11.05.13
We had it coming
Good work, Keith Alexander and national computer security contractors. (Readers should repost and re-mail this pic, it’s great stuff. Pariah is exactly the word to describe a growing and indelible image.)
Revelations about the scale of U.S. spying on the Internet have badly damaged the country’s negotiating power in international talks on cyberspace regulation and law enforcement, analysts and industry leaders said at a conference on Tuesday.
Disclosures by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden about the vast scale of the intelligence agency’s data collection also are undermining U.S. efforts to maintain the Internet as an entity loosely governed by a mix of national, private and nonprofit forces.
“We’re losing leverage internationally” to China, Russia and other countries that want to give more authority to the United Nations and governments, Hoover Institution professor Abe Sofaer …
Digital Pearl Harbor, not a case of if, but when?
If you’ve been following along it’s no secret the US government and the national security industry have been waging an increasingly concerted campaign to increase cyber-defense spending. The linchpin of the strategy is the relentless argument that Chinese hackers, under the guidance of its government and military, are into all American corporate business, military networks and the nation’s infrastructure. Because of this catastrophe looms …
Well, there is a loud call for mounting a big defensive and offensive military cyberwar capability, claiming that the cybersecurity threat facing the nation is equivalent to, or even more serious and complex than, things like mounting strategy against the German U-boat campaign in WW2 and the achievement of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War …
I’d link to all the stuff I’ve written about but … you can pick your favorites or greatest hates. Put ’em in the comments, if you like.
“The U.S. always reserves the right to overdo things. That’s the legacy of the last 10 years,??? [George Smith] said. “And to the world at large, it’s viewed as a nation that sees every potential problem as a nail to be hit with the hammer of the military and/or security contractors.???
So could Smith think of any possible cyberattack that would warrant military response? Blacking out the entire Eastern Seaboard? Opening the floodgates on the Hoover Dam?
“I’m not really in the business of making predictions, particularly here. Too many variables, and the intelligence on such matters is always fuzzy,??? Smith replied. “I’m going with a conservative ‘no.’???
From US Exceptionalism
It’s the NSA’s world, we only live in it
When you let the people in the biggest cyberwar machine in history have whatever they want the only thing left is to turn it on everyone. If the power and resources are there to do it, it is done. Because they can.
Which is what has happened. There’s little to add except that through Edward Snowden’s documents and their delivery via the Washington Post and the Guardian, one sees the world Alexander has created. It’s one that cements the global perception that people in the US computer security industry (government and private sector allies) are an untrustworthy lot, predatory and needing close oversight.
The Edward Snowden affair demolishes US cyberwar hype
The greatest transfer of wealth in history
Our cyberdefense shoe-shine boys
Expose the US virus war machine
The Bogometer is blinking red.
Aspen Security Rent-Seeking Forum
Useless tool of cyberwar journalism
It goes back years.
A great working example of what happens when US journalism almost entirely gives up questioning its sources and leaders on national security matters.