Taking a leak

Ya gotta laff - Techdirt has published a confidential memo of 3 January 2011 memo from The Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), on . . . how to detect potential leakers. 

Not merely that, but the content of OMB memo is ludicrous. Shrinks to spot disgruntled employees? And what do you do then? You can't sack bureaucrats even if they fall well below the already pitifully low levels of motivation and competence that are the best government agencies can hope for.

Hat-tip Scott

Hersh on cyber-war

Did you notice that the Strategic Defence and Security Review allotted £650 million over the next four years for a "transformative National Cyber Security Programme"? Well, that's a drop in the ocean. Seymour Hersh has published one of his epic in-depth reports on "The Online Threat" in the New Yorker. 

Not going to try to summarise it. The following paragraph sums up what it is all likely to involve.

In May, after years of planning, the US Cyber Command was officially activated, and took operational control of disparate cyber-security and attack units that had been scattered among the four military services. Its commander, Army General Keith Alexander, a career intelligence officer, has made it clear that he wants more access to e-mail, social networks, and the Internet to protect America and fight in what he sees as a new warfare domain - cyberspace. In the next few months, President Obama, who has publicly pledged that his Administration will protect openness and privacy on the Internet, will have to make choices that will have enormous consequences for the future of an ever-growing maze of new communication techniques: Will America’s networks be entrusted to civilians or to the military? Will cyber security be treated as a kind of war?