DISQUS

Kelcy · 10 months ago

Your heart's in the right place, but the position is somewhat naive unless you address the vaunted American bastion of "privacy" and freedom. Counterintelligence requires a combination of good education, willingness on the part of Americans to practice good security, intelligence on foreign intel services and monitoring American activities to identify vulnerabilities (and bad guys) and then implement practices to lessen those vulnerabilities. THat includes risk management and Americans are very bad at managing risk (witness current crisis).
A strategic plan will not be effective without some agreement by the American people and all the special interest groups that this is important. It has not worked well for terrorism with 9/11 as a symbol. Too much potential for abuse; it's even more explosive in this area where sharing intellectual property and ideas can be subjective.

Bob · 10 months ago

Thanks Kelcy. I think you are right. I think there are plenty of authorities to get this done, and there can certainly be good strong oversight in place to prevent misconduct. But the core point of needing to address privacy and freedom, always, is critically important.
Bob

Jeffrey · 10 months ago

Thanks for this post, Bob. As Kelcy pointed out, gaining our own population's support for a more rigorous security/counterintelligence policy won't be easy.
For example, one key area that I've been beating a drum about is requiring U.S. ISPs and network resellers to demand ID verification and payment tracking to all customers. This is important because a significant percentage of foreign cyber espionage/network attacks are coming from people who have purchased services from U.S. firms that figuratively look the other way (McColo/Atriva was a good recent example).
We can make the required changes but it's not going to be without a little bit of pain, and I'm not sure that the American population is ready for that.