Obama Stimulus Pours Millions Into Cyber Security 156
nandemoari writes "As his administration continues to work on a stimulus plan that can save America's economy, Obama's latest course of action will see millions of dollars being allocated to heighten cyber security. The move will assist government officials in preventing future attacks on the United States.
The President recently addressed his 2010 budget, outlining funding plans that will grant the Department of Homeland Security $355 million to secure the nation's most essential computer systems.
The money will be spent on both government and private groups, with much of the funding going to the National Cyber Security Division and the Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative programs."
Frist (Score:4, Insightful)
"The money will be spent on both government and private groups, with much of the funding going to the National Cyber Security Division and the Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative programs."
In other words, millions of your tax dollars will be spent paying glorified security guards to sit on P2p networks all day looking for copyright infringers and kiddy porn. As if the FBI needed any competition. What, did you think they were actually saving America from terrorists?
Here's an idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Frist (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is my problem with the p2p babysitting -
what guidelines will they be using to determine what is child porn and what is not?
Some of the recent "child model" busts seem to be pushing the limit of what can be called "child porn". It's almost as if they're widening the definition of child porn so they'll have more people to bust.
What needs funding? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm curious to know what critical cyber security projects or activities are "shovel ready" and awaiting funding...
Weak Postulate (Score:4, Insightful)
As an AC no one will ever see this comment, but I have to say it anyway.
The summary: "As his administration continues to work on an stimulus plan that can save America's economy.." makes it sound as if this is an accepted postulate, but nothing could be further from the truth. Many economists (and others) have serious doubts that such a stimulus package can "save" anything. And while economics is anything but intuitive, one does wonder how borrowing a trillion or so dollars -- at interest -- will work towards putting the economy "back on track."
Jobs shipped overseas (Score:5, Insightful)
The money will go to $5.00/hr bidders on RentACoder. There's no incentive in this bill to keep the money in the US
How about a bit less cheerleading? (Score:5, Insightful)
For example: "stimulus plan that can save America's economy"
"can"? That remains to be seen, and many say it will not. Try being less of a cheerleader and tell the truth. "may save" is a better selection, and much closer to the truth, given several hundred prominent economists (and the CBO) have said this "stimulus" may end up hurting the economy due to the wasteful "political repayment" spending and huge debt load it contains.
Per the CBO a recovery, albeit slow, is predicted for later this year even were no "stimulus" package passed.
Go read up on the Nixon-Ford-Carter economy that used similar big-government Keynesian methods to stimulate the economy, and ended up producing "stagflation", high interest rates, high unemployment and high inflation (the latter two both in double digits).
Then go read Hazlitt and Hayek for why this Keynesian stuff doesn't work as intended.
In engineering terms, most learned this lesson in statics and dynamics class: You cannot push a rope.
cyber? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not "cyber"security at all! Cybersecurity would be pushing for signed DNS architecture, IPv6, and a DDoS mitigation infrastructure. Sonar and radar systems are physical security, not cyber security.
DHS? WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why DHS? Talk about throwing money into a trash disposal.
Why not NSA/CSS? They are already tasked with this and have budget. Plus they have produced viable useful solutions, SE-Linux for example. And they have competence, unlike the DHS, who seem more concerned with political correctness than securing the nation and the borders.
This smells of political back-scratching, not a solution to a problem.
Secondly how is this supposed to stimulate demand in the economy? Remember, that was the purpose of the huge debt load we just got saddled with.
Watch for crony-contracts, and the money to not produce anything other than rich politically connected friends.
Re:Frist (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't call you cynical for that viewpoint, I'd call you naive.
Of course the "Man" is looking for more people to bust - law enforcement is a huge industry worth billions of dollars, and like all industries, it is seeking to grow itself. And in law enforcement, how do you grow your market and secure jobs? You create more criminals.
Re:PC? (Score:4, Insightful)
BO rocks!
Actually, America has a BO problem at the moment. Don't be fooled. Adding a lump of sugar to the poison doesn't make any less poisonous.
FYI, GW did this as well. Every president is going to do some things right, and a lot of them wrong.
Never forget, the goal of the presidents since the USA were founded has been to expand their own power. BHO will be no different in this respect.
Re:Frist (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought the whole problem was caused by thinking about the children.
Re:Is this I or G? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, thanks, BadAnalogyGuy, for demonstrating exactly what's wrong with mainstream macroeconomic thought these days.
In case anyone didn't understand all that, he's referring to the infamous "GDP equation" that "gross domestic product", a poor attempt at capturing the total value of goods and services produced in an economy each year, is equal to:
Consumption (C) + Investment (I) + Government purchases (G) + net imports (X - M)
I don't know what he's using to mean Y, but I think he's referring to the rewrite of the equation that puts it as:
C + I + X - M - Y = GDP - (G + B)
where Y is net private savings and B is net government borrowing. That's how they derive the misleading identity that "net private savings equals government borrowing".
