I just found out today that it is not very hard to get critical information about what our government is doing

The Navy completely amazes me. Actually, I would say that the whole government amazes me. To give you a bit of background information, the Navy and Marines have one joint network (actually the largest network in the world) called the Naval and Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI). It cost the government $15 billion (after it was originally quoted to be only $8 billion), and as one of my coworkers puts it, it is slower than the second coming of Christ.

Now, everyone in my office works on pretty secret/ confidential information and emails, so security is of the upmost importance. We can’t install anything on the computers because it could pose a security risk, and starting in July, they will limit VBA commands such as ‘Do’ (because you know how much of a risk those pesky Do commands are). So they limit what we can do, give us annoying restrictions, and then provide such a slow network, that the government doesn’t even have to try very hard to be inefficient. It is built in to the tools that are provided to their workers.

However, Spyware/ Adware is not a concern to them. My boss called their Help Desk today (which is a royal pain to deal with as well) and they discovered that he had spyware/ adware on his computer… the computer that has secret and confidential information. They didn’t know what kind it was; it could be as harmless as a bunch of popups, or as harmful as something that could leak some information. Instead of having him back up his computer and reimage it on the spot, they told him to talk to someone else, file some paperwork and it would be dealt with within a week.

I don’t know about you, but this is a huge security concern. On the largest network… the one that the government has paid a heck of a lot of money for, spyware is being detected and let run free. Man… I don’t know about you but that would be a great way for someone to get some pretty good data on the U.S. We are dealing with so much crap at airports and government offices because we are concerned that terrorist will get in and take down our country, but we are not doing the small things! Am I wrong about this?

Dear lord… I think I now see how information is leaked to the media so often. It is not an ‘anonymous’ tip… it could be the government’s own computers. But hey… they will get to it within a week right?