The FBI just doesn't do national security

I just came across this editorial by Richard Clarke and his partner Richard W Cressey detailing just how dangerously horrible the FBI is at overseeing cases involving national security and directly refuting current FBI Director Mueller's statements to Congress that if he had the current unfettered access that national security letters provide before 9/11, then he would have caught the terrorists before the bad thing happened.

Uh huh. Clarke raises all the excellent refutations about how the information was out there but bureaucracy and egos got in the way of information being acted upon. It also mirrors my direct experience with some FBI counterterrorism folk with regard to their complete cluelessness when it comes to secure Internet communications and knowledge about what is possible.

This editorial is particularly timely as I just started reading Clarke's "Breakpoint novel this morning. I'm only through the first 30 pages and am as giddy as a kid in a candy store to be reading the scenarios I've been venting about as plausible for years. (No, I'm not a conspiracy theorist - but my involvement in both Information Security and the Red Cross makes me think a lot about these issues.)

Pick up the book or the book-on-CD from your local library and definitely listen to it. It's gotten to the point that our nation's infrastructure is so reliant on technology from satellites to SCADA to undersea fiber cables that it wouldn't take much to cripple our country's financial, military and government services.

Of course, I've barely started the book but between the editorial, knowing the people who are friends with Clarke and are referenced in the book's forward, and meeting the man himself while press liaison for the Black Hat security conference in 2002 when he was our keynote, I think it's safe to say the book will be excellent.

Sure, his editorial is not without loaded political desires such as the hint of a need for a new agency and a reminder of his own qualifications but I don't think the American people truly realize what's going on behind the scenes.

For instance, take an interesting gander and do some research at the recent efforts to play around with the GPS system, (something run and managed globally by the US Military and not managed by the UN which many countries don't realize), and take into account the reasons given as to why the British allegedly strayed into Iranian waters.

Hrm.

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