Politics - Department Of Utter Idiocy

The Department of Homeland Security. Ever since the Damned Thing was first formed, it has flourished like a tumour - growing randomly without plan or sense, weakening its host (the nation), sucking up vital energies that are needed elsewhere. And then there's this: From the Wall Street Journal comes a report of just exactly how clue-impaired the folks at DHS are.

Every day, the Department of Homeland Security emails an “Open Source Intelligence Report” about the nation’s critical infrastructure to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of security and emergency officials working for corporations, governors’ offices, big city police forces and myriad federal agencies. It is a group of serious, security-minded people, or so one would have thought.

Early today, one recipient requested a change in his email address, mistakenly contacting the entire subscriber list. The error set off a chain reaction of responses, revealing once-private email addresses, contact details and a glimpse of how some react to a Homeland Security crisis.

[...]

One outraged recipient took the time to set up an anonymous gmail account with user identity “youmorons7” and write a blistering note: “I can see the CNN story on this tomorrow. The DHS’s mail server was crashed yesterday by a group of security ‘professionals’ that are part of our nation’s defense against attack. Because a large number of these ‘professionals’ did not understand how mail reflectors work and what function their reply button served, many of them contributed to the massive wave of e-mail nearly brought the server down.

“The wave of messages was followed by an equally large tide of ‘unsubscribe’ requests that were also relayed to thousands of subscribers. Combined, these messages were found to be the trigger of the crash event. One insider that was interviewed said ‘We should all be able to sleep soundly knowing that this group may be the one of the lines of defense in the protection of our nation.’”

Look, I've worked with computers for 25 years now, and I'm not claiming to be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but even I know not to do this kind of shit.

So where are they finding these people? Oh, wait, don't tell me. Just like every other maleficent incompetent in the Misadministration, they're being hired on account of their ideology, not their ability. Would you trust this schmuck with your security?

And to think that hundreds of fine IT folk I've known over the years have had their jobs outsourced and can't find work, sometimes for years.

Stumble It!