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Tech Lobbyist Named to DHS Top Security Post
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tue Sep 19, 2006 12:27 AM
from the cyber-czar dept.
from the cyber-czar dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Greg Garcia, a lobbyist for the high-tech industry, has been appointed to fill the new assistant secretary post for cyber security and telecommunications at the Department of Homeland Security. Garcia, a VP with the Information Technology Association of America, will try to resuscitate DHS's flagging efforts to formulate a response plan should the nation's key digital assets come under concerted attack or crumble due to some catastrophic failure. DHS is a little late in filling this post: Congress created it 14 months ago after getting fed up with the agency's lack of progress on cyber issues."
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DHS Publishes Report on Operation Cyberstorm 64 comments
uniquebydegrees writes "InfoWorld reports that the Department of Homeland Security has released the findings of Operation Cyber Storm, a large-scale simulation of combined cyber-physical attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure. From the article: 'According to DHS, "observers noted that players had difficulty ascertaining what organizations and whom within those organizations to contact when there was no previously established relationship or pre-determined plans for response coordination and risk assessments/mitigation. There was a general recognition of the difficulties organizations faced when attempting to establish trust with unfamiliar organizations during time of crisis."'"
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crumble? resuscitate? (Score:5, Funny)
But what will he do if the tubes become clogged?
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Generally government is swiftest to act when this dangerous situation occurs, and the key words "private-sector participants" imply a problem that could best be solved by giving the excess money to the first insider who takes it.
As a lobbyist, Garcia has the connections and experience to remove this money from the tubes as efficiently as possible, while simultaneously routing future congestion to his selfless corporate backers -- who will willin
Re:crumble? resuscitate? (Score:5, Insightful)
US politics 101
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Last I learned in English class, "he will get laws passed" means he will to things to make them be passed, not that he himself will pass them.
You don't think that this money man will be in a position of influence?
The whole system is about money. War on drugs? Money. War in the middle east? Money. It's not about ideology;
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He has vetoed one thing. H.R. 810 [whitehouse.gov], which is also known as the "Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005."
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Re:crumble? resuscitate? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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I believe you mean to say "Series of Tubes is a popular expression." Meme is not a "cool" way of saying "idea." Please quit misusing this term.
From dictionary.com:
meme
n : a cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one generation to another by nongenetic means (as by imitation); "memes are the cultrual counterpart of genes"
jfs
Gibson (Score:3, Funny)
Dude. Just put a level 10 firewall around the Gibson, keep a file on all Vanilla Ice wannabees, and have a watchlist for Powerbook Duo owners.
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"keep a file on all Vanilla Ice wannabees" (Score:2)
Please, DHS, please! Think of the children! Think of the children who, 15+ years
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Well, whenever Ice Ice Baby comes on...just promptly get up, and throw on Queen/Bowie's "Under Pressure", from whence the 'hook' was stolen.
You'll get a much more pleasing and original musical experience. No cringing required.
I suggest taking away the beverages (Score:3, Insightful)
These are unelected officials making law by fiat. And like anything made by fiat, it's crappy and doesn't run very long until you have to take it to Tony to fix it again.
Re:I suggest taking away the beverages (Score:5, Insightful)
So. You think we should actually include positions like "Deputy Undersecretary Of Transportation for Ice Cream Truck Regulation" part of the general federal election? How about his boss? And his boss's boss? And above him? Oh, right, we already do that. Was the Secretary Of Transportation under Bill Clinton acting according some idyllic democratic principle, but the same role under a different administration is suddenly Junior Ceasar?
Wake up. We elect an executive administration specifically to get things done, and they appoint people into thousands of roles as part of that job. Every administration has different priorities and policies, but if they had to try to get anything done while dealing with - what, thousands of departmental bureaucrats all of whom had to run campaigns to get their office? - you'd have absolutely no ability to focus on anything.
Every four years you get to vote for the person who appoints such people, and every 4 or 6 years, you get to vote for the legislators that fund what they do (or not).
So, what's your problem? Don't like the reality of the structure of the executive branch of government, or just don't like it when you don't like who happens to head it at certain times? Or maybe, as is more likely, you know all of this and you're just trolling in hopes of scoring some lame political points with whatever percentage of this audience actually does not know how it works, and wants to hear you paint some Emperor image of the presidency. Just remember, if you ever to get together enough votes for someone you do like better, whatever FUD you spread about the nature of the office and its interaction with other agencies is going to impact that person, too.
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[. .
Every four years you get to vote for the person who appoints such people, and every 4 or 6 years, you get to vote for the legislators that fund what they do (or not).
