Uncle
Sam wants YOU to spy on your neighbor…
Back
in June of 2013, many reports came out about the federal government asking its
employee’s to spy on one another, “Thou
shall snitch on thy neighbor”. Sounds so nefarious doesn’t it? According to Jonathan Landay and Marisa
Taylor of the McClatchy Report (2013), this is exactly what is going on in our
country. The President has given the
order to all federal employees’ to report suspicious activities. According to the article, “Federal employees and
contractors are asked to pay particular attention to the lifestyles, attitudes
and behaviors – like financial troubles, odd working hours or unexplained
travel.” Hmmm, what about the nervous tick I get when I drink too much coffee
Mr. President? Should I worry? OK, I get it, do
we really want another episode of “Falcon and the Snowman?” (MGM Studios, 1985)
or Edward Snowden spilling the beans on top secret US military and other issues
of the day? Absolutely not! BUT, do we want to constantly look over our
shoulders hoping no one is looking suspiciously at us? One of the big issues I
see is if you DO NOT report someone who is doing harm; you can be held culpable
and may face criminal charges. Huhhhh? So what happens when a fed employee does
something, you know nothing about it but because of your associations with
them, you get strung up too? How about
the “Look at me, Look at me” guy who wants to make a name for himself and
starts a campaign to discredit people because they look or act a certain way
just so they get noticed, or someone just doesn’t like you so they make stuff up? I am all for profiling, this is a fantastic
method that “TRAINED” (I’m yelling here!!) law enforcement officials can use to
help thwart bad characters etc. but Joe from accounting who gets a daylong
seminar in Threat Behavior has no reason to do this, nor should he be ordered
to do so.
I
came across an article from Kate Tummarello (2013) of theTheHill.com, titled “Government “Rarely” follows Cyber security
best practices” that pointed me to a report to the President on cyber
security and what the government should do in order to secure our nation. The report, titled “Immediate Opportunities for
Strengthening the Nations Cyber security” (2013) written by the “President’s Council of Advisers on
Science and Technology” is a very interesting read indeed, (see link below.) In it, the authors discuss many issues that
they see and outline methods that our government can undertake to strengthen
our defenses both foreign and domestically.
My favorite part of the reports states the following, “The Federal Government rarely follows
accepted best practices. It needs to lead by example and accelerate its efforts
to make routine cyber-attacks more difficult by implementing best practices for
its own systems.” (p. 1). This is the
lead into the report… Tells you something doesn’t it. Please take a moment and read it if you can,
it really is interesting.
Parting Shots: There are many
things the government can do to secure our nations assets, such as educating
employee’s, working with the public sector and not against them, getting out of
date software and hardware up to date, as well as, multiple other things, but asking
people to be tattle tales should not be one of them.
Landay,
Jonathan and Taylor, Marisa. (2013).
Experts: Obama’s plan to predict future leakers unproven, unlikely to
work. McClatchy report. McClatchyDC.com
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/09/196211/linchpin-for-obamas-plan-to-predict.html#.Ud1k_T4a8gR
Lander, E., Holdren, J., Savitz, M., Press, W. (2013). Immediate Opportunities for
Strengthening the Nations Cybersecurity. (p. 1)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_cybersecurity_nov-2013.pdf
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