A grab bag of commentary on a few stupid things today... White House "loses" emails (*cough*bullshit*cough*)... a new, interesting series from BBC on anti-Americanism (damn French)... shameless self-promotion through use of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (go Big Blue)...
1) The White House "accidentally" sent emails from their RNC accounts instead of their official .gov accounts, so those emails are lost and cannot be turned over in the investigation regarding US attorney firings. Yeah, right, it's all just a big mistake. "Oops, sorry, we didn't know we had to save _all_ communication - silly us." And the atechnical (or tech-illiterate, if you prefer) media just swallowed that line whole. Sheesh. Article here at CNN.com.
2) The BBC's Justin Webb is launching a 3-part series about anti-Americanism. In this intro article he traces the movement to France, of all places. Why? Because the French apparently think that democracy==elitism, rather than equality for all. This is the same country with deeply vested interest in Iran and previously deeply vested interest in Iraq -- which caused them to strongly oppose sanctions, invasion, etc., against both those countries. Hmmm... something stinks, and methinks it's not just spoiled brie.
3) I hate shameless self-promotion of products, especially ones that are ok, but not great, and especially in the security market (where I work). This article on CNN.com caught my eye because it's the VP of Internet Security Systems (nowadays owned by IBM) talking about his favorite "security cyberwar weapons" (could that be any cheesier?). Oh, guess what? Everything he recommends is a product line somewhere within IBM. What a coincidence. Lovely how this advertisement is so cleverly disguised as a legitimate "news" piece.
Are the tools listed potentially useful? Sure. Will it solve the problem? Probably not. Until the average user increases their IQ adequately to recognize scams, and then not fall prey to them, there's very little we in the industry can do. And, as Microsoft has shown with Vista, relying on big corps. to produce better, more secure software simply isn't going to do the trick. Despite investing millions in their Secure Development Lifecycle Process (SDL), Vista still has bugs that can be exploited. Is it better? Sure. Is it perfect? Nope. Can it be? Definitely not. Oh, well...
Oh, btw, added bonus from the Schneier files...
* There may only be a handful of spammer gangs, meaning successful dismantlement of the source may be feasible.
* And, surprise surprise, more reports of civilians being incorrectly labeled as terrorists.
