Free Republic

WASHINGTON – The White House has tapped a corporate cyber security expert and former Bush administration official to lead the effort to shore up the country's computer networks and better coordinate with companies that operate 80 percent of those critical systems. Howard A. Schmidt, a former eBay and Microsoft executive, will become the government's cyber security coordinator, weathering a rocky selection process that dragged on for months, as others turned the job down. In a letter posted on the White House web site Tuesday, John Brennan, assistant to President Barack Obama for homeland security and counterterrorism, said Schmidt will have...

We’ve written about this before but the new and “improved” version of the bill’s just been leaked by Jay Rockefeller’s office. Remember the Bush years, when the Democrats ferociously opposed executive power? Good times. If you think they’ve changed now, wait and see what happens if/when the GOP takes back Congress. Article II fee-vah! A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president’s power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would...

In a speech from the White House East Room, President Obama today declared the country's computer and digital networks a "strategic national asset" and said he would personally select a cybersecurity coordinator to spearhead the effort to protect them. "We're not as prepared as we should be, as a government or as a country," he said, in an effort to bring to the nation's attention what he termed one of the most serious economic and military dangers threatening the country. He laid out the threat, noting that in the last two years alone, cyber thieves have cost Americans more than...

Obama's plan to create a new "cyberczar" with a "broad mandate" in charge of protecting government AND PERSONAL computer networks from harm has some people wondering... just who will the cyberczar regulate anyway?

The Obama administration is moving ahead with plans to name a cybersecurity czar, and National Security Agency (NSA) Director Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander is the leading candidate for the post, Inside the Ring has learned. According to U.S. government officials, President Obama plans to promote Gen. Alexander to four-star rank and give him wide-ranging authority to implement the new Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative. Word of Gen. Alexander's likely appointment comes as the Department of Homeland Security's senior official in charge of cybersecurity, Rod A. Beckstrom, resigned this week to protest what he said was excessive NSA and military influence...