We have the technology, but so do they....in the event that there is a cyber attack, the idea is that the US army be able to take over your computer for the greater good of the country. However, if we compare ourselves to our bigger cousins, China...we pail in that comparison.
China could easily afford to have 250 million machines to node together into a massive botnet, sort of what we have seen the likes of with that virus STORM. We probably could accomadate 10 million machines, if there are that many infected with a special malware the army created.
There are also those special organisations..like google...that allow you to donate your cpu cycles for a special reason (like doing cancer stem cell research) which in the end makes us feel like we are doing our part, but who says that those mega machines are not infected with the same virus or worm, thereby coming back full circle as if you had the malware installed on your pc.
We match our 10 million to their 250 million, and we have to wonder...is this why we are login the cyber war??? What can we do differently, or better, to make sure this type of thing does not happen.
I would recommend something along the lines of an organised committee, that analyses the current threat that countries may pose based on their advanced techonlogy or access to...and formulate a way to moderate a country's progress. Let's say for example Africa was starting a special project to get some computers into schools.... this would be classified as mundane.
If you took a third world country that just finished purchasing special servers that allow multi processing of complex nature, sort of what you need to use to guide missles...well then we would have to review the background of where that hardware was going, and account for its presence at all times.
In the case of a botnet, it is the sum of the small parts that make the whole...does that mean we should limit the amount of computers allowed...or limit the connectivity of those computers to internet access...or anything that might put a small dent into that armor?
Who is to say, but it is something to think about in the years to come, especially now that we are seeing more and more cyber threats surfacing and making theirpresence known. ID Fraud, CC fraud, email scams....spamming, omg spamming! Just food for thought.
The fact of the matter is that all extremist groups have been observed, not merely for the last few months or even years, but for decades, in order to assess the degree of threat each group might - or might not - pose. Yes, there were abuses of this process, the most notable being J. Edgar Hoover's actions regarding Martin Luther King, however, I've not seen that there has been *any* consistent policy of "shying away from" groups of one or another political ideology - what matters is whether a group poses a threat to the populace and/or members of the Government. One of the *fastest* ways to gain the immediate attention of the FBI (and most likely the Secret Service as well) is to make public threats against the President's life or well-being. This has been the case for as long as there was any government organization dedicated to the security of the President and the People.
So, why should anyone really care if extemists complain about this attention? Frankly, attention, ANY sort of attention, is precisely what many of them want, and the majority are satisfied with having their conspiracy theories "proven" by such attention. That is not opinion; that is fact. For a small minority, however, violent action remains the main goal, and this small minority is the threat that warrants investigation.
The only thing the mystifies me is, Why do the media outlets feel so compelled to air the irrational paranoia of people who refuse to accept that there are consequences for actions such as threatening the life of ANY President, or such as committing or even promoting public violence? If someone commits a robbery, and is arrested and tried, that’s considered Justice. If your neighbor threatens to kill you, that is a crime and he can be arrested and tried for it, and the is considered Justice. So why do people imagine they can threaten the life of a duly-elected President or other member of the government, or threaten to harm random members of the general populace, and be permitted to do whatever their free-floating anger desires, yet have a free pass to do so, merely because they claim these threats, or violent actions against individuals, are "political protest"? The plain fact is that some crimes are simply that: crimes. We have the Right to Freedom of Association and Freedom of Assembly, and to engage in peaceful political protest. But threats, beatings, destruction of property, and other personal crimes are simply that: crimes.
Fear Mongering exposed by Mr. Sherman on CSPAN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnbNm6hoBXc
(Yup, the House did pass it, and it was signed.)
Why make a threat like that????
Until later,
EMK
It has become obvious now that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq in first place and stayed in focus in Pakistan and Afghanistan where the real threat was and still is. As the situation gets worse in Afghanistan and the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the International Security Force (NATO) and the US have realized that the focus should be put back in that region.
Sometimes I am trying to understand why we changed our focus from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Iraq when we knew that that terrorists are getting their trainings from Afghanistan/Pakistan area, receive their educations from the schools (madrassas) in Pakistan, mostly mobilized in Pakistan/Afghanistan, the leadership of the terrorists hang out around those borderless area, attack the US bases and Nato forces inside Afghanistan, and much more... but we still decided NOT to focus in that area instead we have created another recruiting center in Iraq- it simply doesn't make sense.
