i finally took a couple of hours and perused last fall's first draft of the U.S. government's "national strategy to secure cyberspace". (reportedly, AP has already obtained a pre-publication version of the second draft, which has been apparently gutted of anything useful).
this doc is available at www.whitehouse.gov/pcipb but, to save you the time, it is a thoroughly worthless piece of work, laden with inventive acronyms and fawning over what kind of utter visionary president bush is. but i digress. onwards. in the wake of the recent MS sql server virus, i was curious to see if that document would make even a passing reference to either of the notions that: 1) MS software is nororiously insecure and is largely responsible for the insecurity of the current IT infrastructure, or 2) open source software at least represents an *option* for trying to secure cyberspace. good luck. after wading through pages of tortuous intro, the first major section discusses security for the home user and small business person, offering such stunning enlightenment as "Use a Tough Password." point 4, on "filtering", talks about how parents should take care to filter internet content for their kids, an issue having nothing whatever to do with cybersecurity, but which gives the authors the chance to do a little family values moralizing. the table of recommendations in the AGENDA however, is where the fun starts. this is, AFAICT, the *only* place in the entire document that refers to Microsoft by name, where point R1-4 reads, "Home users should also regularly update their personal computer's operating systems (such as Microsoft Windows, Linux) and major applications ..." yup, you read it right -- according to the president's own cybersecurity council, linux is an official desktop OS. mind you, given that ex-microsoftie howard schmidt is vice chair of this group, is it any mystery that he would try to tar linux by association, implying that it is just as insecure and bug-riddled as windows? and, AFAICT, there is not a single reference to the potential use of OSS *anywhere* in the document. your (american) tax dollars at work. rday -- Robert P. J. Day, RHCE Eno River Technologies, Inc. Unix, Linux and Open Source training Chapel Hill, NC Waterloo, ON http://www.linux-migration.org -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=unsubscribe https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
