During my daily ritual of coffee-drinking, news-reading, and soft-porn-surfing [insert inappropriate witticism here], I stumbled on something that’s starting to concern me. For those of you that are regular rant readers (or recipients), you’ll recall I don’t get “concerned” often. Irate, annoyed, exasperated, irritated, and/or livid, yes. Concerned – rarely.
This particular “concern” comes from the public notice to comment on the FCC’s plan to develop a Cybersecurity Roadmap as part of the National Broadband Plan. At first, I was tickled. A chance to make waves with a little Jovian Judgementalism ™. Then I started really reading what they’re asking for…
The National Broadband Plan is a sweeping 360 page document, laying out a high level set of recommendations that are intended to make broadband access accessible, affordable, effective, ubiquitous. A good portion of this document is targeted toward market incentives to build out infrastructure and leveraging this new utility for enhanced safety procedures. Super stuff. But concerns start in chapter 1…
Concern 1:
Until recently, not having broadband was an inconvenience. Now, broadband is essential to opportunity and citizenship.
Broadband is essential to citizenship? Does that make it a “right”, as a citizen? Will all citizens have the unalienable right to broadband access? Does this mean that the government must make broadband available to a teepee out in the mountains, where some hermit / genius is plotting to take over the world? I wonder if one might be able to eventually sue an employer for discrimination? What do I think? Thanks for asking. I think it’s like hunger or starvation. If you’re starving to death and you live in the middle of the desert: move to where the food is. Please don’t rely on the government to assist companies to bring the damn food out to your hut.
Concern 2:
Congress should consider providing additional public funds to connect all public community colleges with high-speed broadband and maintain that connectivity.
Educational institutions are typically one requiring “high-collaboration” and take the “information should be free” approach to things. They also happen to be cesspools of insecurity. Anybody who’s worked in higher ed or in state government can tell you that a large amount of cybersecurity “noise” comes from rooted / infected systems at colleges. I really don’t want to have MY money spent on exacerbating a problem that this plan also claims to address, in the next major concern, below:
Concern 3:
The FCC should work with Internet service providers (ISPs) to build robust cybersecurity protection and defenses into networks offered to businesses and individuals without access to cybersecurity resources. ISPs that participate in this program should receive technical assistance from the federal government in securing their networks.
Oh, no. No, no, no. ”Without access to cybersecurity resources”? What the heck could that mean? Will an ISP make that call? Will Qwest decide that I’m not “robust” enough, and they need to do something for me? Will they bill the government for a firewall for my network (with “appropriate markup”, no doubt)? If I don’t have content filtering (or maybe my ISP thinks I don’t have a good enough solution), will they start monitoring / filtering my traffic for me? Not a good idea. I’ve got enough regulations to worry about just trying to do business – don’t make me have to prove my worth to yet another party to whom I’M THE CUSTOMER.
Concern 4:
The FCC and DHS’s Office of Cybersecurity and Communications together should develop an IP network CIRS to accompany the existing Disaster Information Reporting System. CIRS will be an invaluable tool for monitoring cybersecurity and providing decisive responses to cyberattacks.
Ugh! Didn’t anybody learn anything in the last friggin’ decade about crisis communications?? Don’t use the same damn network that you’re trying to defend to “provide decisive responses” with! Holy crap this is short-sighted – unless by “invaluable”, they actually mean “worth nothing”.
Concern 5:
Within 180 days of the release of this plan, the FCC should issue, in coordination with the Executive Branch, a roadmap to address cybersecurity.
Wait, who’s going to do this now? What exactly are they going to accomplish? How many people now have their fingers in the pie? I suppose that’s why it’s out for comment. By the time I got to this, I ran out of steam (and time) and don’t really care to comment anymore.
What promoted me to rant about this, you ask? The FCC decided to include one of my favorite poorly thought out quotes RIGHT AFTER the recommendation to create a cybersecurity roadmap:
Admiral Mike McConnell, former Director of National Intelligence, said recently that “the United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing.”
Great. The friggin’ FCC fell for it, too. I’m sure McConnell went to War College and he should really know better than to toss words like that around. For more cyber-war commentary, see this, this, and this. Maybe that’s why he hyphenated it, so he isn’t in violation of the Geneva Convention which appears to outlaw that.
Stick around for part 2 of this, where I try to untangle all the govvies that want to control “cyberspace”.
What’s up with the sticky-sweet pinkness? Part of my Love Letter to the Editor, my ode to Siobhan Gorman.
