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Sen. Ron Wyden Says CISA Data Collection Could Put Americans At Risk

Posted by samzenpus on from the all-in-one-place dept.

blottsie writes: In a new interview, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) says the Cyber Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA) may put more Americans at risk because the U.S. government has failed to learn the right security lessons from the attack on the Office of Personnel Management. He says, in part: "I've been watching as this goes forward—there's this phrase going around the cybersecurity community, 'If you can't protect it, don't collect it.' Now, there is never going to be a system that's 100 percent safe. But what I'm going to start [saying] on the floor as we get to this [CISA debate], is, you give the government a huge new trove of personal information about Americans before you've addressed the problems that were documented all the way back to 2007—those security holes—before you address those, [before] you plug them, that's like responding to a bear attack by stockpiling honey. That's going to be how I open the debate."

5 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. The US gov't is fundamentally incompetent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No security measure can fix that.

    Hell, OPM handed out root access to "workers" remoting in from China, for fuck's sake. And the clowns who did it are still not in jail.

    It starts at the top, too. Just listen to Hillary! apologists making excuses for her and her classified emails in her fucking basement, all because they - for some strange reason - think Hillary! is on "their team", whatever team that may be.

    1. Re:The US gov't is fundamentally incompetent by steveg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The question is not whether an email server at home is less (or more) secure than one hosted by the NSA. It doesn't matter.

      Email is a fscking postcard! nothing of a classified nature should be sent unencrypted, no matter who is hosting it.

      --
      Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
    2. Re:The US gov't is fundamentally incompetent by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And even that misses the damn point: government communications need to be stored on official servers so that they can be properly supplied in response to FOIA requests. At best, hosting them privately was an attempt to circumvent public oversight, and therefore (IMO) grounds for immediate disqualification for any further public office. That's before even thinking about security issues!

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  2. H's Server (Re:The US gov't is fundamentally incom by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't see H's server choice as a security argument. The "regular" office server, the one she should have been using, was not designed for classified info either and there's no evidence it had better general security than her "home" server.

    There are plenty of other reasons to criticize her actions, but "security" is not one of them.

    I suppose one could argue she was more likely to mix up personal and work email, but that can happen regardless. One can mistype the destination on any device or email service. Such an argument is splitting hairs on what kind of typo is most likely, which is probably personality specific such as to make it highly speculative. The kinds of mistakes I make often have a different pattern than those of others. It's one of the reasons I welcome wide feedback on any of my draft UI designs.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  3. Re:And what about after the security is up to snuf by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 4, Informative

    Senator Wyden has been pretty vociferously against mass surveillance, on repeated occasions.

    Some examples:
    http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
    http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfro...