I honestly had given up any hope of our new President bringing on any technology insiders to advise him or any of the new administration’s agencies on how to steer the country in a new direction, technologically. Both he and Senator John McCain were picked as the best two tech presidents during the course of Techcrunch’s presidential candidate interview series last year, but since his election most of the technology appointees seem to be political insiders, instead of technology ones.
Then I caught this bit of news from Kim Zetter over at Wired’s Threat Level blog:
Forget the new cyber security czar position that President Barack Obama announced last week.
The real sign that the White House might be finally taking cyber security seriously came in an announcement on Friday that Jeff Moss, aka “Dark Tangent” and the former hacker behind the annual DefCon hacker confab in Las Vegas, has been appointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council (HSAC).
He was among 16 people sworn in to the council by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Former CIA Director William Webster and former FBI Director Louis Freeh are also on the council, which provides advice and recommendations to the secretary. Webster is the council chair.
Our Angle: It’s no surprise to those of us who follow these news threads that the United States is in seriously dire straits when it comes to their technological savvy. Putting in advisory roles folks like this – folks who have a great deal of savvy and technical chops to give real updates from those that are on the ground in discovering the exploits that are used by hackers around the world to compromise sensitive US will be a very welcome change.
