Pretty positive there is no actual plan to improve cybersecurity, it’s a facade to quietly hand over power and control to the national guard to keep people in line.

The same day the emergency order was signed by the governor, he announced he was restructuring GOHSEP (governors office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness) under the National guard as part of his state DOGE plan to cut waste and save money.

The emergency order grants the director of GOHSEP authority to act however they seem fit to handle cybersecurity. But on the same day the director of GOHSEP was given a new title, and is no longer director.

The “acting director” is now Louisiana National Guard Brig. Gen. Jason P. Mahfouz

Here is a summary of everything: https://lemm.ee/post/59671562

But tldr for even that: One day last week the governor just declared he was suddenly moving the entire office that handles state emergencies (Governor’s office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness-GOHSEP) under the control of the state’s national guard.

On the same day he also suddenly announced he was Renewing a previous state of emergency that was created by the previous governor to address a cyber attack.

For some unknown reason that nobody has addressed, he added a new section to the renewed executive order that essentially says the director of GOHSEP has authority to do whatever he deems necessary to handle cybersecurity.

Except when he moved GOHSEP to be controlled by the National Guard, he also removed the director of the office and gave him a new title. So there is no actual director.

A member of the National Guard is acting director, so it would appear that the governor basically handed very broad control of cybersecurity to the national guard in a very underhandeded way hoping nobody would notice

So I updated some stuff and yeah this seems very strange. The original order was in 2019 after an attack on some government servers. I had somehow forgotten that in 2023, the government admitted that there had been an ongoing cybersecurity attack on Louisiana OMV data and that essentially every adult in the state had their data breached (it’s been a bit of a hectic year).

https://pimento-mori.ghost.io/comparing-edwards-original-state-of-emergency-cybersecurity-incident-with-landrys-renewal-2/

The governor is a former lawyer, so someone might even suggest it was left intentionally vague?

She’s got a work on her sales pitch. “Probably one of the greatest… Oh it’s not for you, it’s more of a Shelbyville idea…”