SecurityRatty: Spending Money on the Wrong Security Threats

This is cache of http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/02/spending_money.html. Cache is the snapshot of article that we took when we index feed.
To see original page click here.
We are not affiliated with the authors of this article and not responsible for its content.

Spending Money on the Wrong Security Threats

2008-02-19 07:18:32 by schneier in Schneier on Security

This story is a year and a half old, but the lessons are still good:

Kim Hyten, emergency management director in Putnam County, said he didn't realize homeland security grants can now be used to prepare for tornados. As a result, Putnam County is using its grant money to prepare for something else.
"Weapons of mass destruction," Hyten said.

That's right -- weapons of mass destruction. This year, Putnam County spent most of its $58,000 homeland security grant to buy dozens of gas masks, boxes full of chemical suits, a plutonium-detecting gamma and neutron rae radiological monitor and, for good measure, this rural county about fifty miles west of Indianapolis also ordered plenty of weapons of mass destruction test strips.

But asked whether weapons of mass destruction are a concern, Hyten replied: "The weapons of mass destruction -- I don't believe this county has ever, when we did our terrorism protection plan, ever looked at that we'd be a targeted site."