Refocusing in Afghanistan and Pakistan may not be as easy ride as we had the opportunity after we drove the Taliban (Afghan/Pakistani extremist, ISI Influence, and Al Qaida group) out of Afghanistan. We may even need much more resources and greater support of the NATO to get us just where we were 6 years ago in Afghanistan. As our attention was in Iraq, the so called "democratic elected Afghan government", has been transformed to a corrupt entity that has lost the support of its people and the "hope" of a better tomorrow is getting deminished in Afghanistan. We have lost the support and the excitement that we had generated among the Afghan people after the defeat of Taliban and Al Qaida six years ago, but we have no other option than focusing back in a region where the terrorist initially planned and attacked us on 9/11.
I believe strongly that Barack Obama has a better idea on keeping us safe. He has repeatedly requested that we should focus in Afghanistan and Pakistan and send more troops in Afghanistan.He will focus in Pakistan and Afghanistan where the real threat was and still is when he is the President of the United States of America.
Despite all my efforts, I didn't make it to Invesco Field for the truly historic event Thursday night. I'd been in Denver all week, not as a delegate but as member of the DNC's Veterans and Military Families Council which I addressed briefly Tuesday afternoon, telling of my son's "homecoming" from war, shortchanged by a military budget cut that left room for no-bid contract payouts, but not for welcome home receptions for our troops.
I hung out with veterans all week at Coors Stadium, thanks to sponsorship by ALPA (Airline Pilots Association), VETPAC, and other organizations that played host to the constituents that ensure free speech, security for our nation, and ultimately, support of the tenets of our Constitution. On Thursday afternoon, I was about to take possession of tickets for myself and a fellow military mom to be at Invesco Field when a military spouse whose husband is deployed to Iraq as a Helicopter Pilot inserted herself into the negotiation. I couldn’t refuse her plea and we hung out at Coors Field, watching the speech on the Jumbotron, kicking ourselves for missing it.
The overarching theme of the week's events within our venue was "Team Obama/Biden" are a slam dunk in terms of National Security, Foreign Policy, Military Affairs and Veterans Affairs.
I heard tell that in his four years in the Senate, Barack Obama, who serves on the Veterans Affairs Committee, as well as the Foreign Relations Committee, has introduced or co-sponsored more legislation in support of veterans than Sen. McCain has in his entire career in the Senate. Inexplicable, when you consider McCain is a vet. When I get my act in better gear, I'll post links to the legislation.
See more about some of the high-name folks that support Obama/Biden below.
There is a huge amount of discussion in this campaign on the topic of foreign relations and military experience. Much of it comes from the McCain camp in an attempt to equate age with ability and existence with judgment. The discussion is what it is - an attempt to make points from nothing.
Foreign Relations
Aside from early exposure to the existence of other nations, peoples and cultures, Barack has a degree from Columbia University with a major in international relations. Some pretty sound knowledge on which to base any future decisions. Senator McCain's foreign relations experience was gained from an in-depth understanding of how low people can sink in times of war.
When choosing who might best deal with the world outside America - and a large world it is - voters must decide whether they feel America's interests will be better served by educated reason, or by instant violence.
Should Hillary's famous 3:00 am phone call ring at the White House, does America want to be forcefully persuasive as Barack clearly is or does America want to kill off another few thousand young people in a protracted war with no apparent criteria for success?
Military Experience
Senator McCain's military experience is lengthy time-wise, and, yes, he proved himself a better man than most under the worst of conditions. But when examined in the context of a potential President, McCain has little more depth of experience than George W. Bush. Graduating in the bottom 1% of his class, McCain's command experience was limited to a training squadron.
A Commander-in-Chief must consider more than the immediate, must lead more than a small tactical group, and must seek advice from many. In this context Senator McCain's experience is less applicable; a "maverick" style perilous.
Threats to America
The only outside military threat to America comes from waging all-out war with a fellow nuclear power. Only Russia and China are capable, and neither has any desire to do so, despite George W. Bush's adolescent Russia-baiting and Senator McCain's labeling China as an enemy. Real physical threats to America are limited to violent acts by small terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda.
While George W. Bush wastes money, lives and time in Iraq, al-Qaeda's leader is free to plot again. John McCain implies his big change will be to focus on Iran. For some odd reason, no Republican seems to make bringing the architect of the World Trade Center attacks to justice a priority.
America is safest with a leader who thinks first.
