A Peculiar Blog

Once again I’m catching up on old Slashdot mail and I ran across a headline that declared: “FBI warns of sweeping global threat to U.S. cybersecurity”

Then in the article itself I read:

The FBI’s newly appointed chief of cyber security
warned today that ‘a couple dozen’ countries are eager to hack US
government, corporate, and military networks. While he refused to provide
country-specific details

I got as far as “While he refused to provide country-specific details” and lost interest in the rest of the article.  Why?  Because it’s yet another government entity that’s all too willing to blatt off with all this scary sounding but really quite empty threats to our security in order to justify yet another program that’s going to invade our privacy or give the government more authority that it shouldn’t have.

Saying things that amount to “the bad guys don’t like us and will try to do bad things to us” is right up there with saying a really overweight person might be interested in trying Fenphedra to help them lose weight.  It’s what in our house is called a “DUH Moment”.  Something that really goes without saying, so obvious that anybody with even one pair of working neurons can figure out without any help at all.

I think it’s way past time that these various agencies are required to provide sufficient details so that we can have some idea of WHY they think they need this or that extra special authority (that no righteous agency actually needs in a free society).

The days when vague threats and hollow warnings are good enough reason to get more power need to end.  It’s time to start requiring these agencies to put up or shut up.

[Tags]fbi, cybersecurity, security, government agencies, too much authority, big government[/tags]