I, Cringely: The Cybersecurity Myth

So this is the wrong approach entirely. It won’t work, the DHS probably knows it won’t work (if they don’t know that, well God help us all) but they see it as better than nothing.

Then God help us all. I seriously doubt they know how ridiculous that 1000 number sounds or what a security expert is.

We are at the mercy of ignoramuses, and that is true (regardless of party affiliation) with each new Federal pronouncement on the subject (Network Neutrality fits into the mold as well).

These people are “true believers” regardless of whether they support limited government or an ever expanding one.

Of course if you want to posit that those at the top are fully aware of the situations and are simply putting on a show to retain their safe, well paying jobs** at our and our children’s expense while accomplishing nothing of true value, then I’d say the situation is far far worse.

** not to mention creating up to 1000 new ones for family and friends.

And from the link CNN article:

Department officials could not say precisely how many cyberexperts now work at DHS and its various component agencies such as the Secret Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Napolitano said she doubts it will be necessary to fill all 1,000 of the authorized positions, but she is focused on making DHS a "world-class cyberorganization."

I'm watching the gravitas bleed out of this administration at an alarming rate. Que episodes of the keystone Cops.

At least this Janet hasn't ordered the fire-storming of any fringe religious groups. Yet.

Sounds like 2% unemployment in the DC area is safe though. I'm sure the nation appreciates this.

Oh, then there's this:

The Department of Homeland Security today appointed a senior Microsoft Corp. executive to head a section charged with protecting the federal government's computer networks from cyber attacks.

...

Still, critics say DHS cyber efforts have been characterized by inefficiency and leadership failures. Amit Yoran, a former cybersecurity czar at DHS before he left the department in 2004 after little more than a year on the job, said Reitinger has some tough work ahead of him.

Yoran cited as an example the current status of the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT). Widely considered one of the most effective cyber components of DHS, Yoran said US-CERT has been ripped apart by years of political infighting and political stovepipes.

Oh, no business as usual there eh?

Don't miss the irony of hiring a former Microsoft employee (with vested options perhaps?) to look over security issues for a federal bureaucracy plagued with improperly installed and maintained Windows systems.

In congressional testimony his predecessor mentioned Windows issues multiple times. Maybe that's why he was compelled to leave. In any even all our federally installed malware will have nice generic designations now I'm sure. We don't want to hurt any company's feelings after all.

Finally, apropos of nothing other than federal incompetence in general:

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Google Apps and Government

Dedicated Google cloud for government customers in the US. Today, we're excited to announce our intent to create a government cloud, which we expect to become operational in 2010. Offering the same services and features as our existing commercial cloud (such as Google Apps), this dedicated environment within existing Google facilities in the US will serve the unique needs of US federal, state, and local governments. It is similar to a "Community Cloud" as defined by the National Institute for Science and Technology. The government cloud will allow Google to manage and meet additional government policy requirements beyond FISMA.

Finally the Obama administration is doing something I support.

Surely it must be a fluke!

How will the entrenched bureaucracy respond to this?

Done right, this should represent huge cost saving for the feds allowing them to dispense with redundant re-invent the wheel projects (of the sort I was once a part). Yes, that means people out of work, but hopefully out of work doing useless things and re-deployed doing useful things.

The biggest pushback however won't be from downsized consultants but from permanent government staff who "manage" these projects. The size of the budgets assigned to them to do things like replacing everyone's desktop hardware and software every two years they see as an indicator of their importance even though in most cases they have little understanding of the technologies they are responsible for.

Web based applications don't need the latest hardware or software and eventually could be cheaply run on devices that would be impervious to malware and would only need to be replaced when power supplies burned out etc.

This is a ways off for both government and many businesses but the trend in that direction is looking stronger all the time.

