Posted on 03/07/2009 9:30:57 AM PST by Cicero
The buzz online today may have been about Robert Scoble's exit from Fast Company, but there's a major change afoot at the top of the NCSC: Rod Beckström, the director, has submitted his resignation to DHS head Janet Napolitano effective in one week (that is, Friday the 13th). The move comes after rumors of ferocious power struggles at NCSC, which Beckström has led since its inception last year.
The politics at DHS, which oversees NCSC, can't have been much fun for the co-author of The Starfish and the Spider, a book advocating for "the unstoppable power of leaderless organizations." In his resignation letter to Napolitano, Beckström cited his ongoing struggle to keep NCSC out of the clutches of the NSA (which is run by the Department of Defense rather than the civilian DHS and operations from the intelligence worldview rather than that of security professionals or network ops) and noted glumly that "during the past year the NCSC received only five weeks of funding, due to various roadblocks engineered within the department and by the Office of Management and Budget." (Image courtesy beckstrom.com)
Evidently Beckström believes the internet should be "leaderless," and I suspect that Obama and Napolitano disagree.
Also, the money sentence: "Beckström cited his ongoing struggle to keep NCSC out of the clutches of the NSA"
Those who were around during the clinton years will remember that the effort to search every message posted or emailed on the net for keywords was--and presumably still is--run out of the NSA.
Not sure if this should be in breaking news, but it does seem to touch on the key issue of government control of the web.
The Leader wants control. The US government trying to limit Internet access to those persons who are acceptable to Obama. Scary scenario.
Ping.
Not sure, but this brief announcement may be of concern to FreeRepublic, concerning pending government efforts to control the web.
ping
TIme to switch to ham radio when you hear of “massive proxy server famrs” being built to ‘help control internet traffic in an emergency’.
It’s all over then for certian.
You are right, I think, this could have grave implications for free speech in a society whose government has already expressed an interest in controlling speech on the Internet and on talk radio. Not to mention in the printed press in Ohio by its surrogates. This party, only one presidential cycle ago, sought to intimidate television stations showing a film critical of candidate John Kerry's Vietnam record.
I will be eager to see posts by knowledgeable FReepers who can explore the implications of this move.
Fascism Ping!
No wonder Jim Rob posted earlier today reminding us to watch our postings about the so called president.
“Regarding salty talk aimed at the president (or other officials) vs visits from the SS”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2200093/posts
Thanks for the article, Cicero, and thanks, Candor7.
See Cicero’s post #3, too.
Is FreeDominion accepting cross border refugees?
And when it does, you may at that point rest assured that Obama will only last for one (1) term.
Free Speech under assault," Your speech is nasty and mean and critical, we will ban it as hate speech!"
Bull Tail!
Yes, backhoe mentioned FD, so one time when FR was down, I registered there. They have a dedicated section for FReepers.
No need for conspiracy theories.
DHS has lost several leaders who were also entrepreneurs. I’d imagine they couldn’t stand the sluggish federal bureaucracy and its “unique” ways of “doing business”.
He’s not really a computer security guy either, unless I missed something on his resume.
As I said, I don’t know the players, so I don’t know how qualified he was.
But if I understand this correctly, his job was to direct IT people who would protect Americans against the threat of foreign or terrorist hackers. That’s quite different from the NSA, whose job is to identify possible spies or foreign agents—but which was used, under clinton, to identify people who were dissing clinton.
Go post that over on DU and see how they react. I'm not flaming you, just making the point that they were the ones that howled and whined and moaned about Bush and Rove personally monitoring their every key stroke right from the Oval Office. Your point, of course, went straight down the "memory hole".
Funny how that happens. Remember how Bush was destroying Clinton's balanced budgets, "deficits as far as the eye can see"? Again, go over to DU and take a look for all the enraged posts about Zero's massive deficits. You're going to be there a LONG time. I'd suggest an oxygen mask, given that you're going to the internet equivalent of a garbage dump.
>>>> his job was to direct IT people who would protect Americans against the threat of foreign or terrorist hackers. That’s quite different from the NSA, whose job is to identify possible spies or foreign agents <<<<<
Almost right.
The job of NSA also is to lead the DoD and the intel agencies in computer security.
The NSA charters several university programs in computer security; it is the nation’s research authority on cryptography; it has funded and been a consumer of supercomputing research for decades; etc etc etc.
You can start your research on NSA’s critical role in computer security with this very small tidbit from the Committee On National Security Systems here:
http://www.cnss.gov/history.html
“... the Committee on National Security Systems (CNSS). The Department of Defense continues to chair the Committee under the authorities established by NSD-42. This was reaffirmed by Executive Order 13284, dated January 23, 2003 .... in Connection with the Transfer of Certain Functions to the Secretary of Homeland Security.”
The move comes after rumors of ferocious power struggles at NCSC, which Beckström has led since its inception last year. The politics at DHS, which oversees NCSC, can't have been much fun for the co-author of The Starfish and the Spider, a book advocating for "the unstoppable power of leaderless organizations." In his resignation letter to Napolitano, Beckström cited his ongoing struggle to keep NCSC out of the clutches of the NSA (which is run by the Department of Defense rather than the civilian DHS and operations from the intelligence worldview rather than that of security professionals or network ops) and noted glumly that "during the past year the NCSC received only five weeks of funding, due to various roadblocks engineered within the department and by the Office of Management and Budget."
I heard Beckstrom speak at a security conference late last year. For someone who wasn’t as much a technical guy as you’d expect, he certainly grasped the “big picture” and was very dynamic. That, coupled with his emphasis on decentralization makes his loss a big one for our Country.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.