Morning Security Brief: Cyber Czar: "No Cyberwar," E-Verify Replacement, Disaster Mentality, Full Body Scanners, & More

♦ The White House's new cyber czar tells Wired.com that "There is no cyberwar." Speaking with Wired.com's popular Threat Level blog, Howard Schmidt called the term "cyberwar" irresponsible. “I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept,” Schmidt said. “There are no winners in that environment.” Rather than fighting cyberwars, Schmidt told Threat Level the government needs to protect government and civilian networks from cybercriminals and cyberspies.

♦ A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing a new system to vet new hires to prevent employers from hiring illegal aliens, reports The Arizona Republic. The system would replace the existing E-Verify program, which a government-commissioned study recently discovered wrongly cleared 54 percent of illegal workers. The new system, known as the New Employee Verification Act, would run new hires through multiple federal databases and encourage background checks. Naturally there are people who question whether this system will be any better than E-Verify. "But some analysts question whether the system proposed by Giffords would actually be more reliable than E-Verify at preventing illegal workers using stolen identities from getting jobs," reports the Republic. "The system also raises privacy concerns because it calls for employers to conduct background checks and collect biometric information on new employees that could be deemed too intrusive."

♦ A new research paper compares two of the worst maritime disasters of the early 20th century to determine who survives in a disaster, reports Time magazine. The behavioral economists from Switzerland and Australia compared survival rates onboard the Titanic, which hit an iceberg, and the Lusitania, which was torpedoed by a German U-boat, in their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The key to who survived and who didn't has to do with how quick each vessel sunk: the Lusitania took 18 minutes while the Titanic took 2 hours and 40 minutes. "That theory fits perfectly with the survival data, as all of the Lusitania's passengers were more likely to engage in what's known as selfish rationality — a behavior that's every bit as me-centered as it sounds and that provides an edge to strong, younger males in particular," writes Time's Jeffrey Kluger. "On the Titanic, the rules concerning gender, class and the gentle treatment of children — in other words, good manners — had a chance to assert themselves."

♦ Lawmakers grilled Acting Administrator of TSA Gale Rossides yesterday during a committee hearing about full body scanners and whether the technology would have identified the explosives a Nigerian jihadist smuggled onboard a NorthWest flight in his underwear on Christmas Day. Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) asked Rossides whether full body scanners would detect that kind of threat every time, reports CNN.com. "Our officers are doing a very good job," she answered, adding later on ""This machine gives us an increased detection capability that is significantly greater than what we have at the checkpoint today."

♦ An eminent imam has written a 600-page fatwa unequivocally declaring that terrorism is unislamic and that suicide bombers are destined for hell. The Quilliam Foundation calls Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri denunciation of jihadist terrorism "arguably the most comprehensive theological refutation of Islamist terrorism to date," reports Catholic Online.