I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

[don]

About a Lucky Man, That Made the Grade
and though the News was rather Sad,
Well I Just had to Laugh...

C'mon, MEGA, help me

Pentagon Plans New Arm to Wage Cyberspace Wars

The White House office will be run by a “cyberczar,” but because the position will not have direct access to the president, some experts said it was not high-level enough to end a series of bureaucratic wars that have broken out as billions of dollars have suddenly been allocated to protect against the computer threats.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/us...ef=todayspaper

Who will spend most of his time looking at...Americans, I'm thinkin'

a Crowd of People Stood and Stared,
They'd Seen His Face before
Nobody Was Sure If He Was From the House of Lords

"for coordinating private-sector and government defenses against the thousands of cyberattacks mounted against the United States — largely by hackers but sometimes by foreign governments — every day."

The English Army had just won the War,
A Crowd of People Turned Away

Thanks Mike, in advance....

[flintlock]

Re: I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

Yeah, here is Obama's pick for Cyberczar.

[don]

Re: I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

What would the Tsarist Russians think of the American propensity for naming Czars ;)

Alternate headline: Intelligence Agencies, Squabbling Over $$$ Billions, Need Czar As Referee

[vpage]

Re: I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

why not just hire the work out to google - they already track every item people search for and match search terms to the advertising seen by the user.

example: search 'snooring' then within a few days ~ pages you visit have snooring remedies in the banners!

Big Brother has matured

seems to me that it would be a small step for google and the fed to team up and track those that appose USA political ideals.

K

[don]

Re: I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

Feds taps sci-fi writers' ideas to aid security

David Montgomery, Washington Post
Sunday, May 31, 2009


(05-31) 04:00 PDT Washington --

The line between what's real and what's not is thin and shifting, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has decided to explore both sides. Boldly going where few government bureaucracies have gone before, the agency is enlisting the expertise of science-fiction writers.

Crazy? This week the 2009 Homeland Security Science & Technology Stakeholders Conference, with contractors hustling business around every corner (think Katrina), has felt at times more like a convention of futuristic yarn-spinners.


The dozen or so novelists sprinkled throughout the breakout sessions had camouflaged themselves in coats and ties, but they would have fit right in anyway. Science-fiction writers tend to know a lot about science. And the ranks of federal and commercial R&D departments are stuffed with sci-fi fanatics.

The cost to taxpayers is minimal. The writers call this "science fiction in the national interest," and they consult pro bono. They've been exploring the future, and "we owe it to mankind to come back and report what we've found," said writer Arlan Andrews, also an engineer with the Navy in Corpus Christi, Texas.



Harry McDavid, chief information officer for Homeland Security's Office of Operations Coordination & Planning, had a question for Catherine Asaro, author of two dozen novels, about half of them devoted to her Saga of the Skolian Empire. She also has a Ph.D. in physics. McDavid's job involves "information sharing" - efficiently communicating information about response and recovery across agencies, states, business sectors. How, he wanted to know, did Asaro come up with the Triad system in her novels of flashing thoughts instantly across the universe?

"It evolved along with the story," Asaro said. Basically, she applied principles of quantum theory - one of her specialties as a physicist - to a fictional theory of "thought space."

McDavid has no plan to add telepathy to Homeland Security's communications strategy.


"We're stuck in a paradigm of databases," McDavid said later. "How do we jump out of our infrastructure and start conceptualizing those threats? That's very cool."


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...MNLK17PF2A.DTL