"Curiously, the threat hasn't affected any efforts within DHS, who still have only one employee charged with preventing such attacks on their own systems. Chertoff is fabricating a boogeyman to scare us all. He's campaigning to realize what's been nick-named the cyber-security "Manhattan project," officially expanding the presence and role of intelligence agencies into our banking, telecommunications and transportation systems. Their stated goal: to thwart cyber-terrorism "before" it happens. An official who would not identify himself to a reporter writing for WIRED magazine mockingly called the plan a "clairvoyance machine."
This proactive sort of law enforcement harkens back to Dateline's "To Catch a Predator" where no crime was ever committed, and we're tenuously on the verge of what seems to be entrapment. Only now it's not an easy and unpopular pariah such as greasy would-be pedophiles, but it's bored teenagers playing Internet pranks. Of course, DHS realizing a stated goal is unheard of, especially when the for-real goal is eavesdropping. It appears that combating the dreaded specter of cyber-terrorism provides Big Brother with their own Trojan Horse of sort: domestic wire-tapping.