Hello to all potential Obama Event attenders, I have been thinking about this idea of enhanced security for some time and talking about it on rare occasions. Now seems like a great time to SPAM the thoughts to lots of people. Professional agents like the Secret Service can prevent nearly any possibility of harm to those they protect. The media and the blog world has been talking about the one possibility that they can't stop; the "Lone Wolf." This type of threat is hard for a professional to detect because their thoughts and plans are likely to be completely personal, thus undetectable. The pro's can do amazing things with geometry and physics to detect any potential long range attack, or stealthy approach. Mapping communication links allows them to guess who is connected to organized threats, and track the movement of the known players of insurgency. I don't believe they can effectively play the "Where is Waldo" game by scanning our massive crowds to find a potential Lone Wolf who looks just like the rest of us. That's where we the normal people come in. Early in the primaries when we began to discuss this idea, I suggested attendees of events perform acts of confrontation and heroism should a perpetrator brandish a weapon. Recently I thought security against the potential Lone Wolf doesn't need to be so dramatic. Any potential Lone Wolf would be playing the part of a hunter and their camouflage would be pretending to be at the event like we are, but unlike us they would be in total focus on one goal just like a hunter. It would be a terrible problem for them if they were constantly distracted. Since all the attendees that show up for honorable reasons will be friends in spirit or otherwise, their should be nothing wrong with talking to everybody near you even though you never met before. Who could possibly be against a friendly & light conversation at an event? A Lone Wolf would be against light conversation; it would be totally distracting and ruin their hunt. So if you attend a event where the Pros are already on duty, you should be looking around for people that look disconnected, alone, or just out of place and engaging them with a smile and a friendly comment. The upside of this security through noise and connectivity is you have the potential to prevent a wrongdoing without even knowing it. The downside to this is you may meet somebody that you really don't agree with and isn't fun to talk to. Think of how happy the Pros would be to have between 20,000 and 75,000 motivated and unpaid volunteers helping with security. I think this would also inadvertently fit with the Obama plan for strengthening communities; talking to strangers improves a community (don't tell children I said that). If you think this is a good idea, feel free to send it to those you think should read it but haven't gotten it yet.
Sincerely,Michael Ruppaka:WNYmathGuy
Obama yesterday:
"Through its nuclear program, missile capability, meddling in Iraq, support for terrorism, and threats against Israel, Iran now poses the greatest strategic challenge to the United States in the region in a generation."
Huh?! Obama is going off the deep end on Iran in his campaign Nascarization and quixotic quest for the Florida Jewish vote. He has essentially reversed his position on talking to Iran - no one will want to talk to you if you keep spitting in their face. "Greatest strategic challenge..in a generation"? He's giving hyperbole a bad name! We face much greater strategic challenges in repairing our global brand, keeping our middle class standard of living where it has been in this flattening world, dealing with an energy-intensive lifestyle, and finding the political will to mitigate climate change.
Did Jesse Jackson's emasculating jibe make Barack think he needed to show he still had a pair?
I'm not sure what gives us the moral right to make the demands from Iran we have been making. Some questions on basic fairness on the four problems he has with Iran:
Nuclear program
I don't like any country getting nukes, but where do we get off our hypocritical pontificating? If we could live with a nuclear Soviet Union - guess what - we and Israel - can live with a nuclear Iran. Despite what Obama and our politicians have to say.
- We have thousands of nukes and have actually used them in combat on civilian populations. Why does another nation have less rights than us to have nukes?
- We have no problem with a country having nukes in the Mideast, as long as it's not a Muslim country. Does that make us racist? Israel has 150-200; would they give theirs up if all Middle Eastern countries and Iran agreed to no nukes?
- North Korea flouted the NPT and was never threatened with what we/Israel are threatening Iran with
- Didn't our NIE discover they had stopped their program in 2003?
- Why don't we allow them to enrich uranium as much as they want under UN monitoring, as long as they stick to their existing pledge not to weaponize? Some countries want to know that they can actually pull off some technological feat - like Pakistan and India - and South Africa deweaponized after actually developing nukes
- Shouldn't we pay more attention to a country that (1) has nukes and (2) is home to the al Qaeda leadership, instead of a country that is using the nuclear issue to show off their independence, new status, technological prowess and machismo - and has no nukes? Did the Iraq imbroglio happen that long ago? Saddam kept things ambiguous to save face. We underestimate how much appearances mean.
