a creator. Not one. So why do we teach evolution as the only answer?

It's impossible to prove the non-existence of god(s), pink unicorns, etc. The burden of proof lies with those asserting that God is real to, well, prove it.
Evolution has evidence. Creationism does not. Therefore, creationism should not be entertained in a science classroom except as an illustrative example of pseudoscience.

Re:fearmongering

[cpu6502]

>>> price of education has risen, er, 270% in the last 15 years

No the price of a college degree has risen. The price of an "education" has dropped to $20/month (cost of an internet line so you can download free lectures and textbooks and informative websites). I've learned more from these downloads than I ever did in college (which taught me a lot of stuff I forgot).

Re:fearmongering

[cpu6502]

>>>"Something had to start the shit."

False assumption. This universe could have spawned from another universe (read Hawking), or simply from itself (a continuous loop). It doesn't mean there was intelligence behind it.

>>>There is not a single shred of evidence to prove there is not a creator.

That's because it's imposible to prove a negative. For example: There is no way to prove that Santa Clause does not exist. You can say, "Well he's not over here, or over here, or over here....." and the reply will be, "Oh he's there. You just haven't found him yet." The onus is upon the person to prove the positive, not the negative.

Re:fearmongering

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not, it's pseudo science. It's a possible answer, but without proof it's just that. From your perspective, I could also be the first rutabaga to pass the Turing test. I hope you don't also consider that to be relevant to science or I shall have to taunt you a second time.

This sort of ignorance and the way you don't seem to recognize it is truly mind blowing.

Aristotle's idea had a huge hole in that you would have to have an infinite regress problem as you would then need something to create this god and then something to create that god and eventually you'd have to have an Nth god to get things started.

Re:fearmongering

[cpu6502]

>>>Because you are here, there is most likely a creator.

Or not.
Could have sprung from nothing.

AND even if we presume there's a creator...... well then who created the creator? Hmmm. (ponder). It is more probable that a random, chaotic universe came into being, than a fully-formed intelligent person with tremendous power just suddenly "popped" into existence.

Re:fearmongering

[The Dancing Panda]

See, you're arguing the wrong thing. This is why you're getting frustrated.

The beginnings of the universe have very little to do with the theory of evolution. Yet, for some reason, you keep bringing it up in this argument, as if it makes your assertion that creationism (meaning the belief that every living thing on the planet was here at the beginning of the universe, or the planet, or whatever) belongs in a science classroom. There is absolutely no evidence that that belief is true, so the argument is "no, it doesn't". And then you come in with philosophy debates. Now, whether the philosophy should be studied is a different question. It probably shouldn't be studied in a science classroom, because science classes teach what humanity has learned with the scientific method. A belief in a creator doesn't change the fact that creationism makes no sense from the evidence we gathered, and therefore should probably not be teaching it to children.

You're trying to argue whether a Creator exists, with philosophical references. Everyone else is arguing whether we should be teaching about that Creator in a class where there being a creator or not shouldn't matter, since we can't prove it scientifically either way.

Re:fearmongering

[poopdeville]

I see this as sane. The risk of terrorism has always been overblown. But there are literally tens of thousands (or even hundreds of thousands or millions) of black hats out there totally willing to steal your identity or crack your voicemail, like the Murdoch family did to anybody they wanted to investigate or intimidate.

Re:fearmongering

[poopdeville]

Um, this is a fallacy. Just because there are two choices does not make them equally probable. You might get hit by lightning tomorrow. You might not. Are the odds 50:50? (No)

Re:fearmongering

[Samantha Wright]

If you want to talk about the idea of a creator in a deistic sense, as in something outside of known history, then yes; that's perfectly well and good and you can go on winding up the watches in your blind watchmaker's front-window display case. If you want to talk about the idea in an historical context, absolutely; undoubtedly creation myths have had a great impact on how people act and how empires were wound up. These are important matters that should not be ignored, lest we lose the lessons garnered from them.

But the moment you start suggesting that creationism is some kind of alternative to understanding biological evolution is the moment you step off the deep end. Kindly put, sir, you have just used very loaded and inarticulate language that is directly in conflict with what we know is philosophically, scientifically, and intellectually honest. In absolutely no way are there any genuine alternatives to the statement that we developed from single-celled organisms over the course of billions of years, and if you feel the need to distrust what I am saying I will be more than happy to teach you how disastrously misguided such a claim is, regardless of how much or how little biology you have been formally instructed in.

What does exist is the age-old reality of one of humankind's greatest inventions: the power of religion to provide answers to those who need them emotionally, even if they are brutally false and bestow us with an incredibly unwarranted sense of self-importance. Sometimes lies are necessary for social order to proceed, and the most urgently important lies are generally conveniently relevant creation myths.

(P.S., I'm retracting a mod point I gave you by making this post.)

Re:fearmongering

[smellotron]

In odds, it's an exact 50/50 split. There either is, or is not a creator. Ask yourself, if it's a 50/50 split why would you not want people to hear what the odds are for and learn to think about the answer for themselves?

