I as a home user do everything I am supposed to do. I keep my anti-virus up to date and keep my firewall turned on. I have seen in the past spyware infect my personal computer, just as everybody has

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Speak for youself windows-boy!

Ugh, spawn of Richard Clarke.

All this talk about China, and Dan forgot to ask Mister Mini-Clarke here why the anti-virus firms his department hires gives virus tech to China. (search El-Reg yourself; I'm tired of pasting that URL in every comment I post.)

I want to see smouldering mouse pads on the next battlefield. Bring it on.

"DHS's mission is about protecting our networks. We're not engaged in shutting down other networks." No, they're engaged in shutting down their own networks as a precaution.

"The stick has to be coming from the market place to the market place, not from the government to the marketplace." The government can start by not patronizing turncoat computer security firms. The US Government is one of the largest clients of the anti-virus cartel. Now that's letting the market decide.

Dan, you just had to cheapen the memory of Pearl Harbor, didn't you? Respect-minus-minus...

"I have seen in the past spyware infect my personal computer, just as everybody has." YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE ME, I WAS THERE! I HAD MY COMPUTER INFECTED EIGHT TIMES!!!!!111!!11 Um, Larry King was married eight times, too, but I'm not going to him for marriage advice. Maybe divorce advice...

The guy who practices safe computing is a nobody, But all hail the DHS jerk who barely survived a 'digital Parl Harbor.'

if they'd like to have a true value-add, they can outsource Mr. Garcia's job to one of the lobbyist PR firms on the Beltway, and eliminate the position, thereby saving money. the PR house would produce output identical to this, but with better spelling and grammar.

this guy is an empty suit with decision-making authority (what we call a Type 4, to be removed from the gene pool soonest). he has no technical or security experience, and his only qualifications for the job were that [1] he's a "free market" zealot (able to spout dogma at the slightest provocation), and [2] he was somebody's friend or campaign contributor. in this respect, he is just like every other appointee this administration has put forward in the last 8 years.

not one of them will acknowledge that "market solutions" are usually reactive, as the market does not effectively anticipate possible futures (unless one considers panic or paralysis acceptable reactions). this backward-looking approach has already failed in the antivirus industry, as the black hats have continuously gained ground on the security firms over the last 5 years, and we now have permanent botnets reaching deep into government, not just the private sector.

dead bird, because the bald eagle that represents the US is headed that way.