Janet Napolitano, the US Homeland Security Secretary (at least for the rest of this week) gave a farewell speech this week that included a dire predication:  that the US would endure a major cyber-attack that would cause a major disruption in the economy.

“Our country will, at some point, face a major cyber-event that will have a serious effect on our lives, our economy, and the everyday functioning of our society”

She made these and other statements in a roll call of recommendations for whomever is to replace her at the post as the Obama administration’s top homeland security official.  In that call to arms, she has stated the need to put up more protection from future cyber-attacks.

“While we have built systems, protections and a framework to identify attacks and intrusions, share information with the private sector and across government, and develop plans and capabilities to mitigate the damage, more must be done, and quickly”

The statements were a part of a checklist of things she would like to see continued, and she mentioned such hot-topic debates like global warming and events that may come from that, such as the sequester and the difficulties that come with running an operation with an ever-ambitious agenda under such perceived financial constraints, and the continued threat of terrorism.

The TSA, founded as a response to the terrorist attacks of 2011, is run by Homeland Security and has seen public backlash in response to intrusive searching, naked body scanners, and a number of continued incidents that just didn’t rank well in the public eye.

In today’s climate of distrust over NSA surveillance and increased loss of privacy, there is much to scrutinize surrounding these comments.  True, the threat of a massive cyber-attack is real, but it doesn’t have to be an event.  I don’t take kindly to threatening predications. There are technical means, community means, response means that should be improved to prevent a cyber-catastrophe.  I question whether that is something else that needs to be under the supervision of some government program.  For all the surveillance capability that we have been living with (with no option to “opt-out”) for some time, that hasn’t stopped a number of major terror events from happening.  Look at the Boston bombings, look at Ft. Hood (not a workplace crime, but terrorism), look at the underwear bomber, and look at the Times Square bomber, must I go on?  Because I can again and again.  They’re not stopping much.

How about the TSA?  Sure, they’re easy to pick on, and I suppose we don’t really have to fly, we pretty much choose to, it’s convenient – but I wonder if anyone really likes the security side of things.  We don’t have to live with it the way it is, look at how they decommissioned the nude scanners but only after sustained objections.  Reports of failed TSA inspections emerge all the time, and some question whether the massive TSA operation is really focused on the right things.  It makes you wonder how much influence over cyber-security should be in the hands of a government agency.  It’s not very hard to imagine seeing such a thing expand with no end in sight, putting regulations, licenses, registrations and who knows what else in our electronic lives and in our businesses.

I don’t know if this causes people much concern, but the internet of things is coming and nearly everything around us will be connected – everywhere that we eat, everywhere that we spend money, everywhere that we book a trip to, everything you put in your house – is anyone concerned?  And of course if the president or somebody else came out tomorrow and said “We’re going to monitor everything and make you register everything from your sneakers to the filter you buy for your 2006 Silverado” – no one would accept that.  But you dole that out in bits and pieces, and on the down-low, the way this NSA surveillance thing rolled out “for the greater good” – and you’ve got that exact same situation.  It’s civil liberties versus “greater good of security” and it may seem like an excessive Orwellian dystopian concept, but this is coming.  Guess who’s on the “greater good” side – the government.  I’m all for security and investigation as I imagine most people are, but when you have an increasing federal goliath combined with the political verve to work around individual rights and public awareness, the patterns are too much to disregard.  Leave the cyber security of the private sector in the hands of the private sector.  The TSA – that’s a debate for somewhere else, but privatization has been proven to save costs and improve efforts in many areas.

The Secretary is resigning from the post and has taken a position as president of the University of California system at nearly three times her previous salary.  A new secretary of Homeland Security has not been announced thus far.