Today, the New York Times reports that a panel recommends restricting Internet access as a way to boost Internet security. You might think this is the recommendation of some far-out nut-job panel but, in fact, it is the recommendation of Center for Strategic and International Studies. Read it yourself: http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/081208_securingcyberspace_44.pdf
A government that has a much trouble as ours is now going to decide who can access the Internet and, more importantly, who cannot access the Internet? I don't think so!
I'm for Internet security but this is hardly the way to go about it. My reading of it is that they want to prevent anonymous access to the Internet but it seems to me that will only lead to more opportunity to watch what people do. I suspect it could turn into an easy way to track groups who wish to express dissent with government policies.
I could be wrong. What do you think?
This report has some good ideas, and some very unacceptable ones as well. I find the report very nationalistic. It talks little about the huge factor of offshoring via the internet to other countries. The report complains that as the US has lost influence in ITU, the internet may become a "walled garden". Ummm not really. The US is not the only game in town, everyone wants to be connected on the internet and no one wants a walled garden (except the government internet blockers in China)
I am a person who has worked as a contractor in national security positions, in the military with the US Navy, and in civil government. I find the second sentence of the report a flat out lie and contrivance:
"Inadequate cybersecurity and loss of information has inflicted unacceptable damage to US national and economic security"
Where is this supported by facts? Yes there is intellectual property theft. That's theft is going to happen even if there wasn't a internet. And what of national security? The major DOD security breaches of the last 30 years have been from good old Americans who turned into spies, not from bad computer security practice. If you don't trust your people, you think you can make computers secure? Yeah right. All the data lost to foreign sources, my guess is most of that is someone was being paid. . .paid well to gave away those blueprints.
I also disagree with a military presence needed in cyberspace. We have enough tax payer money going to build bombs and missles, and the US military has their own secure networks paid for by our taxes.
In the executive summary you get a overview that the only solution is military intervention on our internet (with white house oversight). I completely disagree.
Read more on the secrecy of the CNCI and the national cyber security center. Why is so much of this program secret? Do you want your internet controlled by the DHS?
http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fuseaction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=a32aba11-4443-4577-b9a5-3b2ea2c2f826&Month=5&Year=2008&Affiliation=C
Simply put, I agree with your comments.
I think the idea of securing the internet borders on silly. The idea of being able to secure government servers (and other servers) is, I think, critical and too little effort has been put into it. When a government exec can log into a government server from home (and they can) and when that home computer is either unsecured or poorly secured (and they are) no amount of security will prevent breaches.
Further, I think we may all be too calm in our level of protest against a big brother mentality and I wonder why I see so little in the way of protest.
Drew