Department of Homeland Security Funds Cyber-Pork
According to a recent article in eWeek, the Department of Homeland Security has spent $1.7 Billion on what amounts to cyber-pork.
eWeek reporters Caron Carlson and Paul F. Roberts note that the $1.7 Billion has bought the following since 2003:
- Daily briefings about cyber-related activities called US-CERT
- The launch of a public-private group to coordinate government and private responses to an IT emergency as part of President Bush's "national strategy to secure cyberspace."
- Sponsorship of the Blue Cascades II and Purple Crescent II regional tabletop cyber-exercises (role-playing crisis management games). (Ironically, Purple Crescent II did model a hurricane in Lousiana, for all the good the exercise did!)
- A "cyber guidance" bulletin to help government agencies address infrastructure protection plans
- The creation of a government forum to address incident responses to IT security issues
- The launch of MSISAC - Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center - to promote cyber-secuirty awareness using conference calls and webcasts
Now, it seems to me that I could have done all this stuff for a couple of thousand dollars, not the billions that the Department of Homeland Security is spreading around as cyber-pork. But the real questions are:
- Who is all this money for nothing going to? (and whose cronies are they?)
- What could this money have bought if spent on our kids' educations?
- What business has the Department of Homeland Security with this nonsense when it can't deal with a disaster like Katrina?
A further observation: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its governing directorate (as it calls itself) manages to be both sinister (invading many aspects of our lives) and almost comically inept and wasteful. As concerned citizens, it is up to us to keep an eye on what this gang of "more-equal pigs" is up to (with a nod of my cap to George Orwell's Animal Farm).
Posted by Harold Davis at September 14, 2005 11:08 AM