It is a fallacy to assume that because two possibilities exist that they must be equally probable. Nobody on earth knows the odds on this sort of a "bet". It is also a mistake to award equal effort or weight to all possibilities in an investigation, since there are innumerable dead-ends. It makes sense to expose people to logic, the scientific method, and mythology (religious or otherwise). It does not make sense to present these topics as competitors, because comprehension of scientific discovery and processes does not preclude personal faith.

Re:fearmongering

[dunkelfalke]

Atheism is a belief the very same way not collecting stamps is a hobby.

Take it off the Internet?

[Malvineous]

To be fair, at least some of the compromised systems in Iran weren't connected to the Internet.

Re:Take it off the Internet?

[cpu6502]

If the flaw is some person sticking a virus-laden USB stick into a unconnected power plant or other gadget, then we don't need a "cybersecurity military" to lockdown the web (and takeaway our online freedoms). We need to stop employees from doing stupid stuff, like sticking USB sticks into power plants/mission-critical gadgets.

"Fear is the mind killer."
- Dune

Re:Take it off the Internet?

[Shoten]

You can't take the power grid off the Internet. You know why? Because of (ironically) reliability. Let's look at Texas, which is governed by ERCOT. ERCOT facilitates sharing between the different power utilities, as well as energy trading. Much of this (and more in the future) is facilitated by communications about load, actual generation and available reserve generation capacity. These three numbers change more frequently, dramatically and unexpectedly than you might think. An industrial plant fires up a furnace...and whammo, suddenly a utility has 25MW of load show up out of nowhere without warning, and they have to push their boilers to produce more power to keep up. (If load and generation get out of balance, very bad things happen...but frequency regulation is a story for another time). If a plant trips because of some mishap, then suddenly a bunch of generation drops off the grid. If it's a big plant, then that utility may need to draw power from a neighbor to keep up, at least until they can restart the plant (or bring demand generators online).

Without these interconnections, the ability to respond this way greatly drops off. So it's a situation where the overall grid becomes more stable, but at the cost of providing a degree of interconnectivity that makes it more feasible for an attacker to go after it via cyber attacks. A lot is being done to manage the vulnerabilities and risks, mostly under the NERC CIP regulatory standards. There's a nugget of truth to the fearmongering, but taking it all off the Internet is not even remotely realistic.

Re:Fearmongering???

[JohnFen]

If the sensitive systems are not connected to the internet (and they shouldn't be), and if standard security procedures are followed (and they should be), then the risk is really quite minimal. Not zero, of course -- but probably less (and centainly no greater) than before computerization.

I don't even know where to begin.

[Beardo the Bearded]

I use my netbook to turn off lift. It makes planes fall out of the sky. I knew that I'd become a terrorist when I ran apt-get install alter-universe-fundamental-forces, I just didn't care.

PLANES! The planes, I reign, fall mainly in the plains. Turbulence, that's me. Fuck all y'all. I do it for the lulz.

I am very sorry, but reading this article made me lose braininess. Next I'll be laughing at Dolan comics.

Fearmongering?

[Hentes]

Hacking causes a lot more damage than terrorists ever did.

Re:Fearmongering?

[wbr1]

Hacking causes a lot more damage than terrorists ever did.

[Citation needed]

Illiterate, donkey riding, half starved..

[Paracelcus]

Illiterate, donkey riding, half starved, hyper religious nutbags with AK47's and common explosives have the most fearsome, multi trillion dollar super/mega military/intelligence/surveillance machine ever to exist, ANYWHERE at a strategic standstill! and even more this handful of inbreds (less than a thousand, Al Whastsa or so I've heard) so much so as to have made the Land of the FREE into the Land of the Spied upon/Groped, bugged and X-Rayed! Even if these guy's could commandeer some rusty Soviet era military boat, what are they gonna do? I'll take my chances and have my freedom back!

Real concerns about cybersecurity.

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I'm concerned about cybersecurity, but I'm not concerned about cyber threats translating to physical threats, but rather economic threats, and they are very much real.

Namely, getting my identity stolen or having US technology secrets getting stolen by somebody who hasn't invested the R&D into it. Namely, 50 years of NASA research being stolen, which has already happened.

I'm sure there are many slashdotters out there who believe that tech secrets should be free, but I don't think so. When you put effort into a project, only to have somebody else rip off your idea and implement it with none of that cost, and therefore they can implement it cheaper than you can, making your entire effort go to waste, is really underhanded and in my opinion unfair.

And before somebody says getting your identity stolen is only the result of your own stupidity, think again. It's often necessary for you to give out important personal information in order to do business. And even in spite of their best efforts to keep their systems secure, even if they made all of the right choices and didn't let their security practices laps, zero day vulnerabilities always manage to show up.

For these reasons, I think cybersecurity should definitely be a concern.

