Ed, I love this comment: "... the FBI will claim they never had any warning. Only this time, the American public will know better, because we sysadmins are the public, and we will ensure everyone else knows that the FBI is knowingly aiding and abetting terrorism by inaction."
I'm in agreement with your readers as quoted that this topic should have received more prominence. I believe that the news media routinely publicizes the sensational over the mundane as advertising dollars mean more than journalistic integrity (present company excepted, of course).
My 20-plus years of experience in IT/MIS/(whatever we call ourselves today) has shown me that it's routinely the small stuff that adds up to big problems, and not normally a single big problem that creates the havoc, problems, and destruction. To misquote an old saying in the government sector and using it as an analogy, "A few dollars here, a few dollars there, and pretty soon you're talking big money".
We've seen what has happened to email with the introduction of spam messages from the humble beginnings of a single advertisement posted by a law firm onto the USENET back in 1992 (ref: Silicon Snake Oil by Cliff Stoll, Doubleday, 247 pages, hardback, Apr 1996). We've also seen Arpanet/Darpanet/Internet change from a professional data sharing mechanism to a catacomb of misinformation, pornography, and (for a large part) the base level of human sociology in society.
Now is the time to stop this misuse of the medium, before it grows so large in size that we administrators are unable to persuade the apathetic users and lawmakers into moving and addressing the issue. Again, to misquote an old saying and using it as an analogy, "A stitch in time saves nine".
Oh, and by the way (I really do dislike the use of BTW as TLA (three letter acronym)), I believe that even if the FBI claims they never had any warning, there will be nothing that the sysadmin can do to change the public's mind because of the spin that will be placed upon the event by the news media.
Ed, thanks for your wonderful job of keeping us informed. I, and many other of my constituents, appreciate your hard work on this issue, and many others!
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