Idiots In Charge

There are some stories that I read and say to myself WTF!!!!
Yesterday I read one of those stories.

The character's in this story are the Federal Gov't. , Michael Chertoff Homeland Security Chief and Rod Beckstrom founder of Twiki.net

You can see where this is going already!

Seems the Fed's got a dim light bulb to illuminate the empty crevices in their head where the brain is usually found and came up with another one of their "Put massive amounts of money in your buddy's pockets!" idea.

It has finally dawned on Michael Chertoff that a hacker attack or God forbid, a 'terrorist hijacking' (His words) of the financial systems in this country could have some dire consequences.
No Shit Sherlock! You just figure that out on your own or did you need the D.C. think tank to clue you in?

He mentions that the government can't do it on their own and is asking companies in Silicon Valley to send their brightest people to D.C. to work on the project.

Meanwhile the Fed's have set up a national cybersecurity center led by Rod Beckstrom.
Now let's get this straight.
Your setting up a national cyber security center to protect our financial institutions against an attack and your putting some guy in charge who founded a company that provides collaboration software for businesses.

But wait! It gets better. I swear these people in charge have no clue of how the internet works or even how to use it.

Mr. Chertoff and the federal government wants to build a system to detect Internet attacks before they occur.

Hmmm........ And just how do you prevent something that hasn't happened?
Maybe you would be interested in going on a snipe hunting expedition while your at it? I can provide you with a very reasonable group rate.

Mr. Chertoff described the plan to protect the federal domain from attack as "almost like the Manhattan Project" that developed the atomic bomb.

"I do believe we have capability to detect an attack before
it's launched," Chertoff said.

Ah,Um,Er.... Mr.Chertoff, the Manhattan project dealt with designing the atomic bomb, not prevent it from being launched in an attack.

Even though much of its work is classified, one goal Mr. Chertoff could talk about is reducing the number of access points to federal systems from the "thousands" to a more manageable 50 or so.

Ever hear of a data bus bottle neck?
Can only jam so many pieces of data through a port.
Cut the access points by a percentage like your talking about and you won't have to worry about outside attacks. You will do a fine job all by yourself when no one can transmit financial data in real time.

Idiots! Plain and simple. All they worry about is how to get their buddies on the federal freeloader payroll.

TaZMAn