The resignation of the federal government's cybersecurity coordinator highlights a power struggle underway over how best to defend the government's civilian computer networks against digital attacks.

Rod A. Beckstrom resigned the post Friday after less than a year on the job, citing a lack of funding and the National Security Agency's tightening grip on government cybersecurity matters.

"He brought a completely different perspective, which in one way could have been his undoing," said a senior member of the intelligence community.

From last year's best-of:

Someone needed to bring it, so I brought it.

From the archive, a personal favorite:

The evidence suggests that from an executive perspective, the most desirable employees may no longer necessarily be those with proven ability and judgment, but those who can be counted on to follow orders and be good "team players."

From the documentation:

MemeStreams has a reputation system, which takes your perspective into account.

From Decius, in 2007:

It is our failure to avoid embracing fear and sensationalism that will be our undoing. We're still our own greatest threat.

Always the classic:

Is more what we really need?

A Struggle Over US Cybersecurity

This graph stuck out in big O's budget blueprint:

I didn't think it felt like much of a recovery...

Robert Levine, former deputy director at CBO:

The macroeconomic perils faced by the global economy are deeper and likely to last longer than those presented by the current financial crisis.

In most macroeconomic crises, the worst case -- depression or inflation -- is fairly clear, and modern policymakers have the tools at hand to cope. The worst case now may be both -- stagflation.

The following analysis begins with the Great Depression, then examines five subsequent periods. The final section makes some policy suggestions for escaping the worst effects. The conclusions are not optimistic.

The Great Depression brought the New Deal to the United States. It brought the rest of the world Nazism and universal war. This time, though, many nations have nuclear weapons.

"Maybe we could" is the limit of optimism in this paper. The world ahead looks difficult.

From 2005, Freeman Dyson:

It's very important that we adapt to the world on the long-time scale as well as the short-time scale. Ethics are the art of doing that. You must have principles that you're willing to die for.

From 2006, John Rapley:

As states recede and the new mediaevalism advances, the outside world is destined to move increasingly beyond the control -- and even the understanding -- of the new Rome. The globe's variegated informal and quasi-informal statelike activities will continue to expand, as will the power and reach of those who live by them. The new Romans, like the old, might not enjoy the consequences.

From 2008, Nir Rosen:

"You Westerners have your watches," the leader observed. "But we Taliban have time."

From last week:

A Pakistani court freed one of the most successful nuclear proliferators in history, Abdul Qadeer Khan, from house arrest on Friday, lifting the restrictions imposed on him since 2004 when he publicly confessed to running an illicit nuclear network.

The Dangerous Road Ahead

David Ross and Ed Colbert debate the copyright issues surrounding Shepard Fairey's Obama poster. (06:37)

This segment on the Colbert Report is one of the most clued discussions about a copyright matter I've ever seen on TV. If you follow copyleft issues, this is pure candy.

Obama Poster Debate - David Ross and Ed Colbert | February 12th | ColbertNation.com

A New York computer forensics firm found that 40% of the hard disk drives it recently purchased in bulk orders on eBay contained personal, private and sensitive information.

Recently, Decius wrote:

One must assume that all garbage is monitored by the state. Anything less would be a pre-911 mentality.

40% of hard drives bought on eBay hold personal, corporate data

The shotgun blast rips into the stray dog's midsection, sending it tumbling over and over. Agonizing yelps echo through the streets as it tries to reach and bite at the gaping wound. Minutes later, the dog is dead. Authorities have been killing the dogs since November, trying to prevent the spread of disease and attacks on residents.

This is the first headline story about Iraq I've seen on CNN in a long time... And it's about authorities shooting dogs.

wtf?

CNN.com - DOGS ARE DYING IN IRAQ!!!

This little town is in the dark and proud of it.

Where other places greet the night by lighting up their streets and tourist attractions, this one goes the other way — low-energy sodium lamps are shielded from above, and household lights must face down, not up.

The purpose: to bring out the stars.

The town of 830 people on New Zealand's South Island is on a mission to protect the sight of the night sky, even as it disappears behind light and haze in many parts of the world.

I really wish more places would do this. For us city dwellers, it's really hard to see a good night sky. And it's not like you can drive out of any given city and see a good sky either, because every little satellite town has a huge supermarket, gas station, or something that is casting out oodles of light. It's also wasted energy..

Is it too late to get this kinda pork in the stimulus bill?

ps-- Ok, really.. I'm going to try to start memeing regularly again.

New Zealand town is in the dark — and proud of it - Yahoo! News

This whole situation is quite interesting to me. Several years ago I gave a talk at PhreakNIC about how security researchers can make themselves a hard target to silence. Ironically, the video recorder malfunctioned about an hour before my talk, so there isn't a record of it.

From the looks of it, these guys planned this out well.. Verisign is just spinning this so they don't look like idiots. Don't see a valid argument that the security researchers were in any way unethical. I think concerns about Verisign attempting to obtain some kind of prior restraint on the researchers was completely warranted. Beyond that, given that the problem could be fixed long before their research could be replicated, no actual vulnerability was created by their disclosure.

Here is more information and commentary from Decius:

I previously commented on Verisign's incredulity at the fact that the researchers who produced a phoney SSL certificate didn't put them in the loop prior to public disclosure of their research.

It appears this incredulity has produced a bit of a debate. I'm linking Rob Graham who weighed in the subject:

The researchers behaved perfectly and responsibly. Their worry about being suppressed was justified, and their secrecy was an appropriate response. The very fact that Versign could quickly fix the problem in a day, but malicious hackers would need at least a month to replicate the feat, means that notifying Verisign ahead of time wasn't needed.

He links to a post from Alexander Sotirov who also took issue with Verisign's position:

In a recent post on his company blog, Verisign's vice president of marketing Tim Callan commented on the disclosure of our MD5 collision attack:

VeriSign did not receive any of [the] information ahead of the actual presentation, rendering it impossible for us to begin work on mitigating this issue prior to this morning.

I feel that this statement is inaccurate. Not only did we contact Verisign before our presentation to let them know about our research, we also strongly advised them to stop using MD5 as soon as possible and were given a chance to review their mitigation plans.

Callan responded in the thread on his blog.

Here are the facts as I understand them.

- The "trusted intermediary" was under a strict NDA with you and didn't feel it could reveal anything that was actually actionable or useful. Your NDA prevented the intermediary from telling us what would be announced, by whom, or when.

- You... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

Errata Security: Versign's Bad Response to the MD5-SSL Crisis

one must assume that all garbage is monitored by the state. Anything less would be a pre-911 mentality. - Decius

I just wanted to make sure this quote was taken out of context and forever remembered...

The State and Your Garbage

This collection is very interesting. Don't miss part 2 and part 3.

The year 2008 in photographs (part 1 of 3) - The Big Picture - Boston.com