McConnell’s not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering. He’s the nice-seeming guy who’s willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his own ends, while coming off like a straight shooter to those who are not in the know.
When he was head of the country’s national intelligence, he scared President Bush with visions of e-doom, prompting the president to sign a comprehensive secret order that unleashed tens of billions of dollars into the military’s black budget so they could start making firewalls and building malware into military equipment.
And now McConnell is back in civilian life as a vice president at the secretive defense contracting giant Booz Allen Hamilton. He’s out in front of Congress and the media, peddling the same Cybaremaggedon! gloom.
We need to develop an early-warning system to monitor cyberspace, identify intrusions and locate the source of attacks with a trail of evidence that can support diplomatic, military and legal options — and we must be able to do this in milliseconds. More specifically, we need to re-engineer the Internet to make attribution, geo-location, intelligence analysis and impact assessment — who did it, from where, why and what was the result — more manageable. The technologies are already available from public and private sources and can be further developed if we have the will to build them into our systems and to work with our allies and trading partners so they will do the same.
Now that is a classic example of how a government agency can reach out and touch you - literally. If McConnell has his way, this blog, your emails, that odd paper your sister is writing for her college forensics class and using Google to research; that would all be traceable and some reactionary hack would be filing away every click of not only your keyboard and mouse, but everyone's.
But McConnell isn't the only threat to the internet.
Just last week the National Telecommunications and Information Administration — the portion of the Commerce Department that has long overseen the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — said it was time for it to revoke its hands-off-the-internet policy.
Following years of the NSA illegally spying on Americans’ e-mails and phone calls as part of a secret anti-terrorism project, Congress voted to legalize the program in July 2008. That vote allowed the NSA to legally turn America’s portion of the internet into a giant listening device for the nation’s intelligence services. The new law also gave legal immunity to the telecoms like AT&T that helped the government illegally spy on American’s e-mails and internet use. Then-Senator Barack Obama voted for this legislation, despite earlier campaign promises to oppose it.
And while this all starts to sound like a Glenn Beck theory gone awry, I'm not looking for the proposed legislation for "emergency seizure of the internet" to make it to Obama's desk, much less have him even sign it. After all, Obama supports Net Neutrality, and signing a bill that would essentially do what McConnell is asking for would be political suicide.
During a Monday speech on innovation, President Obama issued his support for net neutrality rules proposed by FCC chairman Julius Genachowski.
"I'm pleased that he's taking that step," the president said during an appearance in Troy, New York. "That's an important role that we can play, laying the ground rules to spur innovation. That's the role of government -- to provide investment that spurs innovation and also to set up common-sense ground rules to ensure that there's a level playing field for all comers who seek to contribute their innovations."
On Monday, Genachowski proposed adding two principles to the commission's Internet Policy Principles that would prohibit ISPs from discriminating based on content or applications and would require them to be more transparent about their activities. Interest groups praised the move, but the wireless industry was concerned that the proposal also extended to them. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican, also promptly introduced a bill that would cut the FCC's regulatory funding.
Obama was in Troy to unveil his "innovation agenda." The president pushed for more research and development investment, as well as alternative energy sources, health IT, and the manufacture of advanced vehicles.
Fearmongering works well amongst the conservative set, as we saw it's effectiveness with the Bush administration. That same mentality lead to the Tea Baggers and the uptick in insanity over at Fox"News".
Take technology that not many people fully understand and couple that with these people that are claiming that America is now a communist, socialist, nazi-infested wasteland and you've got a recipe for disaster.
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