Do the Feds Really Know Tech? - PCWorld

Do the Feds Really Know Tech? - PCWorld

Back when I was a younger man, I was a Beltway Bandit. What that means is that I worked as a technical contractor for the federal government. In my case, I worked for several years for NASA and NAVSEA (Naval Sea Systems Command ). Then, I worked with numerous bright developers, network engineers and system administrators. Unfortunately, we often worked with federal staffers who were often, ah, clueless. Since then, things have only gotten worse. Much worse.

Illustration: Lou BeachThen, we usually only had to contend with managers who didn't understand the technology, but were capable of giving us realistic goals. For example, one NASA executive knew that the agency wanted a way to keep track of the current status of all telecom and datacom links to the STS (Space Transportation System, or space shuttle to you), but he didn't know how we would do it -- a combination of C and Datatrieve running on VAX/VMS and AT&T Unix systems, as it turned out -- and as long as we delivered the goods, he was happy.

That was when things worked well. Am I glad I'm out of the consultant/contractor game these days.

For starters, a U.S. Senate committee has approved a cybersecurity bill, the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act , that appears to say that the president can have the authority to shut down parts of the Internet during a cyberattack.

Actually, Sen. Joe Lieberman has said that what he wants the bill to do is put limits on the powers the president already has to cause "the closing of any facility or stations for wire communication" during war, which had already been given the presidency in the Communications Act of 1934.

OK, so it's not quite the "Internet kill switch" that earlier reports suggested, but tell me exactly how the president, or anyone else, is going to shut down even a significant part of the Internet on demand? We've come a long way since 1934.

Sure, you can wreck parts of the Internet for hours or days at a time with a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack . And you can try to block parts of the Internet, as China does with its so-called Great Firewall of China . But if you know what you're doing, you can walk around the Great Firewall without too much trouble. Heck, even, Google , while backtracking on its stance toward China's censorship , was able to jump right over it by directing to its uncensored Hong Kong Web site.

But for practical purposes, there's no good way you can "turn off" even part of the Internet. It's silly to even think that there is.

Still, that's just a dumb idea. If it makes the Congress-critters happy to think that they can legislate the power to the Internet off and on or to make the value of pi equal 3 , let them continue to dream on.

What's far, far more serious is the suggestion that the government be allowed to set up a National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace . This sounds good. The plan is to create an Internet-based identity ecosystem, "where individuals, organizations, services, and devices can trust each other because authoritative sources establish and authenticate their digital identities."

It would work by issuing everyone security tokens such as a state-issued "smart identity card," or perhaps a digital certificate on our PCs and smartphones. This token would contain all of the identity information about a person.

Can you say national identification card? I knew you could. I hate this plan. More...

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I experienced this kind of identity verification system for posting on the internet while living over two years in South Korea. It is a method of censoring free speech. South korea has a statute, "The Media Act of 2003" which allows the government to arrest citizens for "posting rumors on the internet. To post on a Korean website or blog you must use your national identity card number or your Alien Registration Card, in my case. There was a very famous case in South Korea in 2008 involving a blogger who used the handle "Minerva". He was arrested after he accurately predicted the economic downturn and drop in the value of "the Won", the counties' currency, the previous year. We do not want to be a country like South Korea or even worse China where the government either controls or censors free speech.

John H. Armwood