The phantom menace
Cyberwarriors
“The United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing,†former National Security Agency chief Mike McConnell wrote in The Washington Post on February 28. “It’s that simple.â€
The reality is far from simple. If the government wants to thoroughly track online activity, McConnell admits, “we need to re-engineer the Internet to make attribution, geo-location, intelligence analysis and impact assessmentâ€"who did it, from where, why and what was the resultâ€"more manageable.†That’s right: He wants to re-engineer one of the most popular and revolutionary technologies of our time, just to allow the government to get in on the business of data security.
Wired called McConnell a “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.†During the Bush administration, McConnell persuaded the president to sign a secret order to erect firewalls and build malware into military gear. Under Obama he’s at it again, lobbying for cyberwar from his perch in the private sector.
Show Comments (3)