potential hazards of Protect-America act

Fri Feb 1 04:27:43 UTC 2008

The government buys from the cheapest bidder, the most vulnerable systems and networks belong to them
because of their bidding and purchase policies that do not reflect the problems of the time.

I am loath to believe much of anything they say or have to offer since it is usually to little and to late
for their solutions. Draconian policy and creating jobs for themselves is their best product.

-Henry

----- Original Message ----
From: Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com>
To: nanog at nanog.org
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 5:31:24 PM
Subject: Re: potential hazards of Protect-America act

Although I agree with almost every part of the paper, I disagree
with the paper.

I think the threats, risks and recommendations in the paper apply 
regardless of the country or local ordinances. If you eliminate all
the parts of the paper discussing the Protect America Act, it doesn't
change the technical parts of the paper very much.

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/27/ST2008012702568.html>

Keeping public networks secure is an interesting problem for every network
operator world-wide.  By its nature, no public network can really be 
highly secure.  If your vendor claims it is, grab your wallet and run. 
Its probably a waste of resources to attempt to build the network to 
protect the user against everything or even a lot of threats.  Yet the 
public network relies on user trust in its operation.

I think it would be interesting to watch a debate between a intelligence 
tech and a repair tech about whose tools need to be more robust and 
reliable.  I suspect they would both be very vocal about their needs.
The public network handled the Y2K rollover, you can't say the same thing 
about some of the intelligence systems :-)

So if you are a network operator, what can you do technically (since this 
is not a law list)?

I think the paper suffers a bit from "CSI" or "24" dazzle, everyone 
expects a DNA printout in the last 2 minutes of the show will find the bad 
guy, Intelligence Support tradeshows are filled with overpriced pieces of 
gear.  Its usually the simple stuff that gets you.  Most networks are 
filled with so many diagnostic features, buying a second set of gear is 
usually for administrative not functional reasons.