National Tech. Corps

Security on the internet will be a major concern for our country in the 21st century. Our networks need to be secured, our databases need to be backed up and restored is necessary, and we need a team of highly skilled technology workers that can, in an emergency, recover and maintain all of what we have lost. However, since all of this is going to cost a great deal of money, it is important to ask what level of protection we actually need.

The United States has an organization already in place that can take care of some basic needs, the National Technology Corps.

“The National Technology Corps is a private effort created with the assistance of the White House. The mission of the Tech Corps is to recruit, place, and support volunteers from the technology community who advise and assist schools in the introduction and integration of new technologies into the educational system. Volunteers provide assistance with local planning, technical support and advice, staff training, mentoring, and classroom interactions.”

Though important, the National Tech. Corps can only solve basic IT problems. The organization is not designed to be utilized in the case of a terrorist attack on our servers and networks, if that should ever happen. What this petition is suggesting, right or wrong, is creating a National Guard of technology soldiers that can be deployed in an emergency to do battle with their knowledge of hyperscript, html,  bandwidth, metabrowsers, modems, byte-bonding, viruses, trojans, cookies, and broadband semantics in order to recover our information back from whatever internet-pirates have threatened it. Is this truly going to be a problem for us in the future? I for one don’t have the foresight or intuition to predict what concerns lie ahead as we enter the Information Age. Good thing the federal government does.

The Citizen Corps National Emergency Technology Guard Pilot Program, abbreviated as NET Guard, was started in the 2008 fiscal year to provide expertise to local communities in preparing for, responding to and recovering for incidents that cause damage to their information systems and communications infrastructure. “The NET Guard Program is envisioned as a means to provide emergency, temporary reconstitution of IT and communications systems, or installation of emergency, temporary IT and communications systems, primarily for governmental entities and private non-profit entities performing essential services.” Four pilot programs have been started, each with $80,000 of funding until the end of September 2009. After the programs’ performances are evaluated, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will further develop them and their administrations for use in the future.

Will these pilot programs become staples for the protection and preservation of our internet freedom in the future? Time will tell if they are either necessary or even enough of a precaution to take. President-elect Barack Obama has announced that he will appoint the first ever Chief Technology Officer to his cabinet, so much of these questions and concerns will fall into the appointee’s area of expertise. It will be his or her job to predict and prevent problems we will have in the future, as well as staying one step ahead of the competition concerning further innovation of our internet experience.

A. Martin