Army Battling Information Security Issues With Bad Graphics, Bad Jokes, Stereotypes And Zero Engagement

from the if-the-'punchlines'-landed,-I'd-say-this-was-no-laughing-matter,-but dept

The US Army should be concerned about cyber security, especially given the recent situation in which a dangerous security flaw was swept under the rug by superiors who threatened to have the person highlighting the flaw jailed if he spoke to anyone else about it.

The flaw revolved around Common Access Cards (CAC), which are removed from the computer by the user after each session, automatically logging them out. Unfortunately, the log out process is slow and can be interrupted by a new user, who then can continue using the system under a different ID. The Army, after long ignoring the problem and threatening the reporting person with jail time, decided to address it by declaring Oct. 14-18 "Information Assurance/Cyber Security Week," because nothing fixes security flaws like themed events with mandatory handouts and instructional videos.

If the Army hopes this will provide a vast number of soldiers with much needed information, it's sorely mistaken. Tomorrow's the last day of "IA/CS Week" and, to date, the uploaded videos haven't attracted many views, as Justine Sharrock at Buzzfeed points out.

Well, Cyber Awareness Week has arrived, so we checked out the military's campaign. Here's the website which contains some recent comics and guidelines, as well as links to the Army's "On Cyber Patrol" videos.

The video series, an Army CIO's information awareness initiative started in 2006, features hokey names, racial stereotypes, clip art era graphics, and dismal view rates — in some cases less than 100 after months online.

The Army's not going to make anyone's computer use any safer by assailing them with videos that, while containing some solid information, utilize stereotypes, bad jokes and some truly hideous graphic effects.

Here's one containing all three:


And here's one that uses a not-directly-named Chelsea Manning as its villain/refrain.


Whoever put together the webpage for this "event" must have been raised by elementary school teachers and bad webcomics. This is the picture that greets soldiers, most of them fully-grown adults with access to weapons and high-end technology, when searching for info related to the Army's cyber security event.


A picture like that only serves to set the tone that any viewers/readers/etc. will be talked down to about tech stuff they're already familiar with and, more horrifically, subjected to bad jokes and lousy graphics. On the plus side, the Army's videos are full of all three, so no one claim they weren't warned.

How this is meant to prevent problems like the one listed above is anyone's guess. All this seems to do is put a check mark somewhere one was previously missing and allow someone higher up to note that the Army is back "in compliance" with whatever it was that someone was griping about a few months back -- the incident(s) that led to this "Information Assurance/Cyber Security Week."

Nowhere is there any indication those responsible for this work are taking their job seriously. Sure, they may have put the hours in and considered it to be done well, but there's no effort being made to engage those who need the instruction most on anything more than a mind-numbingly remedial level. Faced with this, there's no reason to believe there will be any future improvement in either "Information Assurance" or "Cyber Security."

Filed Under: army, education campaign, security

Anti-Piracy Campaign Shows You 'Killing' Look Alike Pop Stars

from the that's-convincing dept

There have been some really ridiculous "anti-piracy" campaigns out there, but this one is really quite impressive. TorrentFreak has the details on a site, called FreemusicHK.com, that pretends to be a site for downloading unauthorized music. However, when you actually do go to download it, instead you get to play a little flash game where you get to "kill" look alike pop stars on the cover of their albums. Of course, the pop-stars aren't just lookalikes, but name-alikes, too. So, it's Any Winehouse, instead of Amy. It's Madownload, instead of Madonna. It's Biur, instead of Blur. Copy Play instead of Cold Play Moby's "Play" album... etc. If this really is some sort of anti-piracy campaign, they're doing it wrong. As multiple people are pointing out, they've made the whole thing so silly and ridiculous that's it's kind of fun to play. It's really quite incredible how tone deaf various "anti-piracy" campaigns have been to what consumers are actually thinking.

Filed Under: anti-piracy, education campaign, propaganda

Shouldn't The USPTO's Education Curriculum Be Accurate?

from the one-would-think-that's-the-point dept

I started my still-ongoing series of posts on intellectual property as a counter to the incredibly one-sided brain-washing educational campaigns put together by companies that only seemed to talk about how wonderful intellectual property was, never once mentioning the downsides or abuses. You can kind of understand this from companies who make their living off of intellectual property -- but it still seems quite questionable that any educational institution would accept and use such a biased "lesson plan." So, if the USPTO came out with its own lesson plan, you'd expect it to be a bit more balanced, right? Not so. The USPTO has created its own curriculum to try to teach kids "respect" for intellectual property law and it seems to be just as bad as the corporate backed lessons. Perhaps that's no surprise, as the USPTO gets its funds from patent application fees, so it has incentive to keep more applications coming in.

Even the way that USPTO boss Jon Dudas explains the program is problematic: "If you own something that is valuable, you want to protect it." That is not, and has never been, the purpose of the patent system. It's not about ownership and it's not about "protecting." It's about encouraging innovation. Simply by setting up this program as teaching kids about "protecting" something valuable they "own" is inaccurate. That's rather surprising, given that you would think the head of the USPTO would know what the patent system's purpose is. The website that hosts the curriculum has a short trailer video that has a clear false statement at the beginning, claiming "an invention needs to be protected by a patent." That would be quite a shock to Benjamin Franklin, who famously said of inventions: "That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously," before questioning the value of patents. Somehow, I get the feeling that statement didn't make it into the USPTO's lesson plan.

Filed Under: curriculum, education campaign, intellectual property, patents, uspto
Companies: uspto