"Cyberspace - Taming the Wild West"

My last event in Washington DC, Round 1, was a surprisingly serendipitous opportunity to attend a talk inside the State Department. A friend who interns in the State Department had seen the poster advertising the event and noted that it was sponsored by my two current bureaus of interest.

Jefferson Science Fellows Distinguished Lecture Series on Current Issues in Science and Technology presents:

John E. Savage, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office of Cyber Affairs - U.S. Department of State

"Cyberspace - Taming the Wild West"

Sponsored by OES and STAS

The Jefferson Science Fellowship was created in 2003 out of recognition of the need to bring science, technology, and engineering expertise to for policy-makers seeking to meet the needs of modern society. Specifically, Fellows are tenured academics who take an on-site assignment in Washington, DC for one year. After this year, they return to their position, remaining available to the State for short-term projects over the next five years.

John E. Savage gave a talk on the need for policy to govern network use and security.

The talk was extremely non-technical in that it did not discuss or prove any particular notions of network security from a standpoint of mathematics or computer science. A few different kinds of network protocol were mentioned, common uses discussed, and some security issues articulated. Savage expressed his disappointment at his new belief (based on his recent work) that there will be no 'magic bullet' to network security. Rather, the best that can be done is to keep abreast of new developments.

But, primarily what I remember from the talk is the image he presented as the illustration for his title.

Imagine a 'Wild West' of computing. There are frontier towns - say, unprotected computer networks. And there are bandits and gunslingers - say, hackers. We now need someone to keep law and order.

According to John E. Savage, the usual approach is to win one of the gunslingers over to the good side, pin a badge on him, and call him a Sheriff.

The problem with this, is that conflicts will end in a shoot-out. It is just pitting 'our man' against 'their man'.

What we need, Savage suggests, is some good, sound, policy that a legislative body can use to deliberate and implement network regulation. The internet and computer networking have grown too quickly for the legislature to keep up with. It is already known that there is not enough policy/procedure for internet/network regulation. For example, there's sometimes not enough in the books for judges to know how a case ought to be decided, etc.

I'm a fan of good policy from my reactor days. Well-documented information on procedures is so helpful. When something needed to be done, there was a procedure for it. When something needed to be done, there was policy for making good decisions.

What well-documented policy contributes is a 'paper brain' so that good decisions and implementation no longer depend so much on the exact characteristics of person dealing with a situation.