12.24.14
Computer Security for the 1 Percent: Seth Rogen named “Freedom’s” Man of the Year
Freedom … because Google’s toffs and geniuses said so:
“Given everything that’s happened, the security implications were very much at the front of our minds,” Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond wrote in a blog post. “But after discussing all the issues, Sony and Google agreed that we could not sit on the sidelines and allow a handful of people to determine the limits of free speech in another country (however silly the content might be).”
For the last two decades more people in the national security state have been hoping for and predicting, first — “electronic Pearl Harbor,” then “digital Pearl Harbor,” and now “cyber-Pearl Harbor.”
Because they would all benefit from it. And even while it stubbornly refused to transpire, they made out on the subject very well, anyway.
Now that it’s here and gone, figuratively triggered by Seth Rogen, many are a little bit at a loss for words. Because you can’t go to war over a cyber-attack that stuffed Seth Rogen’s movie and Sony, if only briefly. Seriously.
It’s kind of a bummer.
When does a cyberattack against an American company, network or government agency warrant military involvement?
Ummm, not now, say all.
“But just because a victim state may be entitled to use its military to take countermeasures does not mean that it necessarily should,” writes Kristen E. Eichensehr, a visiting assistant professor of law at UCLA. “Other options, such as criminal prosecution, international sanctions and old-fashioned naming and shaming, may be legal, available and more effective responses.”
“We will not go to war over Sony, nor should we,” adds James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s frustrating …”
No war. But give more money to the private sector, writes Jason Healey: “[In] nearly every significant attack or conflict, the savior has been the private sector, companies like McAfee or Microsoft that have the agility … The answer to ever-worsening cyberattacks is an overriding priority on defense centered on our true cyber power, America’s private sector.”
Got it. Give more money to large security corporation so they can protect the stuff of the 1 percent, like The Interview.
“For years now, the Obama administration has warned of the risks of a cyber-Pearl Harbor, a nightmare attack that takes out America’s power grids and cellphone networks and looks like the opening battle in a full-scale digital war,” writes David Sanger, also at the Times.
“Such predictions go back at least 20 years…” he continues. You bet.
There is, of course, an anonymous “senior defense official”:
“If you had told me that it would take a Seth Rogen movie to get our government to really confront these issues, I would have said you are crazy … But then again, this whole thing has been crazy.???
Seth Rogen is now a kind of universal IQ test. If you want to see him or his movie because it says important stuff about computer security and freedom, you flunk.
Computer Security for the 1 Percent — from the archives.