Shamoil T. Shipchandler of Bracewell & Giuliani LLP has a great commentary about how our country is doing on cybersecurity and privacy. It begins:
When it comes right down to it, we are about as bad at cybersecurity as Twitter’s CFO is at Twitter or North Korea is at coming up with new political slogans to commemorate its 70th anniversary.
The whole column is worth reading on The National Law Review. I think he’s really hit on a great metaphor for us:
As a prosecutor in a securities fraud case, I once had a witness testify that the bad guy treated him and his fellow investors like “mushrooms,” i.e., he “kept them in the dark and fed them manure.” Okay, he didn’t actually say “manure,” but this is a family blog (if only for kids with insomnia). But we are all mushrooms when it comes to data privacy. Think about it. Do you think about how your information is protected when you swipe your credit card? Do you know how your doctor’s office secures your personal health history? Or are you in the dark?
So maybe “a country of mushrooms” isn’t the worst slogan in the world, if it helps us pay attention to the privacy that we cede and the cyber threats that we ignore.
It sure beats a strong wind of fish farming.