the tindog coffeehouse

It’s hard to believe, but it was 10 years ago this week that I first went to work at Microsoft, the ink on my new MCSE certification still fresh.  To this day, I’m still not sure how I made it through the rigorous interview process, but somehow I made it on as a “blue-badge” (a full-time Microsoft employee, as opposed to the “orange-badge” contractors that mostly walked through the door), hired to provide professional server support from the still-under-construction Las Colinas campus in Irving, Texas.

I arrived just as Windows 2000 was being released to manufacturing and just in time for Y2K.  It was also right before the dot-com bubble burst in early 2000.  Indeed, in the two years I worked there, I saw the glory days of the late ’90s — a time when working at Microsoft meant swimming in lucrative company stock options and bonuses and work was something you did between foosball tournaments — give way to the harsh realities of the falling stock market, before regaining a sense of hopeful optimism with the impending release of Windows XP.

It was from my cubicle that I watched the presidential debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore in which Gore touted his infamous “lockbox” and where I watched the ugliness of the 2000 election drag on with all its “hanging chads”.  And it was from my cubicle where I witnessed the horror of September 11th.  But it was also a place where I made numerous friendships and countless memories.

It was a stressful job, and I can’t say I fully miss it.  But I learned more there than I have at any other job I’ve ever had.  It provided invaluable experience that I’ve taken with me in the years since leaving, and I’m grateful for the time I was given there.

I was working at Microsoft at the time.  Usually I’d listen to the radio on the way to work, but for some reason on the morning of September 11, 2001, I didn’t.

I showed up for work a little before 8:00 AM, and the office was still pretty quiet.  I walked down the row of cubicles to say hi to my friend Larry, and I found him staring at his monitor.  “Did you hear about this?” he asked.  Of course I hadn’t.  “A plane crashed into the World Trade Center.”  Oh my God!  How awful!

I got back to my desk and pulled up any news website I could get, trying to find out what happened.  Normally, there were TVs at the end of the rows permanently tuned to MSNBC, but none of them had been working for a week or so.  And now I couldn’t reach any of the major news sites (msnbc.com, cnn.com, etc.) as they were all flooded with traffic.  I was able to get some information on the Dallas Morning News site, though, and kept reloading it over and over to try and get the latest updates.  This was a terrible accident!

Then came the news that another plane had hit the other tower, and we understood that it was no accident.

Within the hour, a third plane hit the Pentagon, and it was clear we were under attack.  By that time the TVs had been turned back on, and we split our attention between them and any other news we could get online.  Everything seemed to be pretty chaotic.

And then the south tower collapsed.

I couldn’t believe it.  It was all so surreal.  For a few moments I sat there thinking how there would only be a single World Trade Center building now and how strange that would be.  I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

Then came reports of a fourth plane down, this time in rural Pennsylvania, possibly the result of a hijacking that had been thwarted.  But when would it end?  How many more planes were still in the air, and what else could happen?  And then shortly after that, the north tower of the World Trade Center gave way.

Throughout the rest of the morning, we could only watch helplessly as we tried to grasp what had occurred in such a short amount of time.  The phones, which were typically pretty busy at that time of the day, were quiet, but there were a few calls coming in here and there.  We handled them the best we could, but our minds were clearly not on our work.  At lunch, everyone gathered in the cafeteria, where the company had agreed to buy everyone’s meal.  Everyone around me was angry and could only talk about getting revenge on the people who had carried out the attacks.  But I was silent, barely able to hold myself together.  After I was done eating, I went to my car and broke down in tears, and then I prayed; it was the only thing I could do.

I got home that evening and hugged and kissed my wife.  At that time we usually didn’t eat dinner at the table, but we did that night, turning the TV off in order to have a break from the news for a few minutes.  And I prayed again, for our nation, for the families of the victims, and for my daughter Megan, who was only 5 months old at the time.

It’s been 8 years since the attacks on September 11th, and I can still feel the gut-wrenching fear, confusion, and overwhelming sadness that I experienced on that day.  And that’s a good thing.  We should never forget.

God Bless America.

Back in April, Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe introduced two bills, 773 and 778, which would’ve essentially given the President the unilateral ability to shut down any services on the Internet — even those from the private sector — in the case of a “cybersecurity emergency”.  But the bills didn’t stop there.  They would’ve also given the Commerce Department “access to all relevant data concerning [critical] networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.”

As Wired points out, S-773 has been revised significantly since then, removing much of the controversial language and replacing it with more sensible (albeit general) guidelines for dealing with with cyber attacks on the U.S.:

(2) [I]n the event of an immediate threat to strategic national interests involving compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network—
(A) [the President] may declare a cybersecurity emergency; and
(B) may, if the President finds it necessary for the national defense and security, and in coordination with relevant industry sectors, direct the national response to the cyber threat and the timely restoration of the affected critical infrastructure information system or network;
(3) shall, in coordination with various critical infrastructure industry sectors, develop detailed cyber emergency response and restoration plans for each critical infrastructure industry sector;

(Full text of the bill here.)

Further, the revised bill seems to negate S-778, which called for the creation of an Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor.  Instead, S-773 calls for a Cybersecurity Advisory Panel, which would be comprised of “representatives of industry, academic, non-profit organizations, interest groups and advocacy organizations, and State and local governments who are qualified to provide advice and information on cybersecurity research, development, demonstrations, education, personnel, technology transfer, commercial application, or societal and civil liberty concerns”.

All in all, it’s a vast improvement over the original bill.  It gives the President the ability to quickly respond to critical threats to the nation’s information infrastructure, and in emergencies such as those of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, such a response is absolutely vital.  And when you consider how vulnerable we are to a targeted cyber attack, it’s obvious we must be prepared to deal with those crises.

That said, the bill is certainly not ideal.  First, it still gives the White House authority over private-sector networks and information systems in the event of an emergency without specifically limiting that authority.  In other words, the definition of what constitutes a “cybersecurity emergency” is still at the sole discretion of the White House, opening the door to potential abuse.  And as I pointed out in April, President Obama has proven time and again that he is more than willing to seize control of private corporations if given the chance.

Second, the inclusion of “interest groups” on the Advisory Panel should raise an immediate red flag.  Think ACORN, the ACLU, RIAA lobbyists, and other groups.  How much influence groups like that would have is unclear, but do we really want to find out?

The revision of S-773 has definitely eased some concerns, but there is still more room for improvement.

Previously:
Bill would give government unrestricted control over the Internet

After less than 3 days on the job, President Obama has effectively surrendered in the War on Terror.

With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the “war on terror,” as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the U.S. government in battling its enemies will not be limitless. …

Key components of the secret structure developed under Bush are being swept away: The military’s Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility, where the rights of habeas corpus and due process had been denied detainees, will close, and the CIA is now prohibited from maintaining its own overseas prisons. And in a broad swipe at the Bush administration’s lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001.

Marc Thiessen, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, points out:

The CIA program he is effectively shutting down is the reason why America has not been attacked again after 9/11. He has removed the tool that is singularly responsible for stopping al-Qaeda from flying planes into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, Heathrow Airport, and London’s Canary Warf, and blowing up apartment buildings in Chicago, among other plots.

Nice.  While we’re busy digging a nice, big hole in the sand to stick our heads back in, Osama bin Laden is laughing his off in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan.

You know, I seem to recall something Obama said in his inauguration speech:

[F]or those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us….

Oops.  Guess he was wrong.

Previously:
How history will judge the Iraq War