IP: re: GOVNET? Not the brightest idea.

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> X-Sender: jcamp () camail1 harvard edu
> Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 14:37:19 -0400
> To: farber () cis upenn edu, ip-sub-1 () majordomo pobox com
> From: Jean Camp <jean_camp () harvard edu>
> Subject: Re: IP: Re: -RE: GOVNET? Not the brightest idea.
>
>
> >  Inexperienced, untrained government employees were attempting to keep 
> > up with the talent and competitive pressures in the commercial marketplace.
>
> Goodness. The only tiny sliver of good which I thought might come from the 
> horrific attacks on Sept 11 is an awareness that there is good in public 
> service. I thought that perhaps for a while the assumption that government 
> was packed with fools while the true and mighty worked for the highest 
> bidder might be quieted by the thought of the public servants who went up 
> the stairs while all others were running down; by the thought of the 
> much-maligned pencil pushers who knew every school and day care in the 
> debris zone and had them empty; and the much-insulted teachers (UNION!) 
> who got the kids out and safe so when the N Tower debris caused a school 
> explosion everyone was safe. But no, the contempt for the public sector 
> continues. ->sigh<- here are some facts.
>
> First, the ONLY SECURE kernel available is available for download from the 
> NSA.
>
> Second, to point out the completely obvious, the Fed Gov has never 
> prohibited competent programming or operating systems which do not lock 
> up. The blue screen of death is not the responsibility of the DoD. I 
> believe that buffer overruns have never been required by law, but by 
> time-to-ship pressure. These are the 'competitive pressures' which are 
> mentioned above and which generally prevent security -- and not because of 
> the speed of public sector employees.
>
> Third, the market has never been able to address issues of security. 
> Security is The Textbook Non-excludable Good. The market does not function 
> for such goods.
>
> And, as an aside, bashing Microsoft is extremely politically correct.
>
>
> > > Things have gotten better. Now that it is far too late for a new operating
> > > system to establish market share on the desktop,
>
> Don't tell Red Hat.
>
> > > The
> > > case did not decide all of these issues, but it did force secure software
> > > off of the munitions list.
>
> Thus the sudden rush to market of all those prohibited secure OS's. 
> (Where? Did I miss it?)
>
> > > So consider this as you ponder the results of the recent vote on the PATRIOT
> > > legislation. It's not your government who has been working to ensure your
> > > computer security. It's the privacy nuts. The government has done everything
> > > possible to delay and derail the introduction of secure information
> > > processing technology to the general public.
>
> Yeah, that is why the FedGov created DES, funded the research which 
> enabled PGP, and created CERT and CIAC.
>
> The government is not a monolith. Criticism of the monolith is therefore 
> pointless. Identify policies, agencies and actions to be productive. The 
> PATRIOT legislation is a horrible threat to liberty. The privacy nuts and 
> the civil libertarians (with whom I am numbered) are right to fight it. I 
> hold out little hope for judicial review in the current high court. Yet 
> opposition to this and other bad laws is weakened by a uniform contempt of 
> government per se.
>
> That there are bad choices made in government does not imply uniform 
> government incompetence or malevolence relative to the market (which one 
> decided pets.com was worth how much?).
>
> -Jean
> --


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