I used to see GDP as "imperfect, but a good appoximation of economic health, once you understand its limitations". Now I see mainstream macroeconomics taking its imperfections and amplifying them to the point of bad policy. They're so concerned about getting government-recorded spending to show up that they completely ignore whether that spending is actually producing anything of value. If people wisely move, in some area, to a more efficient "bartering of services", such as a babysitting co-op, that shows up as a sharp drop in consumption and thus GDP, yet has made everyone involved much better off. Add up imperfections like these, and you get a bunch of economics advocating the zombification of the economy by propping up obsolete businesses and business models, forever delaying meaningful recovery.
Pork, pork, pork (Score:1, Insightful)
As with yesterday's story [slashdot.org] we now begin to see the reality of the 'stimulus bill' - endless pork, pandering to special interests, and earmarks.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know anything about how cost effective the Hoover Dam or various bridges and public works projects have been in the past, but assuming that they _were_ cost effective, these are examples where "Creating Jobs" is a good thing that stimulates the economy in a good way, because it not only gives people money to spend, but it adds overall value to the system. The Hoover Dam added irrigation, water supply, and power, while bridges add lower transportation costs.
On the other hand, paying someone to sit like a night watchmen on P2P Networks or paying someone to replace the White House Carpet or repaint the ceilings doesn't really help anyone because nothing of value is being created. You're just shuffling money around, and its really no different economy-wise than just _giving away_ the money. People are going to spend it either way.
This isn't to say I don't support re-carpeting or re-painting the White House if it needs it, I am merely saying that the catch-phrase "creating jobs" doesn't do the system any good unless the jobs are worth doing.
Re:The mission, the people... (Score:3, Insightful)
...which just goes to show you exactly why horrible ideas like bailouts & stimulus can survive. "Well, as long as I might get a slice..."
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is everyone believing that "creating" a bunch of temporary jobs is good?
They are just throwing money around with hopes that it will do something. It wont. If it creates 30,000 jobs that last for 1 year it's simply going to cause a secondary aftershock in the economy.
Spend the money to create permanent real solutions instead of this, "OMG!OMG! hurry spend money! HURRY!" thing they are doing now
I personally wished they would have not even voted on the damn thing until May and took the time to make it right. They rush this crap and then it always ends up a half assed cluster fornication that does nothing for anyone but a bunch of in people that helped pen the damned thing.
Plus the Republicans are as bad as the Dems on this, both sides have thrown in bullshit riders on the bill to turn it into a money-grab for pet interests. I so wish the president had line item veto so he could strike off all the crap that rides on things like this.
Create a real IT-CERT system that has real experts not some useless CIO or CTO and let them advise the country on IT needs. Kind of like the Surgeon General. But an IT-General that actually has degrees and active knowledge in IT and CS.
Re:I know, right? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I know, right? (Score:2, Insightful)
Awww. False dichotomy win?
Palin/Romney 2012! I'll take leaders who believe that the earth is 6,000 years old for $200, Alex.
The sad thing is, you probably really believe what you just posted is actually true.
Because it sure isn't like news media to deliberately paint an inaccurate picture of any candidate, now is it?
Or are you too brain-addled to remember "fake-but-accurate"?
And FWIW, I'd rather have someone in charge who believes wrongly about irrelevant things like how old the Earth is than some pandering twit who things he can tax and spend his way out of a recession despite all evidence to the contrary.
Re:I know, right? (Score:2, Insightful)
Regurgitation is not intelligence. Knowing the facts does help. Anyone can repeat the definitions of a Republic and a Democracy. What's interesting is that you said, "we can get back to the idea that growth and prosperity are driven by PEOPLE pursuing 'self interest rightly understood.'" You're absolutely right, but that's a democratic ideal, not a republican one in the classical sense. Remember, people advocated a republic instead of a democracy because they thought slaves, women, and non-land owners were too stupid and not invested enough to be allowed to vote.
Furthermore, I looked up the quote. Did you read the rest of that paragraph?
"The Americans, on the other hand, are fond of explaining almost all the actions of their lives by the principle of self-interest rightly understood; they show with complacency how an enlightened regard for themselves constantly prompts them to assist one another and inclines them willingly to sacrifice a portion of their time and property to the welfare of the state." --Alex de Tocqueville
How did you end up believing the exact opposite of what that quote actually meant? I actually already know. Through propaganda, the same talking heads have convinced people that Adam Smith was against government regulation of markets, which is exactly the opposite of what he wrote. They have convinced low income midwesterners that cutting the taxes for the rich will somehow result in a better economy for them. They have even convinced people that the separation of church and state was invented to protect the church, despite the backdrop of hundreds of years of religious wars waged by nations against each other.
