Within the context of the Defense Authorization, a few points of the Department of Defense’s campaign to describe what they believe their cyberwar policy to be stick out. First, it envisions preparatory actions–basically spying on a presumably non-belligerent adversary’s infrastructure to map out how DOD would launch a cyberattack if the time came.

On the first news day after the holiday weekend reporting on Lockheed Martin, WSJ reports that the US is moving towards making cyberattacks an act of war.

The top cybersecurity guy at DHS, Phil Reitinger, announced his resignation today. Which is pretty odd, given that Obama just rolled out his cybersecurity strategy a few days ago.

It’s becoming an obsession for me, this disinterest in fixing gaping holes in our network security even as the Administration claims Bradley Manning’s alleged leak could be a capital offense. If this stuff is so damned secret, plug the fucking holes!

Two and a half years after privatized auditors largely signed off on practices that contributed to the collapse of Wall Street, and a year after coziness between government inspectors and the oil industry they regulate allowed a massive oil spill in the gulf, the Obama Administration proposes relying on private auditors to ensure that private companies guard our nation’s cybersecurity.

With security like this, the data Manning is alleged to have taken simply can’t be called secret. Limited access, maybe. But it’s not even clear we’re limiting access from the people who most seriously shouldn’t have it.

if our government is going to claim that leaks are as urgent as it does, if it’s going to continue to pretend that secrets are, you know, really secret, then it really ought to at least pretend to show urgency on responding to the gaping technical issues that will not only protect against leakers, but also provide better cybersecurity and protect against spies. Aspiring to fix those issues years after the fact really doesn’t cut it.

HBGary’s past governmental work has been about cybersecurity–assessing malware and finding intrusions. But they’ve been proposing collecting information about citizens’ First Amendment activity to use to target those citizens. And the Air Force–that entity with a cybersecurity budget bigger than all of DOD’s cybersecurity budget–is the service that was engaging cybersecurity firms to develop persona management software.

But aside from that, why should we be worried that such dangerous entities are organizationally such a clusterfuck?

Sunday on CNN Sen. Joe Lieberman tried to explain that what he had in mind in the way of an Internet kill switch was not a total “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” move, but rather a partial Internet shut down. And why? Because other countries already have that in place and we have to keep up with the Hu Jintaos?