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Minister in Charge of Japan's Cybersecurity Says He Has Never Used a Computer (nytimes.com)
Futurepower(R) shares a report: A lot of people don't use computers. Most of them aren't in charge of a nation's cybersecurity. But one is. Japanese lawmakers were aghast on Wednesday when Yoshitaka Sakurada, 68, the minister who heads the government's cybersecurity office, said during questioning in Parliament that he had no need for the devices, and appeared confused when asked basic technology questions. "I have been independently running my own business since I was 25 years old," he said. When computer use is necessary, he said, "I order my employees or secretaries" to do it. [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source.] "I don't type on a computer," he added.
Asked by a lawmaker if nuclear power plants allowed the use of USB drives, a common technology widely considered to be a security risk, Mr. Sakurada did not seem to understand what they were. "I don't know details well," he said. "So how about having an expert answer your question if necessary, how's that?" The comments were immediately criticized. "I can't believe that a person who never used a computer is in charge of cybersecurity measures," said Masato Imai, an opposition lawmaker.
Asked by a lawmaker if nuclear power plants allowed the use of USB drives, a common technology widely considered to be a security risk, Mr. Sakurada did not seem to understand what they were. "I don't know details well," he said. "So how about having an expert answer your question if necessary, how's that?" The comments were immediately criticized. "I can't believe that a person who never used a computer is in charge of cybersecurity measures," said Masato Imai, an opposition lawmaker.
Of course, he's never visited Slashdot, so that's even better.
I could argue that the US president knows a similar amount about politics or diplomatics, but then I guess that honor could be extended to most in his administration.
See guys, now that it happens in another country is when you see it is a weird thing.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
He knows how to do business things. Sit at desks. Make calls. Write reports. Attend board meetings. Shake hands. Carry briefcases. All the business skills you need for general businessing.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
People shouldn't be all that surprised about it considering how despite outwardly being very high tech, the Japanese can be surprisingly low-tech in many regards.
One good example of this is how email hasn't become as commonplace as it has in most of the developed world. No, people in Japan, particularly companies, instead chose to use fax machines to achieve the same tasks as it was still the 1980s. Another example is that the very old fashioned hierarchies within companies allows bosses to be exactly like this computer illiterate cyber security chief. While this may seem really odd to us westerners, it's perfectly normal over there.
As for how someone so ill fitted for the job has been given said job, it's more to do with how jobs like his are first and foremost given out based on party affiliation rather than aptitude for the job or any kind of merit. It sort of makes you wonder if it was better that rather than having political appointees actually run government organizations like this, limit political appointees within them to oversight roles rather than active management.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
This is much better than having someone who thinks he is a cybersecurity expert after blacklisting a website on his home router. That guy would not think it's safe to plug in a random USB stick in a nuclear power plant terminal because "of course the plant has a firewall".
He at least KNOWS that he has to ask experts for technical questions. It's the half-knowledge that's most dangerous.
bickerdyke
While he has a point that delegation to experts is important, the Ministers job is to do politics which means socializing with interested parties. Not how I would desire a democracy to function but up to the Japanese voters, who many are also very old with limited PC experience.
A 2013 revision of the Public Offices Election Act undid long-standing restrictions on the use of the internet for election campaigns. Still popular is blasting sound bytes from a vehicle driving around neighborhoods waving with white gloves. Yep that is persuasive in depth issues coverage. Attack ads are less common.
The Rising Wasabi is satire.. https://www.therisingwasabi.co...
Robert Moses, who tore up a bunch of New York City neighborhoods to build freeways, never drove a car. (He had a chauffeur drive him everywhere)
While I agree that it's odd, I'm not sure that it really matters. As long as he knows how to put qualified people in key positions, then that's all that really matters. How many of his predecessors had to actually code or do anything hands on while in that position? If they could, would it be a smart use of their time? And just how effective would they have been?
Eisenhower was criticized in his day for delegating and not being hands on enough. But he was smart enough to put the right people in the right positions. History certainly judged him more favorably than his critics at the time.