The alliance between the evangelical voting bloc and the party of business is falling apart. It's too embarrassing for any critically thinking Republican to be associated with Sarah Palin. That's why the talking heads went nuts when it was pointed out, very plainly, that she was simply too ignorant to be the vice president. Evangelicals are learning that they have been hoodwinked for the past thirty years. They were needed for their vote and their money, but not their intellectual contributions.
As far as your hatred of Carter, that's a pretty standard parroting. I'd be interested if you could name any specific policies that you believe led to the economic conditions of that era.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
The Republicans mandated that the GSEs make bad loans so poor minorities could end up in houses they couldn't afford?
Re:The mission, the people... (Score:3, Insightful)
Problem with education is that it isn't really the system's fault. Since the Apollo program ended in the 70s it hasn't been "cool" to try to do well in school, be motivated towards science and math, etc. The education system has for the most part recognized this and is trying to stay relevent to the current generation. Too bad, really.
You see, in their striving for "relevence" they pretty much accepted the idea that the education system is a waste of time for most of the people in it. OK, not every child is going to go on to a PhD in math. But what they have done is decided that if they push too hard the kids will drop out at 12 instead of 16. And there is no support from the parents, who now have grown up with a system with minimal requirements.
So do the schools start down a path of stricter requirements and just locking the kids into such a program? Hard to do with the culture frowns on intellectual achievement and decides it is OK if most people opt out of "brain work". China has a culture of high intellectual expectations among the middle class and parents strongly discipline children so they understand what is expected of them. Are Chinese teenagers as much "fun" as American teenagers? I doubt it. So it goes.
More nations die of national debt than (Score:1, Insightful)
Any other cause. The ultimate cause may be a revolution or war, but the fundamentals of these are very often national debt.
One of the very repeatable relationships in economics is the inverse relationship between national growth rate and "total government burden", the sum of taxes and regulations. 100s of studies have confirmed this: get gov out of the way, the nation prospers. Let it start growing, the economy slows, eventually dies.
The US is way over the edge: we haven't generated enough jobs for 20 years, have hidden the problem with rising disability payments and early retirements.
Re:I know, right? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone can repeat the definitions of a Republic and a Democracy. Remember, people advocated a republic instead of a democracy because they thought slaves, women, and non-land owners were too stupid and not invested enough to be allowed to vote.
I see you have been properly indoctrinated by one of the progressive schools. Your argument makes no sense with regards to the form of government, since they *still* could have formed a democracy, just set land-owning white men as the only voters. A Republic means that *every person* is sovereign. It means that the plurality, or the collective, or whatever you call it *cannot* impose its will on individuals, because individuals are sovereign, and their rights are *inherent*, not granted by the state, as you would like it to be.
Furthermore, I looked up the quote. Did you read the rest of that paragraph?
"The Americans, on the other hand, are fond of explaining almost all the actions of their lives by the principle of self-interest rightly understood; they show with complacency how an enlightened regard for themselves constantly prompts them to assist one another and inclines them willingly to sacrifice a portion of their time and property to the welfare of the state." --Alex de Tocqueville
How did you end up believing the exact opposite of what that quote actually meant?
You have missed an important part of the quote: the "willingly to sacrifice a portion of their time and property" part. It's an important distinction. You seem to think that congress spending other people's money that they confiscate at gunpoint somehow as generosity or compassion. That, however, is corrupt self-interest rather than the "self-interest rightly understood" that motivates people to help their neighbor. Take a look at New Orleans today. Compare the federal programs involved in repair and renovation to the Habitat for Humanity (kudos to Carter for his involvement there, BTW) and other private programs. Which ones are working?
Just how did you get such a twisted viewpoint of reality?
I actually already know. Through propaganda,
Ah, of course. Your state-run education and the drooling-over-socialism mainstream media.
They have convinced low income midwesterners that cutting the taxes for the rich will somehow result in a better economy for them.
Sigh. You're like a parrot. It's really about what drives the economy. Is it government confiscating money from private citizens to spend it on a $40 billion program that benefits a few, or is it people deciding for themselves how to invest their money? History is pretty clear that government is wasteful, corrupting, fraught with inefficiency, and produces absolutely $0 in new wealth.
As far as your hatred of Carter, that's a pretty standard parroting. I'd be interested if you could name any specific policies that you believe led to the economic conditions of that era.
First, presidents don't really have a lot of impact on the economy. They can either interfere (FDR) or get out of the way (Reagan). This can have some impact, but none have had the kind of impact that FDR's ruinous policies did.
Still, Carter's policies were horrible: