Re: Security and the Government

["Marcus J. Ranum" <mjr () nfr com>]

Back a zillion years ago, when whitehouse.gov first came online, the
prime minister of Sweden decided to send Bill Clinton an Email. So
the press folks at the White House get all upset because, well, at
that time whitehouse.gov wasn't really in DC at all, it was next to
my desk up in Glenwood, MD. So a bunch of phone calls happened,
and someone(me) stood around watching a mailbox and running
tail -f on /var/log/messages waiting for the fateful Email from Europe.
The Email came, was printed out, and FAXed to DC. High tech? You bet! :)
And, somewhere, presumably, (perhaps in the national archives?)
there is a large collection of floppy disks with my chicken scratch
handwriting on them - how Bill's Email really got to Washington.

The fact that members of Congress have Email addresses that
do more than just go to a line printer (cough, cough) is pretty darned
high tech, really, for them. Personally, I think governments should
be as low-tech and backwards as possible in all their capabilities
except war-fighting. :)

mjr.
---
Marcus J. Ranum, Chief Technology Officer, NFR Security, Inc.
Work:   http://www.nfr.com
Play: http://www.ranum.com

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