Most science ministers lack a science degree and there have certainly been some decidedly uneducated education ministers. Defence ministers have rarely served in the armed forces and we once had a Chancellor of the Exchequer who could not balance his credit card. Sadly, in a democracy, the only qualification for the job that counts is that you got more votes than anyone else and all this requires is that you look like less of a drooling idiot than the other people standing for election...and sometimes even that isn't true.
We admitted we were powerless over computers, so we refused to ever and will never use them.
they know about a field because they know 0.000001%.
Do you need a race car driver to run the national highway administration ?
Doing actual security work is probably the last thing anyone expects him to do and the last thing his job calls for.
What he is going to have to do is be the voice of his agency within the government
Insure it's properly funded.
Settle internal disputes.
Where he will have problems is making informed decisions about the merits of different technologies and given that technical people aren't even particularly useful there it's not that big a loss. Just think of how many technologies you thought were going to be the next big thing but nobody remembers anymore.
They will go away within a few years.
Is it safe to stick a fuel rod into a common USB port?
India's minister for education. This guy's heard of computers, he knows what he doesn't know.
Sounds like he is 100% perfect at cybersecurity. No devices, no compromises. :)
So did you expect the minister to write the code ?
Only when he's in the opposition party.
Most science ministers lack a science degree and there have certainly been some decidedly uneducated education ministers.
We have both of those currently here in the US.
Defence ministers have rarely served in the armed forces and we once had a Chancellor of the Exchequer who could not balance his credit card.
Speaking as a certified accountant I can definitively say that the skill sets for personal finance and for corporate or government finance bear very little resemblance to each other so I'm not really sure what your point about the Chancellor of the Exchequer is. Just because someone is irresponsible in their personal finances doesn't mean they are incompetent or irresponsible with their professional responsibilities.
And "balance his credit card"? I don't know anybody who actually reconciles (the proper term for it) their personal credit card statements in any great detail. Most people quickly glance over their statement for obvious incorrect charges and then call it a day. Companies reconcile their credit cards but individuals seldom do. I don't really see this as evidence of anything.
It sounds strange to say, in 2018, that someone "has never used a computer", but there is some merit in the argument that an executive or high ranking government leader should be earning hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars an hour to type letters and answer eMails. There are people who can do that for him or her, and probably should be doing that for him or her.
A management job or even a government minister's job is not to do the work of his department or company himself. Maybe this particular minister achieved his non-governmental success by delegation, perhaps? And if he chooses his subordinates wisely, he can be perfectly effective.
He should be judged on the merits of his department, not on whether he can touch type. If the Japanese Cyber Security ministry does good work, then he is doing a good job. If not, then he should be replaced. Whether he uses a computer or not is misrepresenting his duty as the skill set of a minimum wage employee at the lowest pay scale.
I dont expect the chief of police to write laws.
But i do expect him to be able to read them.
Do you need a race car driver to run the national highway administration ?
No, but you do at least need someone who understands what is a "car" and what is a "highway". An administrator need not be an expert, but he bloody well does have to have a basic idea of what he is administrating.
The US isn't the only country with complete idiots running things.
Donald Trump never paid taxes, yet he's the POTUS.... /s
But at easy they should have some basic road use and for security work like this even at an high level CEO like job at least basic Computer use.
Edsgar Dijkstra did not use a computer for most of his career.
Do you need a race car driver to run the national highway administration ?
Doing actual security work is probably the last thing anyone expects him to do and the last thing his job calls for.
What he is going to have to do is be the voice of his agency within the government Insure it's properly funded.
You don't need to be the world's leading expert to run a show. In fact, you are in the wrong position if you are.
That being said, there are levels of ignorance that shouldn't be tolerated. Needing an expert to talk about a USB thumb drive is at that level.
I've been working lately with a number of people who don't have a lot of knowledge about matters that I am expert in. But they are smart people, and I've educated them enough so that they won't make fools out of themselves when asked simple questions.
In my world at least, we have High-level, medium level, and low level meetings and briefings. Anyone at the top of a group should be well versed at the High level. Medium level is for middle managers, and low level is for the techs, The expert moves between groups as needed.
