The government buys from the cheapest bidder, the most vulnerable systems and networks belong to them because of their bidding and purchase policies that do not reflect the problems of the time. I am loath to believe much of anything they say or have to offer since it is usually to little and to late for their solutions. Draconian policy and creating jobs for themselves is their best product. -Henry ----- Original Message ---- From: Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> To: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 5:31:24 PM Subject: Re: potential hazards of Protect-America act Although I agree with almost every part of the paper, I disagree with the paper. I think the threats, risks and recommendations in the paper apply regardless of the country or local ordinances. If you eliminate all the parts of the paper discussing the Protect America Act, it doesn't change the technical parts of the paper very much. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/27/ST2008012702568.html> Keeping public networks secure is an interesting problem for every network operator world-wide. By its nature, no public network can really be highly secure. If your vendor claims it is, grab your wallet and run. Its probably a waste of resources to attempt to build the network to protect the user against everything or even a lot of threats. Yet the public network relies on user trust in its operation. I think it would be interesting to watch a debate between a intelligence tech and a repair tech about whose tools need to be more robust and reliable. I suspect they would both be very vocal about their needs. The public network handled the Y2K rollover, you can't say the same thing about some of the intelligence systems :-) So if you are a network operator, what can you do technically (since this is not a law list)? I think the paper suffers a bit from "CSI" or "24" dazzle, everyone expects a DNA printout in the last 2 minutes of the show will find the bad guy, Intelligence Support tradeshows are filled with overpriced pieces of gear. Its usually the simple stuff that gets you. Most networks are filled with so many diagnostic features, buying a second set of gear is usually for administrative not functional reasons.