VDH's Private Papers::Why I Oppose Judge Sotomayor

I particulalry liked this quote from Bork:

Judge Bork describes post-modernism as follows:

This development can be seen in any number of academic, previously intellectual fields. Sometimes called post-modernism or post-structuralism, the denial of truth is, as Gertrude Himmelfarb says, "best known as a school of literary theory. But it is becoming increasingly prominent in such other disciplines as history, philosophy, anthropology, law, and theology..." It is also becoming increasingly difficult to call some of those subjects "disciplines." In every case — the attack on reason, on the concept of truth, and on the idea that there is an objective reality to which we must attempt to make our words and theories correspond — the impetus behind such assaults comes from the political left. … Nonsense these attacks may be, but, as the history of our century teaches, there is no guarantee that nonsense will not prevail, with dire results. In law, philosophy, literary studies, and history, among other subjects, we are raising generations of students who are taught by the "cutting edge" professors that traditional respect for logic, evidence, intellectual honesty, and the other requirements of discipline are not merely passé, but totalitarian and repressive, sustaining existing social, political, and economic arrangements to the benefit of white, heterosexual males. To change society in radical directions, it is said, it is necessary to be rid of the old apparatus. (Slouching towards Gomorrah, pp. 268-9)

Kundra courts the risk of innovation -- Government Computer News

"Government shouldn't be spending a ton of money setting up stuff," when less-expensive alternatives exist, he said.

OMG! Have these words ever been uttered by a government employee before?

Postal chief says post office running out of money

"Lawmakers also raised questions regarding recent news reports that Potter is paid as much as $800,000 a year. That is not correct, Potter said. He said his salary, set by Congress, is $263,575. He said the news reports were counting his retirement fund, the cost of his security detail and a $135,000 bonus that would be paid over 10 years after he retires."

Bonus?!!!
Security detail?!!!!
For a "failing company"?!!!!!

Tax it at 90% !!!!!

Anyway, I'm posting here not to further bash the postal service. But I'm not here to praise them either.

Here is a recent personal experience:

I work with a group that recently set about to mail out a book to interested parties in my local area.

We sent out a post card to 20,000 people or so. If they returned the post card with their mailing address we would send them the book for free.

The post office sends out the card to "resident" and distributes them to everyone on certain mailing routes. I get them all the time, you do too, and the senders don't have to be bothered to know your name or address to get those advertisements to you. Now we couldn't afford to send the book to all 20,000 people, but a few hundred is doable, and that's about the number we expected to respond, and that's about what we got.

The book costs us about $2. Postage cost us another $2. The padded envelope was around $1.50 I think an I'm sure we could have done better on that price with better planning.

The surprise was when we got several "postage due" notices back in our P.O. box. Since the postage was applied at the post office and not as a result of us licking stamps, I couldn't understand how we could owe any postage.

Turns out though that some people gave us bad addresses, or we wrote them poorly, or the people have moved. Whatever.

We have to pay postage on having these books returned to us. The postage, also around $2.

I asked the clerk what would happen if I just ignored these postage due things. He had to ask someone else, but the answer was that they would simply throw the packages away.

Since the replacement value of the book is actually a bit less than the return postage (about 50 cents less as I've rounded the numbers above) and the envelope is not re-usable, it's cheaper for us to allow the books to be thrown away than to get them back.

That's just one example of the things I've learned about the way the post office works in the past few years. With regard to getting a P.O. Box, having mailboxes installed at a building, dealing with lost keys, or mailing things out, they have a lot of policies that are just not "customer oriented". The people at the counter are friendly, often shaking their heads along with me at some of the seemingly arbitrary policies.

But consider that the postal service is probably the most "customer friendly" part of the Federal government. Try getting the same sympathetic reaction from the IRS, the Social Security administration, or try even speaking to someone in any other part of the Federal government about anything and you will realize that it is a big uncaring "black box" over which you have no control, other than voting for more of it, or less of it.

No matter what your special hot-button issues are, growth of government is the thing most likely to affect you and your progeny. If you are watching the man move the cups around and not keeping your eye on that ball, you will surely lose.

