[117048] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Ready to get your federal computer license?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Sun Aug 30 20:11:29 2009
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:11:11 -0400
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
To: Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com>
In-Reply-To: <200908301938220.6B95064B.8300@clifden.donelan.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:46:19 -0400 (EDT)
Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 30 Aug 2009, Jeff Young wrote:
> > The more troubling parts of this bill had to do with the President,
> > at his discretion, classifying parts of public networks as "critical
> > infrastructure" and so on.
>
> Whatever your opinion, get involved. Let your representatives know
> about your better ideas.
I strongly second this. To quote a bumper sticker/slogan I've seen,
"if you didn't vote, you shouldn't complain". Some prominent
politicians have proposed something that we -- including me -- believe
to be a bad idea, not just on ideological grounds but because we think
that it won't accomplish its purported goals and may even be
counterproductive. I don't see a lot of network operators in Congress
-- if you know better, you really need to tell them.
Some folks on this list -- and I know there are a few, very
specifically including myself -- spend more than a little bit of time
not just worrying about public policy issues, but actually spending
time and effort on the subject. (I'm in D.C. right now, largely
because of a policy-related meeting on Tuesday.) I'll misuses a
security slogan I've seen on mass transit facilities in the New York
area: if you see something, say something. If no one tells Congress
that this is a bad idea, how should they know?
>
> > currently living overseas and finding all of this very amusing...
>
> If any other country has solved the problem of protecting
> Internet/data/cyber/critical/etc infrastructures and have some great
> ideas, it would be great to hear what those ideas are and how they
> did it.
>
Indeed.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