Missile capability
- Did Iran sign some pact to not enhance its military prowess?
- How would we react if a politician of a country on the other side of the planet objected to our testing our missiles on our soil?
- Would we ever ask Israel to not test their missiles or step back from signalling with refuelling wargames in the Mediterranean?
Support for Terrorism
- He's on more solid ground here, but just because we call Hezbollah a terrorist group officially, it doesn't mean they've brought more terror on civilians than we have in that region. Our initiative led to the death of a million civilians in Iraq. See my blog for the bodycounts.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/marklevin
- We've been arming militias in Iraq and so has Iran - there's a symmetry here
- Iran-Hamas links are tenuous; a Shiite-Sunni divide exists and the support is necessarily more moral than logistical given Gaza's isolation
Threats against Israel
- We clearly don't derive any strategic benefit from our embrace of Israel, so Israel should be as important as any ally to us - like UK or Japan - but not more than that - but yes, politically it does matter in this election because enough people believe protecting Israel from all potential adversaries is right after our national security
- Ahmadinejad, the source of our fear, is closer to the power of our freshmen Senators when it comes to military affairs. He is not their commander-in-chief - that is the role of the Supreme Leader. From Wikipedia: "commandment of the armed forces and declaration of war and peace, remain in the hands of the Supreme Leader."
- We have popularized his statements in the most sinister way to paint him like a new Hitler; I think he's 1% as evil as Saddam ever was - at most. "Wiping Israel off the map" is not a call for genocide. Wikipedia: According to Juan Cole (most experts agree with him), "Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to 'wipe Israel off the map' because no such idiom exists in Persian". Instead, "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse."
Hmm...wanting regime change! Have we ever expressed such views about other countries? Should we be bombed for that or have to stop enhancing our weaponry? We condemn Iran for wanting the area to be secular and not Jewish, but would we ever condemn the PM of the UK with this vehemence and accuse him of signalling genocide if he criticized Muslim countries for not being secular states? That said, I think Ahmadinejad is just not very well read, if he still thinks that what happened in the gassing of Jews, Gypsies and undesirables by Hitler is an open question.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel
An ignorant leader who is not their commander-in-chief is not enough of a reason for us to participate in or tacitly condone Israeli airstrikes. That we're even talking about it or how Obama is saber-rattling shows how dumb as a country we've become. Stupid leaders exist everywhere. Should we be bombed for having Dubya? Should South Africa be bombed for Mbeki who doesn't believe that HIV causes AIDS?
I'm playing Devil's advocate here to some degree.
Once again, Hillary Clinton is at the center of sending out very inappropriate political and this time "threatening" messages about Senator Obama, this time saying that what happened to RFK (assassination) could also happen to Senator Obama. Could this be a threatening message to Obama? A coded message for a fanatic to target Obama? After all, this is how Osama Bin Laden gives his orders!
A few weeks ago, it was the slip up referring to "working class white people" not liking Obama, where after that comment Obama oddly received a very very low percentage of white working class votes in Kentucky. There's even a Clinton supporter in KY threatening to run a campaign to get KY democrats to vote for McCain should Obama be nominated. And oddly, this woman seems like a religious right surrigate than a democrat.
Last year, it was the rumors from Clinton's campaign saying Obama is a Muslim, with her very unconvincing answer in the debate that she knows Obama to be a Christian and not a Muslim.
In each case she appolized, but got a big boost from the dirty tactic. So - is this latest reference to RFK a direct threat to Obama or even a cue to an anti-Obama fanatic to take him out? Should the FBI be looking into this??
As reported in many circles, Hillary Clinton's "Fat Cat" supporters sent a not-so-subtle threat to Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her comments that the superdelegates should NOT overturn the pledged delegates. As reported in Reuters and elsewhere, these are big, moneyed supporters of Senator Clinton who apparently like to throw their weight around.
Their threat to Pelosi seems to be, "back off your democratic notions and let the party bosses (i.e. people we can more easily influence with our money) decide who gets the nomination."
Apply Tobin Tax of .0006 to all Federal Reserve transactions
(This allows an end to all individual income taxes and increase revenue for social needs)
IRS gets same books as stockholders
"True Costs" up front and published
Cannot win a "war" against a "tactic"
Law enforcement can resolve this
Too much on military, not enough on aid
Clild slavery
Child prostitution
By name kidnapping
Muder for body parts
