U.S. government fear-mongering suggests Anonymous could cause blackouts

It seems that National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander is worried that the U.S could suffer from power blackouts because of that dirty nasty bunch of evil hackers called Anonymous might attack the U.S. power grid.

Now before I start smacking my head against the nearest brick wall here’s the facts according the report from the Wall Street Journal who said the director admitted his worry over the evil kids at the White House even though there has no public statement about this concern.

This of course is the same group that has never ever made any statement about the group of hactivists even thinking about attacking the power grid however this hasn’t stop the fear-mongering from federal officials spinning baseless suppositions for the fear loving media to reprint everywhere possible.

Not to mention of course that this is the same power grid that industry watchers and officials have stated many times is built on redundancy and even though they sometimes have to deal with cyber attacks the power grid is resilient enough because of the existing backup systems that restoring it quickly is pretty much a snap.

Even intelligence officers will admit that when it comes to cyber attacks from foreign government sponsored groups there just isn’t any incentive to do so, however this doesn’t mean that there isn’t intrusions into the industry’s networks but these are just looking to find classified information not take it down.

I can understand the fear-mongering even though I personally think it is entirely baseless – at least when it comes to a group like Anonymous.

The thing to understand here is that Anonymous would have nothing at all to gain from attacking the power grid and bringing it down other than totally alienating a general population that either openly or private are rooting for the group.

Anonymous is about exposing truth as well as corporate and government malfeasance which provides them with much better press than attacking the energy lifeblood of our country.

Unfortunately though it is groups like Anonymous that provide the government with the perfect scapegoat to hold up as reasons why they need to regulate and control the flow of the Web and the Internet at large.

Maybe I am misguided in my assumption about this type of news when it comes to groups like Anonymous but I don’t think so. I believe that groups like Anonymous are needed and in fact provide some modicum of protect for you and me on the web as they have now qualms about standing up for what they believe; and for that we should be thankful while holding politicians and bureaucrats accountable to show absolute proof when they make statements like this.

But we all know that will never happen right.

via VentureBeat