Pentagon Confirms Cyber Command, Under NSA Control

eldavojohn writes "The Pentagon's been planning a cyber command for a while now but it's just been confirmed. The Pentagon will set up a Cyber Command outfit most likely around — surprise surprise — Fort George G. Meade in Maryland. From the article, 'The head of the Cyber Command would also be the director of the U.S. National Security Agency, which conducts electronic surveillance and communications interception and is also based at Fort Meade.' The Air Force has been no stranger to digital warfare."

United States Postal Service

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this stuff going under the NSA and not the USPS? They seem rather capable of guaranteeing the security of communications, and have been doing so for a very long time now.

one or two nukes in Washington

[Reality Master 201]

If there's one or two nukes in DC, we're not in a "US defending itself against a serious attack" scenario, we're in an "end of human civilization as we know it" scenario. There's plenty of folks elsewhere in the country who will be around to push the button.

Re:Concentration

[Satanboy]

there are plenty of other bases and stations throughout the country.

don't forget, we also have about 2 guns per person in this country, it would be very hard to disarm the country if we were invaded.

Unfortunately

[copponex]

Unfortunately, if we are invaded, we wouldn't have the right to attack the invaders. At least that's the principle we live by in Iraq.

Re:Unfortunately

[ArcherB]

Unfortunately, if we are invaded, we wouldn't have the right to attack the invaders. At least that's the principle we live by in Iraq.

If we were living under an oppressive dictator and another country invaded to remove that dictator and hand the country back to the American public, then yes, you would be correct.

Re:Concentration

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me, Shooter, how many legally purchased guns have you had taken away? I mean actually taken away (or been forced to turn in)? I'm guessing no more than I have. Sure, a couple of things have been made difficult to obtain legally (full auto weapons, large capacity clips), but this "They're coming for our guuunnns!!!!!11!!" hysteria is getting a little tired...

You were modded flamebait because you posted flamebait.

Re:Unfortunately

[copponex]

And if the country invading us had put that dictator into power and then strangled our country with sanctions for a decade, suddenly accused him of atrocities they had allowed while they were sponsoring him, bombed our entire nation into pieces under pretense and lies, destroyed our national security by dismissing the entirety of our former armed forces, allowed terrorists to flood in from every direction, stood by idly while mobs destroyed our infrastructure, bombed our streets and cities so no one had access to clean water, proper sewage, or electricity, took control of our local natural resources and handed them over to private corporations from their home country, invited foreigners to buy up our land while it was cheap, built over seven permanent military bases worth over billion dollars each from border to border, and had mercenaries with no legal oversight roaming the streets with machine guns and RPGs, I guess you'd just sit there and take it?

Interesting.

Re:Unfortunately

[ArcherB]

I'm suggesting that an invading army, who has invaded on a foundation of lies and profiteering...

Profiteering? Really? We've spent $80+ Billion/year. How does $-80,000,000,000 somehow equal a profit?

Again, let me remind you that facts do not rely on what you WANT to believe.

Re:Unfortunately

[copponex]

Tell me again how we played a part in this?

Try 1963.

The coup that brought the Ba'ath Party to power in 1963 was celebrated by the United States.

The CIA had a hand in it. They had funded the Ba'ath Party - of which Saddam Hussein was a young member - when it was in opposition.

US diplomat James Akins served in the Baghdad Embassy at the time.

"I knew all the Ba'ath Party leaders and I liked them," he told me.

"The CIA were definitely involved in that coup. We saw the rise of the Ba'athists as a way of replacing a pro-Soviet government with a pro-American one and you don't get that chance very often.

"Sure, some people were rounded up and shot but these were mostly communists so that didn't bother us".

This happy co-existence lasted right through the 1980s.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2694885.stm [bbc.co.uk]

UN != US.

You have no idea of how politics work between the two if you believe that. We told them if they didn't follow us into a Iraq, they would be a debating society, right? Do you think the UN does anything the United States vetoes? Are you fucking serious?

Are you really saying that there were no atrocities?

I'm saying we gave him the weapons to complete the atrocities, and that we didn't say anything about it while we watched them happen.

Try some elementary moral exercises in your brain, if you can. Very quickly you'll discover that "the enemy of the enemy is my friend" has come back to haunt us so many times it's now sheer irony to watch any international political event involving the United States.

not really

[commodoresloat]

cockroaches will survive a nuclear war. I'd like to see a cockroach try to cross the beltway.

Re:Concentration

[NotBornYesterday]

He was probably modded flamebait because what he wrote was perceived to be against the prevailing opinions on slashdot. Most readers, writers, and mods around here have no problem with anti-government conspiracy sentiments, so the word that must have set them off was "guns".

If you are naive enough to believe that 2nd Amendment rights are freely available to all law-abiding, qualified, rational, sane, and otherwise okay US citizens, I would suggest you travel around a bit, or at least do some research. For instance, here is Massachusetts, we have "may-issue" set of laws for gun permits (ironically, considering we're home to the "shot heard 'round the world", and all that). Local police chiefs have the final say. Let me emphasize that - an unelected official may deny a qualified citizen's legal right to exercise a Constitutional right. If you live in a city or town whose chief of police opposes guns (and here in MA, that is a sizeable number) it is damn near impossible, and in some cases actually impossible, to receive the permit necessary to exercise that right without breaking the law. I live in such a place. Why do we allow this? I don't require a permit from my police chief to exercise my 5th amendment rights ... why should I for my 2nd amendment rights?

What I don't understand is the pervasive silence. When our other Constitutionally protected rights (free speech, freedom from unreasonable search & seizure, habeas corpus, etc) are abridged, there is righteous outrage. Slashdot, in fact, is a hotbed of rebellion when issues of censorship, free speech, and other human rights come up ... unless the right in question is the right to own a gun.

Americans and the American press fought harder to extend American-style rights to the detainees in Gitmo (I'm not trying to open up a Gitmo debate, just offering a comparison) than we have to defend the rights of US citizens in our nation's capitol, or MA, or any of the other areas where the 2nd amendment has effectively been repealed.

How many guns have been denied to qualified individuals because of the government? From my point of view, I think it reasonable to include those in the total of "legal guns taken away" you mention, and it would be a large number.

The President and VP have both expressed strong anti-gun sentiment. Ditto for Obama's nominee for SCOTUS. The government is interested in taking guns.