Congress has been working on legislation to create a militia composed of 'technology experts' who will manage the telecommunications infrastructure in times of national emergency. The Senate bill passed last week emphasizes disaster response, not terror prevention, with such things as patching leaky government servers and databases, setting aside bandwidth and developing interoperable standards for emergency communications, and organizing local teams of geeks ready to lend a hand putting it all back together in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack. All that sounds quite reasonable and the initial budget of $35 million refreshingly modest. But before we...