White House Circulating Draft of Executive Order On Cybersecurity

New submitter InPursuitOfTruth writes with news that the Obama administration has been circulating a draft of an executive order focused on cybersecurity. This follows the recent collapse of an attempt at cybersecurity legislation in the Senate. According to people who have seen the draft, the order would codify standards and best practices for critical infrastructure. That said, it's questionable how effective it would be, since participation would be voluntary, and the standards would be set by "an inter-agency council that would be led by the Department of Homeland Security." The other agencies involved would include NIST, the DoD, and the Commerce Dept. "It would be left up to the companies to decide what steps they want to take to meet the standards, so the government would not dictate what type of technology or strategy they should adopt."

Comments

Executive Orders vs. Checks & Balances

[ReallyEvilCanine]

On one hand, efficacy and direct, immediate action.

On the other hand, the complete usurping of the very principles of enumerated and separated branches of gubmint in order to prevent abuse and provide for accountability.

Re:Executive Orders vs. Checks & Balances

[girlintraining]

On one hand, efficacy and direct, immediate action.

No. There's been nothing efficient, fast, or direct about this. It's another power grab by the Department of Homeland Security, and pardon my french, but fuck them. They have incompetently managed every resource assigned to them, whether it's investigating domestic crime, securing airports, or anything else. They've created gulag prison camps within our borders to throw protesters in, encouraged the usurpation of local and state laws to further their interests, they irradiate their citizens and workers alike to the point that cancer clusters are now showing up in TSA screeners that are well-beyond being able to be dismissed as a statistical abnormality, and the list goes on.

And now they want a master kill switch for the internet, to dictate terms about how all our communications infrastructure is organized, and they have deep connections with media organizations -- of which only a few need to be manipulated to suppress information at the national level. The Department of Homeland Security has become the Ministry of Truth, and thanks to clever and covert manipulation of the media and the occasional use of deadly force and questionable laws, has all but silenced dissent or even knowledge of what its activities are.

No. It's gone too far. It no longer matters to me how well-intentioned or beneficial a proposal is; If it is administered or requested by Homeland Security, my advice is to resist it in any way you reasonably can... they're a dangerous and corrupt organization, unamerican and destructive of the very means it seeks to protect. I'd rather have a hundred Osama Bin Ladens out there plotting the downfall of my country than to turn over my personal safety and security to a bunch of incompetent bureaucrats -- at least in the former case, I know who my enemies are.

How about some basic guidelines?

[Xenkar]

Rule 1 of critical national infrastructure: Don't put it on the damned internet.
Rule 2: See rule 1.
Rule 3: Are you sure you saw rule 1? Quadruple check anyway.
Rule 4: Manufacture everything pertaining to the critical national infrastructure in your own country (microchips, resistors, diodes, final assembly, etc)
Rule 5: Keep it simple.

Now for big business:
Rule 1: Don't let anyone leave your office with a notebook or any form of portable media containing sensitive customer information unless it is encrypted and heading to your off-site tape storage facility.
Rule 2: Don't let anyone hook their own computers and gadgets up to your network.
Rule 3: If it needs to be on the internet, have a nice firewall between it and the internet.
Rule 4: Have your web browsers running in sandboxes.

There, now we don't need feel good, ineffective legislation.

Voluntary ?

[Taco Cowboy]

That said, it's questionable how effective it would be, since participation would be voluntary

That "voluntary" part is inserted to throw off people so that they can't object to this executive order
 
After a while, the word "voluntary" would disappear, and participation would no longer be "voluntary" and the whole thing would be run by the Homeland Security or one of the many 3-alphabet-agencies
 
Count on it !
 
Cyber-security or whatever -security it might be, they are all designed to do one thing - to take away the freedom of the ordinary people and to concentrate all the power at the top
 

I'd like what you're smoking

[Overzeetop]

You do realize that most of the "socialized healthcare" law came straight out of the Republican recommendations of less than 10 years ago and, with the exception of providing vouchers(!) for those who are lower income to buy commercial insurance, is nearly identical to the right's plan as a counter to the Democrats call for a single payer system?

You obviously have never heard of Keyens, either, or remember that in 1929, Herbert Hoover actually implemented many of the Tea Party recommendations in an attempt to prevent the national debt from growing as the federal government's income revenue shrank. Not only did it spiral the unemployment rate to 20%, but even when FDR implemented (effectively) Keyensian economics by leveraging the US governnment to create jobs it took 6 more years for the economy to stabilize. In 80 years we haven't had as wild a bubble burst, and yet the current presidents approach to stopping the hemmoraging - which worked almost immediately - is considered a failure? You do realize that the previous 6 years of growth was based solely on margin spending of consumers based on inflated values of their homes - and now that the market has corrected there is no more real estate to leverage in the same way, and nobody else in the world has any consumer money to spend either?

Did you miss the part about BHO getting rid of Don't Ask, Don't Tell? Did you miss how he promised health care reform and - even though you clearly don't need it - actually passed it? Did you miss how he promised to re-regulate the Financial industry, and put forth and passed legislation to do so, only to have the Republican held congress refuse to enact, fund, or appoint people to run it? Did you miss the part where he planned to pull us out of Iraq, and to draw down the surge in Afghanistan.

Has is been so long - 3-1/2 years - that you forget that the rest of the world hated us so fucking much that they gave him the Nobel prize for simply not being GW Bush? No, of course he didn't deserve it, but the whole rest of the world hated Bush and Cheney so much they gave hi a medal and a million dollars just for not being them. Let me repeat that - our allies don't hate our guts any more. Even the neutral states think we're okay now. Did you notice that, when Egypt and Libya went apeshit we didn't have to mobilize ground troops. Hell, we were barely involve. Our allies took that over and we didn't have to put on our cowboy boots and lead the charge.

As for corporate value, I'm not sure where you've been hiding where the Dow Jones doesn't get reported, but from when GWB took office in 2001 to when the bubble burst in 2008 - the peak!- the market went up by 32%, and then fell crashing down for a NET LOSS OF VALUE UNDER G W BUSH of nearly 23%, start to finish. That was my God damned 401k retirement fund. Holy shit that sucks. Since Obama took office, the market is up...sit down for this...62%. That's right, and that doesn't count the low spot - that's from the day they swore him in. In 3.5 years he did DOUBLE for the value of the market what GW Bush did right before the bubble burst. We just had the worst market crash in 80 years, and in 40 months the market is back to within spitting distance (5%, if you're counting) of the all time high.

Are you worried about gas prices? Ever wonder when gas has been the most expensive? Yup G W Bush - mid 2008. Even higher than right now. And do you know why gas is so high? It's not because we're dependent on foreign oil - our dependence has gone DOWN under Obama. It's because we're EXPORTING most of our gas to other countries who are willing to pay more! Gasoline was the #1 (total, top, more than anything else) US EXPORT last year. We're making money hand over fist on it. Are you going to fault Obama for not restricting exports to keep gas prices down, because that would do it. And you know that pipeline through PA Romney is going to build the day he gets into office? It's not for keeping domestic oil in the US, it's to get oil to the gulf where is can be refined and exporte