Re: High-Tech Leaders Favor Net Security Czar

["[gill]" <gill () TOPSECRET NET>]

->http://www.ecommercetimes.com/news/articles2000/000816-7.shtml
->
->By Beverly Ford
->E-Commerce Times
->August 16, 2000
->
->"It's important to have someone in the federal government focusing on
->this issue to build awareness," CIO editor-in-chief Abbie Lundberg
->told the E-Commerce Times. "This is a security issue. It has to do
->with cyberterrorism and the issue of whether people hack into our
->infrastructure."

This is such a telling statement.  The phrase "our infrastructure" really
exposes how businesses feel about the Internet.  The open, friendly,
communal environemnt the Internet was in its infancy has, upon the
posession by American business, become the property of White Guys in Ties
(TM).

That they are scared of cyberterrorism and the anecdotal fifteen year old
cracker is the result of their own race to basterdize the technology in
hopes of capital gains without taking the responsibility to build it out
carefully or use it wisely.  The blind dependency on homogenized and
simplified tools indeed provided the foundation of the modern Internet
but with such fears what kind of foundation is that really?

Indeed the fear felt by CIOs is not merely conservatives reacting to
full-page ads of heavily pierced kids, there is a warrant to it.  Steps do
need to be taken by these businesses if they are going to expect anyone to
continue to do business with them via the internet.  However, expecting
the Government to oversee is not only not in our best intrest (and by
"our" I mean the Internet community as a whole and not merely the
aforementioned WGiT), it is dancing on one foot atop a slippery slope of
governmental control.  While trying to to be alarmist, I need only imagine
for a moment what the crossbreed of governmental control and the immense
promise of the internet might yeild.  Huxley'd be blanched.

The real control of the Internet should remain in the hands of those who
use it and the responsibility of the internet should remain in the hands
of those who use it.  As a shared medium, the Internet should be
controlled and regulated by each entity who uses it over the specific area
or aspect they are charged with.  Even today we use tools like the RBL and
ORBS systems to effectively ostracize those participants who behave in a
way that is detrimental to the community as a whole.  Tomorrow connecting
to the internet need not be an ordeal that requires forms or licensing,
nor should it imply that you will be compromised.  Tomorrow, as today,
should require only an Internet address and the intelligence to know what
you are doing and how to apropriately protect yourself.

There is no "them" that can be extracted.  You can only defend yourself.

Your government cannot help you here.

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