The Net is a ‘god-awful mess’
p2pnet.net News:- “Bagel and Mydoom are the future of virus-writing because they have a business model,” says author Bruce Sterling. “Those are organized crime activities … These are crooks.”
Speaking at the Gartner IT Security Summit, the Internet is a “god-awful mess,” but few US government officials are willing to take action against virus writers, spammers, and other scammers, he’s quoted as saying in an IDG News Service story here.
He also believes “terrorists operating in places with little central government control will begin to see cyberterrorism as an effective weapon because of a lack of international cooperation on cybersecurity enforcement,” says the IDG story, listing Somalia, Bosnia and the Philippines among the countries Sterling singled out.
“Disorder and corruption are winning on the Internet, and computer users need the U.S. government to crack down on the thieves preying on the Net,” said Sterling.
Efforts such as the CAN-SPAM law, passed by Congress in late 2003, are “phoney-baloney gestures,” and, states IDG:
“Instead of weak laws, the U.S. government needs to sponsor a multistate computer-crime task force that enforces existing laws, he said. He also recommended that the government post names of spammers and other Internet scammers on a Web site for everyone to see.”
But he had praise for parts of the US National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, released by the Bush administration in February 2003, calling it “modest and feasible.”
June 10th, 2004 at 4:27 am
Bruce who?
June 10th, 2004 at 5:03 pm
bruce athoritarian moralist state head bobber man juice slurper
June 10th, 2004 at 5:13 pm
The guv seems all too eager, if not almost happy to spend tax dollars to fight copyright infringement on the net. When the victim of cyber “crime” is big corporations, particularly media corporations (those congressmen and senators know where the real power is…) uncle sam stands up and salutes, ready to fight the good fight on their cash fat benefactorâs behalf. On the other hand, when it’s just the lowly average Joe net user getting scammed our elected officials drag their feet, provide lip service, and pass weak laws. I don’t have hard numbers to back me up but IMHO I believe that the amount of real money that net scammers and spammers cost consumers collectively totally dwarves even the wildest overestimated amount that the entertainment industry claims they are loosing to “piracy” on the net. Go figure. Maybe we need to start some really big well-funded lobby groups to represent the public in Washington so we can start voting with our pocket books just like the big boys do…