The Great Awakening: Boomers, Your Crisis Has Arrived (Part 1 of 3) -- Seeking Alpha

I don’t have a preconceived notion of our country’s destiny, but I’m getting a bad feeling about the track we are on. The last thing in the world I want to see is my three boys being forced into a war caused by a bunch of clueless 60 year old political hack morons in Washington DC fulfilling their destiny to cause the once in a century national crisis. Based on the foolish actions of most politicians in Washington over the last thirty years, I fear for the future of our country. I don’t think the politicians in Washington comprehend the state of affairs. I sense the mood of the country turning. Fear, anger and disillusionment are the prevalent themes. Change is coming, but it is not the change that Barack Obama campaigned for. It will be forced upon us by circumstances beyond any one person’s control. While we are hurtling towards our summit with destiny, Congress continues its path of pork barrel spending, short term solutions, party politics, and condemning our children and grandchildren to a lower standard of living. The “leaders” of this country are using the tried and true method of using fear to ram through their $900 billion tax on future generations. President Bush used the same fear tactics to launch his invasion of Iraq. I see a similar success story with the coming stimulus package. Maybe the coming crisis will ultimately lead to Great Leaders rising to the occasion.

If there are any.

Washington Times - CBO: Obama stimulus harmful over long haul

"President Obama's economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday."

Obama Is “Failure” At Google & “Miserable Failure” At Yahoo

"I told you so. Or I told anyone who cared. I even tried to reach the Obama administration in four or five different ways. Do a search on Yahoo right now for miserable failure, and you’ll find President Barack Obama’s page ranking either in the top spot or the second spot. Given a redirect that Obama’s web team has put into place, he should solidify into that number one spot over time. Eventually, Microsoft’s Live Search should reflect that, as well. And over at Google, Obama will likely gain a top page listing for a search on failure.

I know. There are bigger issues Obama has to deal with. But then again, this is supposed to be the tech-savvy presidency. It should be search engine optimization savvy, as well."

I may have linked this before.

But clearly Google deserves some sort of special payback from the new administration.

They now say they have a special utility they can run to fix their database. They have now run the utility so as not to label Obama a miserable failure.

Only they've known about this since 2005, so presumably they simply didn't mind having Bush labeled as such.

It's good to have friends in high places. Things haven't changed and it's not what you know, but who you know that really counts.

The Plot to Kill Google

"And for all its woes in Washington, Google is finally learning how to operate there. It has hired more lobbyists, and its policy experts are starting to attend the cocktail parties they have long ignored. Schmidt serves as chair of the New America Foundation (a think tank at which one of the authors of this article is a fellow). And Google can now boast a uniquely powerful ally: Barack Obama, who benefited from Google employees' extensive campaign contributions and from Schmidt's well-timed endorsement."

All of this, and for all of these companies, at the expense of actual productivity.

Real Regulators - The Technology Liberation Front

Too many advocates of regulation seem to have never considered the possibility that the FCC bureaucrats in charge of making these decisions at any point in time might be lazy, incompetent, technically confused, or biased in favor of industry incumbents. That’s often what “real regulators” are like, and it’s important that when policy makers are crafting regulatory scheme, they assume that some of the people administering the law will have these kinds of flaws, rather than imagining that the rules they right will be applied by infallible philosopher-kings.

Also, see below.

“A Real Regulator” (Cato @ Liberty)

“[W]e need a real regulator.”

Ms. Burnett, the SEC that failed to prevent this is a real regulator.

When regulators fail to address a problem ahead of time, when they regulate inefficiently, when they hand their rulemaking organs to the industries they are supposed to oversee, those are all the actions of real regulators. That’s what you get with real regulation.

What Burnett meant when she called for a “real” regulator, of course, was “the regulator I can imagine.” The regulators people imagine are foresighted, interested only in the public good, they’re resistant to lobbying, and they run efficient organizations. But these characteristics are simply imaginary.

Watching discussions like these, you come to realize how legislation and regulation thrive on self-deception and the appeal to ego.

