When information security people sit around and drink beer, the topic of the worst blunders that they've ever seen often comes up, and I had more than a couple of these discussions at this year's RSA Conference. Luckily, I had just read something that let me give an example of a blunder that people seemed to agree that was even worse that what they had seen in the world of IT, and the discussions where I had a chance to mention it went roughly like this:
"That's incredible. What could possibly compare to that?"
"What about the time when the Jackson County, Florida schools tried to ban George Orwell's 1984 because it was too pro-Communist?"
"Did that really happen?"
"Yes. Back in 1981."
"OK, that's pretty bad, I'll give you that."
"But does that really count as a security problem?"
"Let's call it a DOS attack against education."
"Fair enough."
