Sometime the past few years, the prefix "cyber-" changed meaning. It used to mean "high-tech". But lately, it's meant "I am trying to sell some poorly-thought-out computer crap to the USA government." If you're reading about some new computer security product and it makes no sense, it's probably a "cyber" product. You think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not.
Lately, the senate's been nosing around a plan to give the USA president a "kill switch" for the world internet. Because, y'know,that worked out so well for Mubarak. It's a pretty terrible idea, both from a "is it possible" point of view and a "why on earth would you want to do that?!?" point of view. (Non-computer people who are thinking "Gee, I don't know from computer security. Can I belive Larry when he calls this a boondoggle?", you can believe: Lieberman's a sponsor.) How do they try to justify it?
"We cannot afford to wait for a cyber 9/11 before our government finally realizes the importance of protecting our digital resources."
If you read that and thought "wait, what would a 'cyber 9/11' be?" that's because Collins doesn't know either.
Fortunately, not everyone in the USA government is such a dummy. Howard Schmidt gave a speech at the recent RSA conference and pointed out the waste of spending on "cyber-war" efforts. "Cyber-war is a terrible metaphor." He pointed out that the defense department would like to train up "cyber-warriors"... for no purpose that makes sense to anyone who actually, you know, uses computers. Yet if you follow a few computer security blogs, you will keep bumping into these "cyber-warriors" and "cyber-this" and "cyber-that"...
What, you ask, is Howard Schmidt's position? He's the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator. Yep, that's his title. So that tells you something about the people he's working with.
