Richard Clarke
4.0 out of 5 stars Clarke is Always Worth Reading–and Always 20 Years Behind, March 31, 2012
I wrote the original letter to Marty Harris at the National Information Infrastructure, it–and the attachments developed with Winn Schwartau, Jim Anderson, and Bill Caeli–are easily found by searching for < 1994 Sounding the Alarm source=phibetaiota >. The US Government, in its ignorance and arrogance, refused to listen and continues to be dangerously corrupt in its business practices.
This book is worth reading and buying–anything Richard Clarke writes about has the benefit of deep experience and broad access. I've been on this stuff since 1992 and have neither the time nor the money to indulge in this book, but I certainly recommend it to all who are new to this issue.
Here's the bottom line: the US Government is corrupt at the top — the elected and appointed officials and the senior flag officers and civil servants that “go along” in violation of their Oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies domestic and foreign. We who have striven to inform the public all these years face many obstacles, not least of which include a corrupt Supreme Court bought and paid for through the campaign led by Lewis Powell; a Congress that betrays its Article 1 responsibilities every day of the year; a national media that is owned by five legalized crime families; and a school system including universities that have lost their integrity and no longer even pretend to search for the truth.
The next threat to national security is the same threat that has existed since 1776: domestic enemies who place their profit and privilege foremost, and betray the public trust for private gain. Every President following Gerald Ford, every Secretary of Defense, every US Cabinet member defending budget share and the recipients of the taxpayer dollar instead of the taxpayer–all easily indictable and impeachable for dereliction of duty as well as high crimes and misdemeanors.
With respect to cyber-security, it is a FACT that proprietary does not scale but idiocy does. Absent a global commitment to shift to “open source everything,” and particularly to the creation of an autonomous internet rooted in open source software, open source hardware, and an open mesh from OpenBTS on up, nothing the US Government does in this area is going to be anything other than fraud, waste, and abuse (think of NSA, DHS, and Cyber-Command as three sucking whirlpools of incompetence combined with fraud).
By all means buy this book. I wish Richard Clarke well and would welcome interaction with him if the USA ever has an honest government again. In the interim, below are five books in the cyber arena (see also my Homeland Security Today article on “America's Cyber-Scam”) and five books on the larger threat to national security.
On Cyber
Worm: The First Digital World War
Cybershock: Surviving Hackers, Phreakers, Identity Thieves, Internet Terrorists and Weapons of Mass Disruption
The Hacker Crackdown: Law And Disorder On The Electronic Frontier
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution – 25th Anniversary Edition
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit
On the Death of America
What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States
The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
The Ambition and the Power: The Fall of Jim Wright : A True Story of Washington
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History
Semper Fidelis,
Robert Steele
THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth, & Trust
