Why CSI: Cyber Matters

New submitter hypercard writes: CSI: Cyber has been the butt of many jokes in the infosec community since its inception. But in addition to facilitating lots of cyber bingo events and live tweets to call out technical errors, the show has real value in bringing awareness about infosec issues to the masses. Members of the Army Cyber Institute at West Point discuss the upside of CSI: Cyber in an article in the Cyber Defense Review. "Children all over the country have been inspired to be law enforcement agents by shows like Criminal Minds, NCIS, Bones, and CSI." One of CSI: Cyber's cast members, Shad Moss, has more followers than the entire top one thousand information security professionals on Twitter.

Comments

ACK..PHHT

[craighansen]

If only it had some concept of citizen's right to privacy. Instead, it breathlessly celebrates the death of the 4th amendment.

Re:ACK..PHHT

[dottrap]

Anybody find it suspicious that at the height of the Snowden/NSA spying revelations, NCIS brings in a sympathetic and pretty NSA agent into the main cast. (And her show's husband is played by Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galactica), another NSA agent.)

Re:ACK..PHHT

[stephanruby]

Exactly. I haven't seen this specific show, but every other crime drama on TV seems to portray the cops as being able to go snatch information from just about anything they can get into, through any means, without any discussion of a warrant.

That's correct. Barring one or two exceptions, crime drama on TV also seems to portray cops as wanting to get to the bottom of murders.

When in fact, it's quite the opposite in real life. Cops who get promoted, classify murders, as suicides, or as death by natural cause. That's the most politically expedient solution. That's the cold hard truth of our society. In San Francisco for instance, it took international pressure from the French government to reopen a case where the death of a French man was ruled as suicide despite the fact that he was stabbed repeatedly and that the knife was never found.

Also, I know someone who works as a CSI in Florida. She said to me that CSIs are not criminal investigators, they're more like social workers. They're there to process dead bodies, not to try to inflate the official rate of murders in their jurisdiction. So forget that notion of super detectives, they're not super detectives (as most of us already know of course), but take it even a step further, they're not even allowed to be detectives since the entire bureaucracy is only incentivized to ignore murders (instead of investigating them).

So if these TV shows inspire any young people to get into these professions, those young people are in for a very rude awakening one day.

Re:ACK..PHHT

[Anonymous Coward]

always wondered if production of those types of programs are at least partially funded by the government, perhaps, so that the masses get used to those concepts? it can't all be just 'literary license' and 'plot devices' concocted by the writers and directors.

Re:ACK..PHHT

[AmiMoJo]

It's the same on UK television. There was a series called "Spooks", about MI5 (kinda like the CIA) officers. They would regularly hack any random CCTV camera that happened to be of interest to them, without any consideration for legal procedure or apparently any effort. It was just assumed they could look at anything any time they wanted to, no questions asked, because national security.

It gives a false view

[BarbaraHudson]

It gives a false view of what's possible, what's plausible, how things work, etc. In other words, it sucks.

That's no better than kids saying they want to be Superman or a Ninja Turtle because they saw it on TV.

And the acting ... god-awful.

But what can you expect from scripts that were written by former employees of the National Enquirer.

Re:It gives a false view

[TapeCutter]

I saw a real live astronaut say that Star Trek was his inspiration -- surely it was not the technical accuracy that inspired him.

I grew up in the 60's, loved star trek and I dream of Genie. The "adult" backdrop was the Moon race, portrayed as scientific but driven by the fear sputnik induced in the pentagon. Virtually every boy in my school wanted to be an astronaut even though we knew there was no such thing as an Aussie astronaut at the time.

Humans are inspired by human stories, "magic" is just a plot device. To enjoy fiction such as Dr Who or CSI you have to "suspend belief", often that is not possible if you are expert in a specific kind of "magic"; eg "infinite zoom" which was ok in the 80's has now become a bad cliché because the general population are more familiar with pixilation. The problem starts when popular actors/storytellers start conflating their fiction with reality to drum up business (eg: Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code).

If the storyteller offers details about the magic it's important to me that the details are correct (eg: Big Bang Theory), a few correct details makes the magic much harder to reject. For example has Dr Who ever explained how the magic wand (sonic screwdriver) works? Do we need an explanation to enjoy the show?

Re:Idiotic Nonsense

[SuricouRaven]

I've noticed that every single IP address has at least one segment >255. Perhaps it's a legal thing - their lawyers tell them not to show any address that might be in use by a real entity, and using invalid IPs is their equivilent of a 555 area code?

CSI and spinoffs all have the forensics team work as a one-department law enforcement squad. They go to the scene, interview the suspects, draw conclusions, and eventually chase down and arrest the perpetrator. It's just a storytelling constraint: It would be a lot less exciting if the CSI's job were more realistic. They go to a scene, spend a few hours poking around, then write up a report and hand it over to the detective? Who wants to watch that? It's a much better story if you have a small group of core characters who are intimately involved in the case from start to end.