RE: Digital Destruction Was Worst Imaginable

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: Rob Rosenberger <junkmail () barnowl com>

  >>Im not quite sure what kind of critical infrastructure
  >>protection you think the FBI or NIPC would have been
  >>able to carry out.  It seems highly unlikely that anyone
  >>would have been able to do anything.

An excellent point, Brooks.  I don't fault the CIA just because they
didn't know enough beforehand.  Nor do I fault overtaxed FBI agents
who didn't know enough beforehand.

I *do* fault FBI NIPC for strutting on the media stage, telling
reporters how Osama would attack us by computer and focusing an
overwhelming majority of their resources in that area because it made
for great PR.  Clinton's vaunted "PDD 63" tasked them to protect the
critical infrastructures from Osama bin Laden ... but FBI NIPC was too
busy looking for Osama bin Virus.

Thankfully -- and I mean "thankfully" without sarcasm here -- it only
cost roughly 3,000 lives before FBI finally gave NIPC director Ron
Dick the tools he needed to overcome his agency's infatuation with the
Internet.

(Notice I didn't say "infatuation with protecting the Internet."  FBI
NIPC and the Pentagon will run like helpless damsels to the antivirus
industry if a virus war ever breaks out between the U.S. and China.  
But that's another story.)

Rob



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