UK Parliament suddenly remembers it wants to bone up cyber security *cough* Russia *cough* The UK parliament launched an inquiry into cyber-security on Tuesday. The investigation by MPs and peers follows weeks after the UK government committed to spending £1.9bn between 2016 and 2021 as part of an update to the UK’s National Cyber Security Strategy. Protecting critical national infrastructure organisations ( …
"Look! We are doing something! It costs a lot so it must be good stuff."
Yes, and this time there will be few there to slow down idiots from blowing yet again a Godawfully full trough of tax payer's money on sh*t that doesn't work but will help fund some people's new yacht and/or retirement.
I wonder if the NAO gets rigged again without anyone noticing so it all passes audit. I personally I found that the most impressive thing tax wasters got away with.
....for massive wrangling with service providers tasked with providing some vague idea written on a post it note by a junior intern who's good with that Apple Mac thing he carries around for "That cyber security stuff I keep reading about in the Daily Mail" with constantly changing goalposts (By the customer of course) ending in nothing useful being achieved except a website (maybe) and a database and huge waste of expenditure of taxpayers money.
Did I miss anything?
Their recent legislation presented on The Register is several years ahead of us.
I especially like the criminal liability for senior management for companies designated as critical infrastructure who fail to implement proper cybersecurity. We should copy it (as well as opening a few settlements in the outer Hebrides for the aforementioned criminals to spend their terms).
We will reach the same conclusions as them and implement it. +/- some screaming about it being non-democratic, howling monkeys in the Daily Mail and so on. Then we will just cut-n-paste it and do the same. Same as with the Internet surveillance (Putin did it first thing after coming to power and, by god, did the monkeys howl loudly at the time...).
"Damn, I wouldn't mind getting on this gravy train... any easy ways in?"
only at a local level. On May 4th, you can apply to start climbing the lower rungs of the greasy pole that is this gravy train.
(I tried to get in as many mixed metaphors as average MP's hustings speeches, but i'm so far out of their league .... )
In India? China? Russia? It won't be the UK. Probably wont even be via a UK company - most likely a French or German 'consultancy'. The real losers as normal are the those paying their taxes to employ the said Indians/Chinese/Russians, support the fat cat managers of the consultancy AND paying unemployment to unemployed Brits...
Oh well, situation normal.
Sorry but how is Russia the bad guy when Podesta's IT guy said a dodgy GMail password email was legit (should've said it wasn't) and the Democrats allowed their most high profile to have their own email systems dealing with party specific subjects?
We're literally being set up for another "Saddam has WMD's we need WAR WAR WAR" again.
Russia is the bad guy because the Democrats needed someone to blame when their dirty laundry appeared online. And now it's all the Dems have in the fight against their triumphant antagonist, so they're doubling down repeatedly on that fable. Okay, they're basically risking war with Russia in doing so, but Trump must be stopped!!
Besides, it probably won't happen...
No, Russia is the bad guy because it invaded and partly occupied Moldavia (Transnistria), Georgia (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) and Ukraine (Crimea), and it continues to destabilize Ukraine and Baltic States.
It's funny to see all these US Republicans fond of Russia, with a special admiration for a former KGB operative... Russia may have won the cold war after all.
"No, Russia is the bad guy because it invaded and partly occupied Moldavia (Transnistria), Georgia (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) and Ukraine (Crimea), and it continues to destabilize Ukraine and Baltic States."
Oh, a bit like what America has been doing since the 60's? Guam, Guatamala etc. But let's come further forward, the US has been bombing the shit out of the middle east for 10 years, and it just so happens the US and UK owned companies are doing pretty darned well out of that situation. Syria? Let's not get started on that.
But Big John makes a good point, something which has been lost. The leaks of the emails exposed corruption within the Clinton Foundation. Jesus there's even an email chain between Podesta and others within the foundation and the DMC regarding Chelsea Clinton's questioning of where certain payments from the foundation were ending up, with Podesta even asking "How do we shut her up?".
Follow the money, as they say. Because the money sure as hell doesn't end up in Moscow.
Guam
Guam is a US territory since 1898.
Anyway, how many lands were annexed by the US recently? How many democratic countries were dismembered by the US Army? How many so-called "Republics" with no international recognition created after an American military occupation? How many journalists killed or in jail in the US? How many opponents to the US killed by polonium poisoning or any other mean?
the money sure as hell doesn't end up in Moscow.
"Anyway, how many lands were annexed by the US recently? How many democratic countries were dismembered by the US Army? How many so-called "Republics" with no international recognition created after an American military occupation? How many journalists killed or in jail in the US? How many opponents to the US killed by polonium poisoning or any other mean?"
I love you, you point out Guam but totally skip over Guatamala.
What about the shit show in Syria? What about the shit show in Iraq? Afghanistan? The continuing shit going on with Saudi Arabia? To say it's fine because you brought "freedom" to a people who have lived under a dictatorship is an insult. Many of those in Afghanistan are now so dependent on heroin due to the explosion in poppy field production that there is a generation lost because of it. Why? Well didn't the Taliban surpress the growing of poppies. But hey, no more dictators so heroin addiction MUST be good?!
But no. The big bad Ruskis they're the baddun's aren't they.
We will spent this ridiculous amount of money in stuff that will add no value to citizens. That is really nice.
Will we finally protect e-mail, phone calls and things like that, that the other country's are taking advantage right now? Of course not! Protecting security and privacy of citizens is not the priority, staying in power is.
Maybe the spooks already do, but keep the public in the dark as its convenient to have a bogey man, in this case Russia to maintain the divide and conquer that's been in place since Roman times?
In the mean time exploiting the fundamental flaws of capitalism meaning businesses need to make profit so end up abandoning said products once sold & cash parted hands by not providing firmware updates let alone investing in unique username/passwords on IoT things as we saw in Oct 2015 when parts of the US and UK infrastructure were targeted seems to be a common tactic. Even when firmware updates are provided for a period of time after sale, it will have the effect of forcing people to keep buying into tech in order to stay secure, creating a dilemma for people, do they land fill their existing tech (think PC's without Secure Boot with Flame, Stuxnet, badBios, badUSB as the same evolving over the years suite of malware observed doing different things by different security experts) and then go without replacement device or choose to replace, or do they do nothing and facilitate the spooky hackers (spending tax payers money) doing this sort of thing?
You have to decide whats more important, that fancy gadget or putting food on the table, paying the mortgage or something else which forces you to think critically about your spending. After all if you are to do this security properly, you'd be running decent firewalls and vlan all your home devices in a bid to contain and isolate any possible threats under the sun whilst refitting your house with Cat5/6 to reduce the risk of attack from airborne communication or powerline network adaptor risks best seen on newbuild estates with standardised wiring.
"The investigation by MPs and peers follows weeks after the UK government committed to spending £1.9bn between 2016 and 2021 as part of an update to the UK’s National Cyber Security Strategy."
I have to ask this but are they hiring retards ('special-needs') to run their critical national infrastructure. That they would need to spend £1.9 billion on a project to figure out that it isn't a good idea to connect your critical national infrastructure directly to the Internet.
ps: soon, we'll have the cyber red hordes quaking in their spetsnazs.
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