Richardson to withdraw as Commerce secretary - Politics- msnbc.com

"New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, tapped in December by President-elect Barack Obama to serve as secretary of Commerce, has withdrawn his name for the position, citing a pending investigation into a company that has done business with his state."

One has to wonder why someone so squeaky clean would act so quickly to drop out of public scrutiny.

Are we about to set a record for the largest number of scandals to beset a presidency before it even begins?

WSJ's Annual Christmas Editorial - WSJ.com

"Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom."

DispatchPolitics : Worker says 'Joe the Plumber' cover-up was forced upon her Columbus Dispatch Politics

The state worker who unwittingly ran an improper child-support check on the man known as Joe the Plumber told lawmakers yesterday that a deputy director later "dictated" how she was supposed to cover it up. Vanessa Niekamp an administrator for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services Office of Child Support and a 15-year state employee said that when Deputy Director Doug Thompson came into her office "He appeared very upset his neck was bright red and he was shaking. He closed my door." Thompson told her she must write an e-mail to the agency s information-security officer and then 'dictated word for word' what she wrote Niekamp said. He also reminded her that she could be fired at any time she said.

...

"Both Doug and Carri can access the (child-support) system and could have accessed a file without my involvement," Niekamp said. "To this day, I do not understand why they asked me to look at this information when they could have easily done this themselves."

Online uproar in China as drunken official grabs girl

"The girl's father challenged a drunken Lin, who offered to pay him off.

'Yes I did it, so what? How much do you want, just tell me. I'll give you the money,' Lin said according to footage shown on the sina.com website.

'Do you know who I am? I am from the Ministry of Transport,' he goes on to tell the father, according to the website.

Lin, who was only identified after appearing on the Internet, lost his job and is now the target of a police investigation."

The Columbus Dispatch : State employee says she was ordered to check out Joe the Plumber

About 3 p.m. on Oct. 16, Niekamp said Carrie Brown, assistant deputy director for child support, asked her to run Wurzelbacher through the computer. Citing privacy laws, Niekamp would not say what, if anything, was found on "Joe."

On Oct. 23, Niekamp said Doug Thompson, deputy director for child support, told her she had checked on "Joe the Plumber." Thompson "literally demanded" that she write an e-mail to the agency's chief privacy officer stating she checked the case for child-support purposes, she said.

Thompson told her that Jones-Kelley said Wurzelbacher might buy a plumbing business and could owe support. Thompson said he replied that he "would check him out."

Niekamp, 38, a senior child-support manager, said she never heard any discussion of politics amid what her supervisors told her about the checks on Wurzelbacher.

California Cities Cut Police Budgets - WSJ.com

"Those full-natured benefits created a bidding war among Northern California cities, and Vallejo negotiated lucrative wage increases with police and firefighter unions to stay competitive. Three years ago, the city agreed to a 20% pay increase between 2007 and 2009; an average police officer now makes $121,000. When benefits are included, the number rises to more than $190,000. By 2007, 80% of Vallejo's budget was dedicated to police and firefighters.

As tax revenue plummeted, Vallejo's finances buckled under the pressure of the labor contracts. Retired Vallejo employees are owed almost $220 million in unfunded pension and retirement-health benefits.

'We did a bad job of long-term forecasting,' said Craig Whittom, Vallejo's assistant city manager. 'We made agreements that were beyond our means.'"

Translation: We didn't think ahead at all.

Duh.

Think that lack of planning is going on anywhere else in government?

ABC News: Stevens Jury Catches Indictment 'Typo'

"The jury has correctly found that after reviewing Stevens' forms, the senator did check the 'yes' box. The error is on page 6 of exhibit 884.

'These items do not correspond. What do we do?' the note from the jury read."

What indeed. I don't know whether this guy is nice or honest or what. But I do know it's been open season for small things on Republicans for the past few years and it seems Democrats are getting away with as much or more.

Are people who have conservative views going to have to go into hiding during an Obama administration?

