It's about time, since we've seen several successful hacks into top-level government computers lately. Of course, there's also something a little Big Brother-ish about the idea, too, since the feds will always find a reason to put us under surveillance if they want to:

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials said Thursday, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare - or even shut down the internet.

The military command would complement a civilian effort to be announced by President Obama on Friday that would overhaul the way the United States safeguards its computer networks.

Mr. Obama, officials said, will announce the creation of a White House office — reporting to both the National Security Council and the National Economic Council — that will coordinate a multibillion-dollar effort to restrict access to government computers and protect systems that run the stock exchanges, clear global banking transactions and manage the air traffic control system.

White House officials say Mr. Obama has not yet been formally presented with the Pentagon plan. They said he would not discuss it Friday when he announced the creation of a White House office responsible for coordinating private-sector and government defenses against the thousands of cyberattacks mounted against the United States — largely by hackers but sometimes by foreign governments — every day.

But he is expected to sign a classified order in coming weeks that will create the military cybercommand, officials said. It is a recognition that the United States already has a growing number of computer weapons in its arsenal and must prepare strategies for their use — as a deterrent or alongside conventional weapons — in a wide variety of possible future conflicts.

Chicago Tribune:

There is no single leader. There is no agreed schedule. Organizers aren't even certain where everyone is supposed to gather, let alone use the restroom. The only thing that is known for sure is that thousands of protesters are boarding buses at churches, colleges and community centers across the country this week, headed for this tiny dot on the map of central Louisiana.[..]

Yet this will be a civil rights protest literally conjured out of the ether of cyberspace, of a type that has never happened before in America-a collective national mass action grown from a grassroots word-of-mouth movement spread via Internet blogs, e-mails, message boards and talk radio.

Jackson, Sharpton and other big-name civil rights figures, far from leading this movement, have had to scramble to catch up. So, too, has the national media, which has only recently noticed a story that has been agitating many black Americans for months.

As formidable as it is amorphous, this new African-American blogosphere, which scarcely even existed a year ago, now comprises hundreds of interlinked blogs and tens of the thousands of followers who within a matter of a few weeks collected 220,000 petition signatures-and more than $130,000 in donations for legal fees-in support of six black Jena teenagers who are being prosecuted on felony battery charges for beating a white student.

Color of Change is certainly one of the blogs leading the protests. They have a petition you can sign to support the Jena6

TomDispatch:

...In recent times, Congress, while not policing its own, has put much energy into the matter of the possible cyberspace stalking of the young by sexual predators at sites like MySpace.com, home to a zillion young "friends" and "friends of friends." As it turns out, these days there are predators of all sorts roaming the Internet looking to lure young bodies their way. In the case of the Pentagon, which, Nick Turse reports, has only recently made its "friendly" debut at the wildly popular MySpace website, the interest in those bodies isn't sexual, but -- given the state of George Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- the phrase "e-cannon fodder" certainly comes to mind. If you want to know more, check out Turse's latest below and then consider the deeper recruitment desperation of the Pentagon and the way it's transforming our military in his previous Tomdispatch piece, "Dirty Dozen, The Pentagon's 12-Step Program to Create a Military of Misfits." Read on...