This system works. The folks running the show have political issues to deal with as well as keeping the troops functioning. But if you are leading a computer security group, you better have some idea of what thumb drive is. That indicates a certain interest in the work going on.
Example: I am not a professional programmer. But I know enough programming to know when a professional programmer is trying to bullshit me. The same with other matters outside of my field. Trusting your people about things you don't know is good and all, but them knowing they can't bullshit you goes a long way. They can trust what you do then.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I higly dopt that satement as ineracting with computers is un avooidable today. Has he evre used a smatrphone, tablet, atm, amart tv, etc. Now i don't know him but my guess is that he has. But if we limit "computers" to mean PCs or laptops (even tho it stll ssems strange in 2018) I can't dispute that clame. But wth is he doing being the minister for cyber sec?
Do you need a race car driver to run the national highway administration ?
no, but he should at least know what the signs on the side of the road means...
Sounds like a pretty good cybersecurity policy to me: Don't use computers.
There seem to be a lot of comments that are saying 'he doesn't need to be a security expert to do a good job'. That's not the problem, the problem is that it seems he doesn't even have a basic understanding of computers.
At the end of the day, we expect that his role will entail making balanced decisions of some sort - he may call on the advice on experts, but how can he do anything other than blindly accept what they say if he doesn't even have a basic understanding?
I've got bad news for you then.
And that's not a knock against most police chiefs. Seriously, sometime sit down and try to actually read most laws. I bet your eyes will glaze over and you'll be so utterly confused in short order. I know that's what happens to me, and most people consider me fairly intelligent, I'm fairly well educated as well (holding a M.S.)
There's a reason law is its own profession. Now, I argue that laws should be written to a level the average person should have a prayer of being able to understand them, but alas, that's not the world we live in, and few give a damn what I think.
> Government Minister in Charge of Japan's Cybersecurity, Yoshitaka Sakurada, 68, Says He Has Never Used a Computer
Then who did Sakurada Reset?
Might take some investigation to find out who is really in charge of cybersecurity then.
omg the cronyism and nepotism lol...
He is probably the best high level boss there is. Instead of making stupid decisions because he thinks he knows stuff, he asks from those who know.
The only problem is, that if you know less than people below you, how can you hire and fire the correct people?
Why should Japan be different from the rest of the world when it comes to filling political positions?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
By hiring a Consultant that tells you which people are the right ones.
And that Consultant you hire based on recommendations from the friends you play golf with.
I've been invited to play at the C-Level a while ago. You quickly learn how things are done up here. It's actually pretty easy once you realize that money only matters when it comes to expenses for people who actually work, but nobody questions any expenses for consulting. Ever.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, I'm not sure about that, but international politics sure resembles some kind of soap opera.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Steve Jobs never bent metal, designed PCB's, or wrote Operating System code. Did that make him a terrible leader of the most profitable technology company?
Bill Gates never designed PCB's, never built his own gaming system, though he did write the original MS DOS. Does that make him a terrible leader?
William Clay Ford Jr. never drew up design documents for a work truck, never casted an engine block, and (honestly) probably never looked at an assembly line in detail. Does that make him unfit to lead Ford Motor Co?
Lots of C-level folks have never done the jobs of those they hire. Just because they haven't gotten their hands dirty in the design lab or production line doesn't mean they have no grasp of what it takes to run the business and how to find the big brains to answer those questions. True businessmen know when they're being lied to, and know when to cut losses - often those go hand-in-hand.
Well to some extent I agree with that.
But at least this guy knew what he didn't know and was willing to refer the issue to someone who did know.
It's not hard to find the complete opposite.
I'm often encouraging people to hire older people for IT / technical positions.
... :(
This man is not advancing my efforts
The vast majority of people are employees. During their lifetime, they never have (and never will) manage other people. Since they've never had to do it, they only difficulty they attribute to managing is the aspect of it that they see - being told what to do. So they assume all a manger has to do is tell people what to do. And since anyone could do that, therefore managers are useless drains on a company (or country).
