Pete and I exchanged emails from time to time and, although I never met him face-to-face, I considered him one of the nicer people I've met through my involvement with this medium and industry.

I'm sure he'll be missed by many.

A Million Bucks For What?
Look out -- the government is really ramping up its justification for pushing through that Crimes Amendments Bill.

They're now telling us that things are just so bad out there on the Net that they're going to have to spend nearly a million dollars to set up and operate a division of the GCSB which it says will protect us from "cyber threats."

Dubbed the Center for Critical Infrastructure, it will effectively be a duplication of the services offered by Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) in the USA.

Now CERT, and any number of other security watchdogs already do a splendid job warning Net users about real potential threats on the Net -- so why are we about to spend $269,000 on gear and another $850,000 per year to run something which duplicates a huge amount of this functionality?

Hell, even Aardvark and IDG offer regular heads-up as to the latest worms, viruses, trojans and other online threats at no cost to the government or industry so what's the justification for spending so much taxpayer's money?

And that's exactly how many hip operations Helen?

Surely this money would be better spent on providing computer resources to help bridge the significant digital divide we have in this country?

Readers Say (updated hourly) CR/CRII comes-a-knockin'... - Simon Proof there is no Knowledge Wave... - Alan CERT and GCBS... - Mudrat Have Your Say

Of course if you really believe that we need to spend nearly a million dollars a year just to "provide coordination, support and advice on the ways in which we can maintain and improve our security" then I invite you to send me an email describing the colour of the sky in your world for surely it isn't blue.

The interesting thing is that this team will supposedly protect the Internet infrastructure -- but, to the best of my knowledge, all of NZ's Internet infrastructure is owned by commercial operators. The provision of such a service amounts to a free handout to those operators. Yes folks, it seems that YOUR tax dollars will effectively be used to provide a free (or below-cost) service to companies such as Telecom.

Quite frankly, I can think of more deserving causes myself.

Why can't Telecom and the other providers of Internet infrastructure look after their own security -- it's not rocket science and, since virtually all the threats originate from outside our borders, we'll hear about it first from CERT or some other source anyway!

No -- I can see the spin right now: "We need the draconian measures of the CAB because things are already so bad that we're having to spend nearly a million dollars a year to protect NZ's Internet infrastructure."

Don't be duped folks!

If the government is really serious about providing such a service then I invite them to drop me a line. I'm sure I can offer the same service at a *much* better price so that the rest of those tax dollars can be applied to more important things, such as clearing patients from the corridors of our hospitals.

We ought to remember that governments and their departments are not widely renowned for their aptitude in online security and are therefore perhaps not a wise place to spend this money anyway.

Add Aardvark To Your Own Website!
Got a moment? Want a little extra fresh content for your own website or page?

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!

There is/are 0 Vacancies Last added 2 July In The Job Centre

There are 14 Domain Names for sale