Redlining Under Attack - New York Times

Just a reminder from the 90s:

Most of the analysts who are dubious about the assertion that redlining is a fact of life make their argument on the ground of economic efficiency.

George J. Bentson, a specialist in financial regulation at Emory University, finds it implausible that banks would pass up any chance to issue mortgages that could be sold for a quick profit in the securities markets. "There is no evidence of significant discrimination in mortgage lending," he said.

Others, including Lawrence J. White, a former Federal bank regulator who teaches economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University, worry that using statistical patterns to infer discrimination -- the general mode of proof in such matters -- will induce lenders to allocate funds by racial or neighborhood quotas rather than by creditworthiness.

"Such targeting is bad public policy because it wastes capital," Mr. White said. "If we are going to subsidize lending for social purposes, it ought to be done explicitly and with Government money."

And of course it now will be.

Also:

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/Pre_96/August94/484.txt.html

Home Runs

I do some of my best "blogging" not here but as comments on other web sites. Slashdot used to be the primary target, and I still post there, just less frequently.

These days I read Valleywag and All Things D as my first pass on technical news (and gossip). Since they often don't do in-depth coverage, the hit and run pieces they offer up are excellent fodder for my excess verbage.

Today I hit two home runs (really, out of the park material). The first was regarding a feared rollback of IT workers built on a survey by one of the companies that question people who lie about their jobs to get free magazine subscriptions. What follows is only the link and my comments (as quoted text):

49 percent of US companies cutting back IT spending

"IT" has been the make-work of the last quarter of the 20th century. I am regularly in touch with IT workers who have no idea why they go to work daily and do what they do. They have learned not to ask ("What? You're not enthusiastic about what we do here?!").

I last worked for a company that was entirely composed of people who would be categorized as "IT workers", thousands of them. We worked for a federal agency, on a contract to an IT department, subsidiary to an IT division... and so on. It would have been impossible, had I tried, to actually speak to someone who's job wasn't providing information to someone else who was in IT.

We "analyze" everything to death, and then we "analyze" why it died. So many people are used in processing the data and no one is left to interpret what (if anything) it actually means.

The PC has of course made the situation much worse, though it was already underway with the explosion of small departmental computer systems and the staff needed to run them. The only thing that keeps this in check is the steady stream of companies going out of business after forgetting why they went into business in the first place.

I have a small hope that the re-centralizing of computer services (via web-based tools or by other means) might set this process back to a more healthy state, at least in the private sector.

Next is a comment on why Google's new scanning of newspapers is a good thing and not a bad thing. Really, how can anybody think more free things on the Internet is a bad thing?

The cuddly embrace of the Google monster

"But really, isn't Google's move to archive centuries of newspapers a bit like the architects of a genocide dedicating a museum to the holocaust they committed?"

I am with the bad analogy police and you are under arrest.

Most of the content Google is scanning for this thing would never see the light of day otherwise. Hits that involve the New York Times, Time Magazine, some publications already indexed by Cornell University and many others go directly to those sites where they can charge for the content, monetize it with ads, or whatever they want to do. But there are hundreds of other papers around the country that don't begin to have the resources (hardware, know-how, or will) to archive their own historical content in a way that will last, and be usable. These papers weren't broken by Google, they were broken by USA Today, cable news, Ebay, and Craigs List.

Nothing stops other big Internet companies from getting into this. It would be right up Yahoo's alley if they had any desire to provide real content instead of fluff.

Microsoft showed some initiative when they matched the Google Books project for a while (and in some ways they did a better job of it than Google). Why did they stop? Because they are total pussies that's why. To match what Google is doing in this and other areas with buildings full of Windows servers would mean (as I've calculated it) about 2000 Blue Screens of Death every second.

Google's secret isn't search, it's clustering on the cheap, and the only way Microsoft will match it is to go back to Unix. Yahoo has a head start (and I think a quick reentry into alternate OSs might have been a part of MSs acquisition strategy), but as you portray almost daily, the people running Yahoo are airheads.