I agree entirely, and wish more voters would stop voting for the candidate they'd most like to have a beer with, and start voting for people who are competent and will make responsible decisi
He knows what to do (Score:5, Funny)
"Calm down, sir, calm down. Now, a disaster you say? How so? Uh-uh.. Uh-uh... Uh-uh.. Hmm, yes, it sounds like your country is infected with a virus alright, and a nasty one too. Here's what you do: You shut down the country, reinstall the government and then you restart the whole thing from the beginning. That should take care of it. Have a nice day now!"
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Just minutes ago a customer who is an engineer and surveyor for very special stuff told me that he was offered a good job in the US but his insurance specifically excluded coverage in the US. He wouldn't want to risk to be detained somewhere or to be ruined for the rest of his life because of some stupid lawsuit. So he'd prefer working in China.
He concluded that the US political and judicial system was a probable case of "the dog ate my homework" and that
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I am no fan of lawyers, but criminy, ...
Surprise, surprise, surprise! (Score:5, Insightful)
But really - I'm sure this is all done in the purest of intentions. After all, the best people to run agencies are those really familiar with the issue at hand, and cagey enough to know what tricks people out to trick the government are, right? The weight of responsibility of protecting American's safety and well being is best secured when it is in the hands of people who used to press the government to look the other way when industries wanted to maximize... certain negative and positive externalies, shall we say.
Ryan Fenton
No surprise at all. (Score:2, Insightful)
A news story came out yesterday that these positions under the current administration are given out based on ideological "purity" and agreement with their ex
Great Job, Greggie! (Score:4, Funny)
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Wow, we are really peeling back the foreskin of quality here
That is without a doubt the most disgusting metaphor I've seen in some time! Well done!
Fancy titles don't fix problems (Score:4, Insightful)
Little known fact (Score:5, Funny)
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If he was REALLY a tech veteran (Score:3, Insightful)
I know Greg (Score:2)
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Maybe this is a good thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps he could be convinced that information replication is the only way to protect our information environment and that DRM would aid "terrorists" or whatever our Eurasia/East Asia is called nowadays. Then he could prosecute the *AAs for treason.
It seems that a DRM system would be a rather powerful weapon in the hands of an attacker. The ability to revoke or alter all instances of a document worldwide and trusted systems in general would be quite useful to someone wanting attack a country's communications, especially if users and administrators were barred from preventing it at the hardware level.
Duh! (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a thought, maybe there isn't a damn thing DHS can do about a concerted attack on key points of the internet. Maybe it just isn't possible for one government agency, no matter how disgustingly bloated or invasive, to "protect" a largely private, distrubuted, decentralized, global internet. What are they going to do, mandate that all ISPs and carriers around the world stock up on duct tape? I can't describe the kind of warm fuzzies this whole thing sends down my spine.
I say fsck DHS and the Chimp it rode in on.
Hold on a second, someone is knocking on my doorNO CARRIER
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Public/private is the issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that this guy is an industry lobbyist and the stance of the Republicans on holding any industry to account I'd expect to see a porcine acrobatic team (the Pink Devils perhaps?) performing over Washington than any real progress being made.
But all this ignores the basic fact; cyber terrorism has yet to materialise beyond a few disgruntled virus writers. As Bruce Schneier has pointed out repeatedly strapping on a suicide belt is far more effective than any form of online attack. If my email goes down I'm inconvenienced, not terrorised.
Re:Public/private is the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
More and more of our telecommunications infrastructure is potenetially vulnerable. And without the ability to check up on friends and family, a physical attack would be magnified by the psychological impact of not being able to see if somebody is ok and the worrying involved.
So an attack on our network infrastucture could be very bad for the US. Do I think it's likely? No. But in 2000 if you asked me if I thought terrorists would be able to hijack four airplanes simultaneously and crash them into buildings, I'd have probably said no. It's not the body count that hurts us most, it's the psychological effects. We were attacked here on our soil by a foreign enemy, and that was something new to us.
I don't think that this lobbyist is going to help us, but then again, I've become more and more cynical about our government being able to accomplish anything (whether it be in regards to rights, terrorism, foreign affairs, or even the tax code) so I'm not exactly unbiased. It's easy to say that cyber terrorism hasn't really caused any problems, and never will. And you'll probably be right for a while. But eventually, there is a good chance that statement will be proven false.
-dave
Parent
Guess we should have seen this one coming... (Score:2)
A lobbyist??? (Score:4, Insightful)
While 3500 people died in terrorist attacks on US soil in your lifetime, 40,000 people die on the highways every single year.
Homeland Security is about keeping you terrified so you'll continue to let the corporate-owned US government keep taking your rights away.
