Incoming deputy boss of Homeland Security says America's top cyber-agency needs to be reined in During confirmation hearings in the US Senate Tuesday for the role of deputy director of the Dept of Homeland Security, the nominee Troy Edgar said CISA has had the wrong management and needed to be "reined in." At the start of the Trump administration more than 130 out of 3,000-odd employees at CISA – the US government's …
Phew! Amy Gleason managed to escape to Mexico (land of the Free) just before being appointed head of DOGE (naziland) ... that should right answer those doubters who think she's not been made aware of her new job!
Close call though ...
She won't be in charge of Musk. She's in charge of the organisation that gives a veer of respectability to the "DOGE Temporary Organisation" that is the vehicle for Musk's Twitler Youth group
They had to name someone to be at the top of the organisation because the Whitehouse press secretary looked even more of an embarrassment claiming they couldn't give out their name while at same time claimed to be totally transparent.
But now they have. And courts can name her in proceedings.
Of course Musk is running it, and still will. This announcement is just a distraction, because Trump's admin said that Musk wasn't the head of DOGE - because they don't want congress to subpoena him. There's growing anger on the right over what he's doing since it is hurting people who voted for Trump and red states, and it would only take one republican vote in one of the many committees affected by this to be in favor of subpoenaing him and he'd have to answer questions under oath. That's the last thing either he or Trump wants, so they are claiming this figurehead is in charge.
If they subpoena her she'll be able to answer truthfully "I don't know" to the many uncomfortable questions that are put to her because she has no idea what is going on. I mean they literally found her vacationing in Mexico after she was announced as the head. If she was really running things there's no way she'd be on vacation a month into the job when all this stuff is happening. If that doesn't scream "I am not involved at all with what is happening" and probably "I didn't even know they were going to designate me the official 'head' of DOGE" I don't know what does!
There are people who are not au fait with acronyms like ISA, and they will mean different things in different countries.
ISA
Italian Space Agency
International Soccer Association
Indonesian Sausage Advocacy
Independent Slushfund Advisors
Isvestia Soviet Agency
Cash
Johnny, Dave, Pat?
The style books used to say we should write "Xaa Yaa Zaa Corp (XYZC)" before referring to XYZC in text without any heads up as to what XYZC means. Or maybe it was "XYZC (Xaa Yaa Zaa Corp)". In either case, it would be a blessing if writers still did that. Why did they stop?
I was thinking the exact same thing. Just launching straight into all these acronyms and personalities from the US without even enough context to build up a guess.
And yet the article about Northern Ireland police names being leaked came with all sorts of qualifiers about the fact that there is a bit of historical conflict there, as if we living in the UK really needed to be told that
Suppose we know who the target audience is now
This has been the case for some time.
While The Register (*) had already been pandering to its growing US readership in the years prior, it's pretty clear in hindsight that the biggest change in style- and the most obvious sign that they no longer saw the UK audience as its main target- happened when they switched the main site from "theregister.co.uk" to "theregister.com" around five years ago.
Since this happened in May 2020 (**), with people distracted by Covid and routines disrupted by the first lockdown, it's likely that this was missed by many and didn't provoke the attention it might otherwise have. (Your guess is as good as mine as to whether that timing was intentional or coincidental.)
Regardless, it managed to slip through mostly unnoticed at the time, but that was a pretty clear statement of intent.
(*) Does the straighter, more US-focused and more faceless post-switch site still count as "El Reg"?
CISA has been covered in this paper quite a lot. I think most people working in security have heard of it and know what it is, for the same reason that I, a non-UK resident working in security, am fully aware of what NCSC* is. Maybe that still should have been covered in the article, but it is far from the first time it has appeared here.
* National Cyber Security Centre, you could call it the UK equivalent of CISA in the US. NCSC is part of GCHQ. I know what that is too.
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