CYBERSECURITY STODGE CZAR STORMS OFF IN HUFF

Apparently, the pace of change from old stodge to new stodge has not been quick enough for some.

"The top White House aide for cybersecurity said she will resign following months of delays by the Obama administration in appointing a permanent director to oversee the safety of the nation's vital computer networks," reported el Reg here.

"Melissa E. Hathaway, told The Washington Post her last day would be August 21. Up to now, she had been considered a candidate for 'cybersecurity czar,' a post designed to give a single person authority for securing networks and infrastructure that serve the country's banks, hospitals and stock exchanges."

El Reg notes Hathaway lead the team which wrote the Obama administration's recent cybersecurity review, commented on by DD here at SITREP.

To review:

"Over the past decade, a great many US government officials have uttered similarly pleasing sounds [on cybersecurity]. Obama administration officials and advisors are no different ...

" 'The national dialogue on cybersecurity must begin today,' states the Obama administration's recent cyberspace policy review.

" 'People cannot value security without first understanding how much is at risk. Therefore the Federal government should initiate a national public awareness and education campaign informed by previous successful campaigns.'

"These are statements which sound good, but only superficially. Instead, they tend to really insult the intelligence of anyone who has followed US government campaigns to educate the public over risks from cyberspace in the past eight years.

"Fundamentally, the US government's 'education' on the issue has always boiled down to employing a small army of officials, as well as experts from the private sector, to convey dire messages: The country is so dependent on the networks, it can be turned off like a switch by a variety of enemies who choose to attack through cyberspace. The enemies can be nations we don't like, teenagers, disgruntled insiders, organized crime, or just crazy people."

This was the contribution of Melissa Hathaway's team. And it was not substantially different from past practices.

As leader, Hathaway was ultimately responsible for passing on an urban myth in Obama's report, one the President repeated in his coming out speech on cybersecurity. It was the hoary tale of unattributed foreign cities having their lights turned out by unattributed hackers from unnameable foreign lands.

DD has spent a couple months dinging the adminstration over its inclusion in briefings with reporters, noticeably starting here and in radio interviews conducted over the next couple of months. (See here for an excerpt transcript from the Background Briefing show on Radio Pacifica and here on Richard Chirgwin's 'A Series of Tubes' from Australia, as late as last week.)

In comments to Chirgwin and others, I made clear that I thought the authors of the Obama administration's cybersecurity review probably did not even care that one of their key examples of badness from cyberspace was crap. The 'lights out' vignette was used because it filled a standard need in these types of things -- the need to fix the attention of laymen and the easily gulled, of people who do not require substantive evidence when presented with extraordinary claims. In other words, it was meant to inspire forboding, a desire for hasty action, and to muddy rational, deliberate and critical thinking.

And it was evidence of business being conducted pretty much as usual in the worlds of risk and threat assessment.

If any of it had the result of slowing the Obama administration's appointment of a national "cyber czar," it's a good thing. However, I've no indication this was so.

"According to The Washington Post, Hathaway grew 'dismayed' by the delay and developed 'the sense that this was very political' because of her ties to former President George W. Bush."

In any case, it's no big loss.