Show me the questionnaire

[yuna49]

I don't trust executive summaries of polling data; I want to see the entire questionnaire so I can understand the context in which the questions were asked. I'd bet that if people were asked an open-ended question about the "problems facing our country today" cyberterrorism would be lucky to get a 1% response. Here are the top items from the most recent New York Times/CBS poll released yesterday:

Economy and jobs 62%
Federal budget deficit 11
Health care 9
Same-sex marriage 7
Foreign policy 4
Immigration 2
Other/DK 4

I don't see terrorism of any sort on that list.

Even if we accept the findings of the survey, what is most striking in the results is the substantial increase in respondents who say they are "not concerned" about the threats asked about compared to a year ago.

Moreover at least one question has nothing to do with IT, the one about respondents' ability to "meet essential financial obligations." For more relevant questions, solid majorities report being only "somewhat" or "not concerned" about the security of online shopping and banking, computer viruses and spam email, and their own personal security.

The IT media has a habit of touting these self-serving studies by organizations like, in this case, Unisys as somehow providing an "objective" view of public opinion. Puh-leeze.

Who needs cyber terrorism?

[OzPeter]

I've said it before that all you need to take down the electrical grid is for or five teams with high powered rifles and an SUVs. Nothing you can't legally buy in any small town in the country. So how is the government going to protect against that vector?

Not necessarily unreasonable

[Daetrin]

I mean cyberterrorism isn't a huge risk, but "real" terrorism is even less of a problem. It's not like anything like the 9/11 attacks could ever happen again. (As so many people have pointed out, it took the passengers of flight 93 less than an hour to figure out how to prevent that kind of attack from being effective.) Short of terrorists actually managing to acquire a nuclear weapon any direct attacks they carry out will probably be pretty small and totally dwarfed by all the more mundane dangers we face in our day to day lives and have learned to live with.

_If_ cyberterrorists managed to bring down a portion of the powergrid it would probably affect more people than a "regular" attack, though since hospitals and such usually have backup power the actual number of deaths might be lower.

Though to be "fair", the cynical part of me suspects that this has nothing to do with people actually getting grip on how little a risk terrorism actually represents currently and does indeed have a lot more to do with fearmongering and a lack of understanding of computer networks in general.

Re:Fearmongering???

[clarkkent09]

Let me correct that for you:

If the sensitive systems are connected to the internet (and they often are), and if standard security procedures are not followed (and they rarely are), then the risk is really quite significant.

.

Mystified by responses

[__aaltlg1547]

According to TFA, the questions regarded how important is it for Presidential candidates to tell us about security threats.

My response is NOT AT ALL. There will be zero difference in their approach to security threats
  The question isn't even worth considering when comparing Presidential candidates.

Ask them about what they will do that's DIFFERENT.

Re:Fearmongering???

[cpu6502]

Let me correct that for you (again):

If the sensitive systems are connected to the internet (then you must be fucking stupid & should be fired). The easiest fix to remove a cyberthreat is to remove the "cyber" part of the equation. Hence you've cut off the threat from access.

Duh. I don't worry about cyberthreats when I'm using my old Commodore Amiga. Ya know why? Because I pulled it off the net ~10 years ago!!! (Wow what a shocking solution.)

polarization is not helpful.

[mevets]

Regardless of my personal beliefs, I see no reason for evolution to exclude a deity or vice versa.
This polarization reminds me of the sports mentality of US vs THEM; and it troubles me that seemingly able people are so hamstrung by such nonsense.
Metaphysical belief is is a spectrum, and people subscribe to different regions of it.
I'm proud of my 98% Chimp ancestors (although my better half thinks I'm too modest). I can relate to Christian Humanists; and can't relate to intolerant fanatics, regardless of faith.
It isn't a contest, and we will never know the answer; unless the faithful are right, but then we will never get to mumble about it on /.; unless the nuts are right...

Another thing to keep in mind, personal experience

[khallow]

Very few people in the US have experienced anything resembling a terrorist attack, but a fair number have experienced a cybersecurity breach. For example, a lot of people probably have experienced the wrong end of credit card skimming and virtually everyone who has been online has some exposure to malware and malicious websites.

Even if those aren't the proper purview of a government agency, it's still the case that we have person problems very similar to the sort of cybersecurity issues.

When someone writes a story about a bunch of DoD computers getting compromised by the Red Menace (that's China BTW), you have some sympathy since your coworker Fred had similar trouble when he was porn surfing over the weekend. Their machines got hacked, just like Fred's.

OTOH, it's not likely that someone tried to kill Fred for political purposes or to inspire fear in your work group.

Education, cost and need

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

"'Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life - save only this - if you work hard and diligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education."
--John Alexander Smith, Oxford professor of moral philosophy.

That ability doesn't necessarily cost money to acquire, which is fortunate, because in an era of Internet, talk radio, and cable "news", it is indispensable and vital.

Re:That's because

[Chrisq]

The people who realize the government is the only perpetrator of terrorism

Ah - you're one of those "George Bush arranged 9/11" people. Muslim by any chance?