Decius wrote:
Both of these problems are elminiated by simply making this a private sector endevour motivated with the right economic incentives.

Which is what?

I agree with your initial surmising, but the fact that the President's hand is being forced on this indicates two things:

as you suggest, this is another lever in expanding surveillance powers by the state. My theory on this is that the end goal is "peace & security" through monitoring and tracking outcomes. Most crime is committed because there's simply a lack of expanded oversight and enforcement. All cops can't be everywhere all the time. This is a HUGE HUGE HUGE societal shift. (Just think the massive cycle that will be caused when speed limits are controlled through vehicle monitoring rather than police enforcement, bloating or killing the legalized extortion of writing tickets, completely rearranging the way police departments are funded, equipped, and deployed. And that's just one example!) There's no two ways about it. You either have more security or more privacy. The infantile methods of bringing about these infrastructures will not include the appropriate checks and balances and trust structures to ensure that they are not abused. THAT IS THE POINT!

Secondly, it points to the fact that cyber crime has now risen to be so prolific and systemic that it is threatening the very nature of our market driven economy. If there's no trust that assets are protected in our virtual world, then it undermines the entire system. For the last 10 years, this has been a cost of doing business. Identity theft? Simply raise our margins and fees to sweep the costs under the rug. But those costs are rising faster than organic margin growth and there's a ceiling on how much growth you need to continue to hide it. (There is a similar problem in health care with bad debt. It is a HUGE secret that will ultimately reveal itself in the next 12-24 months). You may not be able to get the Feds to centralize security, but you can be damn sure there is going to be some further regulation and licensing of what minimum standards are expected to protect data assets. Get ready for it.

Yes, it doesn't escape me that there's solutions to both problems which are readily available, but anyone who's spent five minutes in the technology industry knows that the most elegant solution rarely wins.

Ultimately, society is going to collide with the aftermath of the information revolution, which is, when everyone has access to all the information, then the truth becomes apparent. Our society is not built on truth. In fact, most of it is built on the evasion or arbitrage of truth.

RE: WSJ | Bush Looks to Beef Up Protection Against Cyberattacks