nightcats's Journal: A Lesson From Geeks, for Mike Chertoff

Another lesson from geeks: ever notice recently how all the security threats are found by the pros, not the bad guys? (the latest one's here).

What if our Homeboy Security Dept. worked that way? What if the DHS was run the way the Net polices itself for security holes? Well, for one thing we wouldn't have Chertoff spouting his gut feelings with no evidence, raising panic for no reason. And we'd probably be learning true vulnerabilities, and fixing them before the bad guys find them. Just like in geekland.

That's why I'm writing a book about what geekdom can do for our government and businesses. Imagine an "open source society" (the title of my book) where terror threats are found by decentralized teams of security experts and sealed long before the bad guys can do anything about them; where corporate hierarchies go extinct in the face of fresh, living, Mozilla-style communities of organization and control; where publishing is done in a GPL model that rewards creativity but not insularity; where the codes of law are truly open-source (no lawyers needed); where TV and radio are wiki-fied.

Crazy as it sounds, it just might work. One thing is sure: the proprietary, closed model of government, business, and media has failed, repeatedly and miserably.