*America has never had a cyber-czar whose position and powers amounted to anything useful. Everybody leaves that post because there's a vast echoing hollow there – where there ought to be national security policy and action. You go to that hall of the Gothic High Tech castle, and there's nothing but impotent phantom hands, clutching and begging from the walls.
*I hate to say "I told you so," but (a) I don't really mind saying it, because it was dead obvious to everybody and (b) this may be the last time the feds even try. Which would mean that the United States of America can't protect you from threats that emerge from your computers. The USA can still put you in jail (maybe), but the USA cannot provide for the common defense.
*This means that, the more Americans rely on computers, the less American they become. It's a quiet admission of federal impotence. Nobody really messes with this increasingly dangerous arena but the nameless global criminals and the unknown and invisible cyberwar spooks: spooky, spooky Gothic High Tech.
http://www.technologyreview.com/wire/23131/?nlid=2252
WASHINGTON (AP) – Nearly six months after the Obama administration turned its focus on computer security, the White House is still struggling to name a cyber coordinator, delaying efforts to better organize and manage the nation's increasingly vulnerable digital defense.
Experts say it is an almost impossible job to fill, and several executives have already turned it down. But the resignation Monday of White House cyber director Melissa Hathaway now leaves a gap in the administration's campaign to better protect a government that is constantly assailed by computer attacks and scans.
Those familiar with the search process say that one problem may be that President Barack Obama's decision to have the coordinator report to both the National Security Council and the National Economic Council creates a complex structure, with little budgeting or broad decision-making authority.
"Clearly every day we don't have someone at the helm of this problem, we're exposed more than we should be," said Roger Thornton, chief technology officer for Fortify Software, and a cyber security expert. "I do think, though, that this is a testament to how new and difficult this all is." (...)
(((Difficult, certainly; new, not at all.)))
*Modern Russian crime syndicate keenly unimpressed by anybody's "czar":
*I see they took Twitter down today. Perhaps that was rather a disappointment for the various federal officials using Twitter.