Once you've actually done the job of managing people, you realize just how asinine people can be, and how much work is involved in getting a group of people to work together smoothly. A good manager is worth their weight in gold. The difference in efficiency is enormous - like getting a group of people to clean a beach by assigning each one an equal sized strip parallel to the beach, vs everyone just wandering off in random directions. If he's good at managing and has competent advisors and sub-managers, he'll be fine.
He knows what a computer is. He does't really understand mobile technology, or realize all the computers and phones and such are all capable of interconnecting. So in the analogy, he knows what a car and road are, he just doesn't understand the difference between a Formula 1 car and a Ford Fiesta and why those two things should not be on the same course.
Does that explain why the EU seems like it is run by a bunch of headless chickens?
Yes, The Stupids are in charge.
The latest book by Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk, is about the loss of institutional knowledge in the departments of the Federal Government. And about the consequences that arise when the people making decisions are unaware of the outcomes, options, and alternatives. The blind being led by the blinder.
Or, as Daniel Ellsberg said as he exited the movie theatre right after seeing the film Doctor Strangelove, "It's non-fiction."
Do you need a race car driver to run the national highway administration ?
Probably not, but at least to a person having a driver license.
Insure it's properly funded. Settle internal disputes.
And also set priorities, which requires at least some practice in the field.
Few enough insightful comments that I could review all of them. Also the keywords for the actual insight are few enough that I could check them, too. (And yes, sadly there was no humor to be found on Slashdot, but perhaps that's reasonable in this case because the topic is intrinsically low on fuel for funny--but that's exactly where the best jokes can appear, where you least expect them.)
So of the small number of insightful comments, I regard this as the closest to actual insight. And yet all it spawned was some minor trollage. That's today's Slashdot for you. No solution in complaining, but trying to do better has also demonstrated its futility...
So I guess I'll just wave a finger in the direction of the actual insight. The brokenness of the notions of democracy and representative government in Japan are largely legacies of American interference. Nominating a totally unqualified political hack to such a crucial position is only a symptom of the problem. Yeah, some of the interference was justified. Japan earned some punishment and the American-written constitution actually has some good and non-punitive ideas in it. Other interference was less or even beyond justification, driven by cold war paranoia. So raise your hands if you know about the dark money hidden in the Marshal Plan funding. Italy and Japan are probably the two leading "beneficiaries".
The real problem is that Japan now has an extremely computer-dependent economy. That means the country is extremely vulnerable to cyber-warfare and needs extra competence on the defense.
Not certain of the source, but I think it was Akio Morita who wrote that it was extremely beneficial in competing with American companies that he had actual engineers managing Sony. Really hard to make good decisions about technology when you don't even know the fundamentals underlying the options.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
... One good example of this is how email hasn't become as commonplace as it has in most of the developed world. No, people in Japan, particularly companies, instead chose to use fax machines to achieve the same tasks as it was still the 1980s.
Because fax works 100% of the time, regardless of the end points. It doesn't require Internet connectivity, it will work across POTS, while it still can leverage Internet Fax services like eFax. The hardware, supplies, maintenance, and longevity are dirt cheap and require no tech staff. It, by default, leaves and audit trail and hardcopy, which is essential for vendors that are still paper based, like home workshops. It is legally and statutorily recognized in almost all countries of the world. You don't have to deal with font and encoding issues, like characters that never made it into Unicode. Point to point security is acceptable if it's going over the voice network. It can be marked-up and annotated and returned immediately, especially with signatures.
'Fax' pre-dates telephones, and there are reasons why it is still used today - it is a least common denominator for most of the globe and even the smallest businesses in the 3rd World.
I hate to point it out to you naysayers, but he is probably the least likeliest to be hacked in the whole organization!
Take that you geeks of changing password every week!
I'm sure that someone, right now in Japan is starting to draw the manga and/or anime to the effect of, "Incompetent man becomes national cybersecurity chief, hilarity ensues."
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the current cybersecurity minister in Japan spends most of their time watching anime for "research purposes".
Ignorance is a highly valued attribute in 'Murika, he'd fit right in.
I have no problem with this, a head of the departments job is not it know security, it is to manage the budget and lead the staff which I am certain anyone with a security background will not be proficient at.
Makes sense. If he was the minister of Gundam, he would have at least known how to edit wikipedia...