Flagging?!?! (Score:2)
From Oxford English Dictionary:
flag
noun
1 a piece of cloth or similar material, typically oblong or square, attachable by one edge to a pole or rope and used as the symbol or emblem of a country or institution or as a decoration during public festivities : the American flag. used in refer
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That's because you're using the wrong dictionary.
Miriam-Webster [m-w.com] says:
and American Heritage [bartleby.com] says:
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flag, v.
1. To hang down; to flap about loosely.
2. To become limp or flaccid. Now only of plants: To droop, fade
3. Of wings: To move feebly or ineffectually in attempting to fly. Of a bird: To move its wings feebly (in early use also trans. with wings as obj.); to fly unsteadily or near the ground. Obs.
4. To become feeble or unsteady in flight. Hence in wider sense (in early use perh. consciously transf.): To be unable to maintain on
The real question is (Score:2)
Also happened in January (Score:2)
He's ITAA. Who's the ITAA? (Score:3, Informative)
In a conference call with voting machine makers, the ITAA proposed conducting a campaign on their behalf, in exchange for $100,000 to $200,000 per company, depending on the services provided. [wired.com]
The ITAA president told Computerworld that criticism of voting machines was just a "religious war" [computerworld.com].
Re:By the corporations, for the corporations. (Score:5, Interesting)
to more directly answer your question:
When exactly did corporate lobbyists BECOME our government?
Post-WWII, certainly, but perhaps earlier. Before then "lobbyists" had to be more secretive... A lot of companies became rich on the second world war trade, and the U.S. has been at war ever since - Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Gulf War I, Yugoslavia, Gulf War II (probably forgetting a couple).
There's also that perpetual "War on (certain) Drugs", which benefits some corporations greatly.
Isn't there a saying about a country with a standing army always needing an enemy to fight?
Parent
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I'll go further and make this bet with you: You name a country and a period of history when it was a major player on the world political stage, and I'll
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You name a country and a period of history when it was a major player on the world political stage, and I'll
I believe this is the contention of The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. Economic power leads to the use of the militar
Re:By the corporations, for the corporations. (Score:5, Informative)
H.L. Mencken, always a good voice for dissent, wrote some profiles of the people that became major power players under The New Deal. Mencken was many things, not all of them comfortable to modern sensibilities, but empiricist was one of them. Check some of his writings on it, such as the collection compiled by Alistair Cook, for some things they don't teach you in history class.
Parent
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Military actions. I'm sure there are better examples, but those are what I remembered.
Yugoslavia? Wasn't the US criticized roundly for NOT getting involved until too late, and only then half-heartedly?
I don't think we'll ever know the full story on Yugoslavia. I'm inclined to believe the reports that Slobodan Milosevi was going to win his war crimes trial, and was executed to prevent him from calling Bill Clinton as a witness. Wikipedia has a good summary of people who defen [wikipedia.org]
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Most Bush appointees are lobbyists, donors, etc. (Score:4, Interesting)
Read more here:
Bush Has Appointed Over 100 Lobbyists as 'Regulators' [commondreams.org]
WhiteHouseForSale.org | Contributors and Paybacks Articles [whitehouseforsale.org]
Evidence that this has been a pattern of behavior as far back as when he was governor. [tpj.org]
Some info on two of the officials reviewing the Dubai Ports World deal [tompaine.com]
An even longer list of crony appointees [oldamericancentury.org]
The Bush administration is one of the more shameful examples of cronyism in modern US history. The term "conflict of interest" doesn't begin to cover it. Then, when you can't find a person with experience as an industry shill, you can always go to political advocates with no experience in the field (but solid Bush support):
Michael Brown's two political appointees deputees in FEMA [thinkprogress.org]
A petition for Bush to make political appointments with a list of 6 good examples [workingforchange.com]
The Hertiage Foundation even endorsed making political appointees over experienced civil servants in 2001! [govexec.com]
Why, just look how many Heritage Foundation flacks are now in the administration. [thirdworldtraveler.com]
Any wonder why the DHS hasn't done hardly anything useful, why FEMA had someone with no emergency relief experience installed as it's head, why scientists are abandoning NASA, the EPA, the CDC, etc. in droves, and why hundreds of IRS agents that audit capital gains and estate taxes have been downsized? It's government with the wheels taken off -- oriented explicitly to do nothing but enrich special interests by people who have publicly stated that that's all they believe the government exists to do in the first place.
What, you didn't think they meant that they'd try to STOP it when they said that, did you? Yeah, I was fooled too, but not anymore. It's time we get people back in power who believe that the government is meant to serve the people. People who believe that it's part of the solution and not part of the problem. Otherwise, as we've seen, the temptation to just exploit "the problem" is just too much.
Parent