The Conservative Front

An AP story today details Barak Obama’s plans to set up a new bureaucracy around the need for greater cybersecurity.

User beware!

If the fate of Chrysler and GM are any indication of Obama’s modus operandi, the computer industry should be in fear for it’s very life.

“It’s now clear this cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation,” Obama said, adding, “We’re not as prepared as we should be, as a government or as a country.”

In now predictable fashion, Obama is creating a crisis around computer and network security, elevating it to the level of a national security risk. Despite the hyperbole, most computers, even if infected with viruses, are not a national security risk. Obama is using this crisis, as he has done with so many other issues before, to expand government power and control over the lives of citizens.

With most any anti-virus software (I recommend AVG Free for home users), the danger of being infected is minimal if a few common sense guidelines are followed.

• Don’t open email messages from people you don’t know, especially if it includes attachments.
• If you receive email from someone you do know that includes an attachment, if the content of the message looks different from their previous communications to you, trash it. You can always get them to resend it.
• Don’t visit questionable web sites. These include any sites that promise free downloads of software you would normally have to buy, game cheat codes, or porn sites.

Hackers use sites like these to attract unwary visitors. Sites like these often contain malware which gets automatically installed to your computer, usually without you even being aware of it. A little caution goes a long way to keeping your computer under your control.

Ostensibly, the new Cyber Czar will oversee how government bureaucracies use their budgets to keep their computer systems and networks updated and hardened against usch threats.

He assured the business community, however, that the government will not dictate how private industry should tighten digital defenses. And he made it clear that the new cyber security effort will not involve any monitoring of private networks or individual e-mail accounts.

Unfortunately, Obama’s plan is being seen by many “experts” as not going far enough to effectively deal with the problem.

Overall, computer company executives and members of Congress hailed Obama’s announcement as a good first step, while warning that there is much hard work still to be done.

“Because the private sector owns and operates the vast majority of our nation’s critical infrastructure, government and business have a shared responsibility to defend our networks,” said Ann Beauchesne, vice president of national security at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

That essentially means this will be open for discussion at a future date, when a new cyber crisis looms.

Obama says he wants the Internet to remain open and free, but if the content being passed on the Internet was deemed a national security threat, it is only logical to assume that the free nature of the Internet will lose its appeal among the power-brokers.

Another concerns is that if the Progressives in Congress succeed in passing a new version of the Fairness Doctrine, and effectively silence talk radio, the next best avenue for the delivery of that content is the Internet. Most radio talk show already stream their shows live on the Internet. And there has already been talk of creating a sort of Fairness Doctrine for the Internet, which would have the same effect.

After all Obama has said, in light of everything he has done, can we really afford to believe him anymore when he says he doesn’t want control of private computer IT systems and personal email accounts? Remember, he said that about the auto industry. And in the mind of a Progressive, the end always justifies the means.