No, it's perfectly reasonable to be "worked up" about more government regulations that restrict the actions of programmers and sysadmins and such. Professional organizations, eager to be the ABA cartel for tech, occasionally propose such things. But the beauty and efficency of the tech world is that you don't need to jump over government hurdles to do your job. When I was in high school, I was a tech consultant to a local Good Shepherd hospital -- good cause, and I did it for free. Restricting that would be plain silly. After all, the best person to decide whether a consultant is worth it or not is the person paying their bill. Are you sure you haven't been an ABA member for too long? :) -Declan On Sun, Apr 01, 2001 at 12:15:49AM -0600, Aimee Farr wrote:
More cut-and-pasting from ukcrypto, Britain's last remaining form of parliamentary oversight. This week: the government's plans to require all security consultants to register with the authorities, and be strictly licensed afore passing on their forbidden, arcane wisdom. First the bad news: the bill in question, the PRIVATE SECURITY INDUSTRY BILL, is already at its Commons' Second Reading, and is set to be law in two months (barring those pesky elections). Now, the good news: at the reading, HO minister Charles "RIP" Clarke said it's mainly aimed at security guards and bouncers, not IT security consultants. Now, the bad news: he added the word "currently" - and, "currently", the Home Office says it *does* apply to computer consultants, but they won't get around to enforcing that until 2005. Now the good news: the main restriction on the license is that you mustn't have a serious criminal record.
I've seen these snips today...
In the US private security consultants have numerous licenses, variable by state. ("C & G" licenses - guns, dogs, exec protect, PIs, etc.) Aren't ya'll just getting worked up over a misnomer? Not to say it won't happen, indeed, some interests could make a powerful argument for tech security licenses, the same rationale would definitely apply.
Background links: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/psib/psbinfo.htm#psbds Break it: http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200001/cmbills/067/en /01067x--.htm
~Aimee