What do DU'ers think of this?

Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for the United States


MELBOURNE, Fla. — The government’s urgent push into cyberwarfare has set off a rush among the biggest military companies for billions of dollars in new defense contracts.

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The exotic nature of the work, coupled with the deep recession, is enabling the companies to attract top young talent that once would have gone to Silicon Valley. And the race to develop weapons that defend against, or initiate, computer attacks has given rise to thousands of “hacker soldiers” within the Pentagon who can blend the new capabilities into the nation’s war planning.

-snip-

Nearly all of the largest military companies — including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies.

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The changes are manifesting themselves in highly classified laboratories, where computer geeks in their 20s like to joke that they are hackers with security clearances.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/us/31cyber.html?_r=1&hp

My first thought was JOBS in FL! My second thought is someone better be hired who knows what they're doing.

I suppose there are other topics considered more "sexy" here.

I honestly don't know what else to say.

There have been lots of hacking attacks in this country. Now someone is trying to do something about it. I'm glad.

trust these war corporations to do the right thing.

healthcare? I hope you're not expecting the government to do anything to help you. I could go on, but you get my drift.

I think we have to trust the government, and I know that's tough considering how 'the government' abused all of us the past 8 years.

As it looks now on healthcare, prosecutions and so on, if you left it up to the government it will never happen. We, the people have to force them to do the right thing.


Love your country, but never trust its government.
Robert Heinlein
1907 — 1988

What if they're doing the right thing to begin with? Sure, that'd bum a lot of people out, but hey, I'll take it.

:wow:

You first!
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"In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other.'
--Voltaire

In the context you present the two are vastly different. I paid/pay dearly for the post office, medicare and Social security, only a total fool trusts the government with their hard earned money!
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But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

it scares me a little as well unless someone has full trust in these corporate entities.

I don't find it "scary" at all. I find it necessary. Their mission is quite clear--protect government data. If you don't hack DOD, they won't be up in your stuff. That's not their charge. It may be the charge of other agencies, but that's a horse of a different color altogether.

Think of all the interconnectedness of people on the web with financial institutions and more. Also, in 1930's Germany, the government was able to track and round up people quickly and efficiently with a system developed by IBM.

the Amish! Disconnect. It makes it harder to find you--and don't forget to unload the cell phone, too.

From the article, it seems like their charge is pretty clear--protect DOD data and computer infrastructure. Like I said, what happens elsewhere is a different story.

I'm wary of "policing" though--the minute you have "policing" you have "regulations." The minute you have regulations, the costs go up (to pay for the "policing") and rules, which may or may not be arbitrary, can be imposed. Who writes these rules? Someone like Bush, or someone like Obama, or someone like Kucinich?

I don't want the government telling me that GOOGLE is bad for me--like they do in Iran. Or blocking websites--like they do in Iran, and China, and elsewhere. Or coming around and punishing people for what they write in their little blogs.

The upside of the internet is that it's all out there. The downside has always been hackers and stupid jerks. It is what it is. If you've got a lot of money in the bank that worries you, don't do your banking online. Go to the building and stand in line. Keep a smaller account online, so that if "something happens," you don't lose so much dough.

But I don't trust a government that spies on its citizens, intimidates the press into censorship, uses secrecy to keep its population from knowing what it does, has the power to seize assets, etc., to leave the free passing of information alone.

And ladies.

Their job is to stop people from penetrating their systems, identify them, and then conceivably turn around and hack their shit, or provide the info to those who do that kind of stuff. The story indicates that their job is to trap people who are trying to poke their noses where they don't belong, and prevent them from sneaking into government systems.

I don't have any problem with their charge, as described in the article.

Asking a sieve to be a dam. If you make it so it doesn't leak it no longer works. The system would have to be redesigned from scratch for true working security.

The majority of people who purport to do this kind of work cannot and probably should not but they are the kind of people corporations like to hire.

We probably cannot do anything about this other than boycott the internet for a year but these hackers can go rogue or the CIA can find new clandestine revenue streams this way. If we had strong American corporations they should have a fit about this but they hardly said boo to what happened with Y2K and the Israeli Mossad sending out Trojans and finally actually marketing software that spied on corporations (Canadian court case.)

Observations from a family member who made his living fixing what Anderson Consulting did to companies after low balling, bait and switch, upping the ante and finally being thrown out. They had a bigger team of lawyers than they had software engineers and technicians.

Nothing to see here folks.....

From the Neocon's plan for US hegemony - Rebuilding America's Defenses
http://manifestor.org/imperium/archive/PNAC.html

CONTROL THE NEW "INTERNATIONAL COMMONS" OF SPACE AND "CYBERSPACE," and pave the way for the creation of a new military service – U.S. Space Forces – with the mission of space control.


Change we can believe in... :rofl:

Internet voting. Forget the DREs, internet voting is our future.
It doesn't matter who votes, it only matters who counts the votes.

Our votes are the only real leverage we have to change our representatives.
It is now a hack or be hacked world. ^TM

May the best hackers win!!

Sorry, but cyber security IS an issue, and not just for the military.

This is the next front in warfare, imo, and I've felt for years that an attack on the internet would be tremendously damaging in many ways, from economy to national security to DUers who will fall down dead without our LOLcats....the risk is too high. ;)

. . . should help the Pentagon wage their 'information war'.

This reminds me of Clinton's push to broaden wiretapping, citing 'threats' as justification.

from Reason: http://www.reason.com/news/show/124733.html

"For example, on July 29, 1996, Bill Clinton unveiled a proposal to expand government surveillance by permitting the use of "roving wiretaps." The nation was still reeling from terrorist attacks on the Atlanta Olympics and American barracks in Saudi Arabia, and many suspected that the explosion of TWA Flight 800 was also the work of terrorists. Clinton argued that these tragedies highlighted the need for legislative changes, and he pressed Congress to act before its August recess."