Luddites Need Not Apply

It is becoming increasingly difficult to move through life without being technologically savvy. Maybe it’s still possible for some, but how is it even remotely possible when you’re in charge of our nation’s cybersecurity?

A few years ago when my friend Harvey wanted learning to edit video he sat and watched some pros.

“It’s not that I didn’t know how to do it,” Harvey would later say. “It’s that I didn’t know what I didn’t know!”

I thought of Harvey’s editing encounter when I read a story about Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitanto. She has been a frequent target of conservatives. Now she’s going to get it from me.

CNN Security Blog: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledged Friday her Luddite-like ways, despite the fact her position puts her in a critical leadership role when it comes to defending the nation’s infrastructure from cyberattacks.

Napolitano said she does not use email “at all.”

“For a whole host of reasons. So, I don’t have any of my own accounts and that, you know, I’m very secure,” Napolitano noted at a Washington conference about cyber security.

“Some would call me a Luddite but you know. But that’s my own personal choice and I’m very unique in that regard I suspect,” Napolitano added.

It is 2012. Calling herself a Luddite might seem sweet and quaint to Secretary Napolitano. It is not!

Like Harvey, she doesn’t know what she doesn’t know.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to move through life without being technologically savvy. Maybe it’s still possible for some, but how is it even remotely possible when you’re in charge of our nation’s cybersecurity?

Secretary Napolitano’s comment is telling to others in a way she can’t see.

Does this disqualify her for the job? I don’t know what I don’t know, but at first glance–yes!

Scary.

Janet Napolitano Gives The Wrong Answer

No! The correct answer is, “Yes, this was a failure. We shouldn’t be letting known threats carrying explosives on airplanes. I am very upset. This will be fixed immediately.”

I really didn’t want to write about security and the Delta Detroit incident but then Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, appeared on Sunday morning TV. She delivered one of the most stupefyingly insipid comments I’ve ever heard–an insult to America.

This week’s suicidal crazy used the same chemical, PETN, shoe bomber Richard Reid used!. That led David Gregory on Meet The Press to ask if this was a security failure. Napolitano answered:

SEC’Y JANET NAPOLITANO: Well, I think we don’t know enough to say one way or the other in that respect. The forensics are still being done, the investigation is still underway. I think the important point here is that once the incident occurred, everybody reacted the way they should; the passengers did, the flight crew did. And literally, within an hour, additional measures had been instituted not only on the ground here in the United States, but abroad and, indeed, on the 128 flights that were already in the air from Europe.

No! The correct answer is, “Yes, this was a failure. We shouldn’t be letting known threats carrying explosives on airplanes. I am very upset. This will be fixed immediately.”

We got none of my answer.

We are trying to protect targets when it seems more manageable to find threats.