The Internet is a “god-awful mess,” but few U.S. government officials are willing to take action against virus writers, spammers and other scammers, author Bruce Sterling said at the Gartner IT Security Summit Tuesday in Washington, D.C. Disorder and corruption are winning on the Internet, and computer users need the U.S. government to crack down on the thieves preying on the Internet, said Sterling, author of futuristic novels Heavy Weather and Islands in the Net and the nonfiction book The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier. “We had a digital revolution in the 1990s — now we’ve slid into digital terror,” Sterling said during his hour-long critique on the state of cybersecurity. “Today’s Internet is a dirty mess — it’s revolution failed. E-commerce was extremely inventive for a while, but the financing model was corrupt. There was poor governance in the financial systems, there was worse industrial policy; the upshot was a spectacular industry-wrecking boom and bust.” Full Story