Perfect Citizen? Scary name, but probably a good idea…

So have you heard of Perfect Citizen?  It’s a relatively creepy sounding program whereby the NSA (and apparently the DoD?) would use federal resources to monitor and track private-sector threats and (also using federal resources) respond if need bo.  I’m assuming they’re only looking at critical infrastructure (Utilities, FS, Healthcare, Telecom).

The name is pretty scary – it’s a phrase that makes me think of something that the Ministry of Thought Control would have in their mission statement.  So no props to the marketing people over there for scaring the hell out of people.  However, the idea is probably a decent one – namely, for critical infrastructure managed and governed in the private sector, where the private sector operators of that critical infrastructure have shown a general obstinacy and unwillingness to secure their data and infrastructure, have a voluntary program  that will let us, the taxpayers, invest in helping pick up the slack.

One suggestion though: provide a tax incentive to those folks who don’t participate in the program but yet can demonstrate that they are keeping their security at a reasonable bar.