The Unjust Cyberwar

 

After reading more about hacktivists, it really makes them seem more and more like cowards.  Sure, they are using the power of millions of people while engrossing us with their steps via Twitter.  However, they cannot be identified.  In Wikileaks, protest, and the law:  The rights and wrongs of hacktivism, a great point is made.  "But in a free society the moral footing for peaceful lawbreaking must be an individual’s readiness to take the consequences, argue in court and fight for a change in the law. Demonstrators therefore deserve protection only if they are identifiable."  

While it is illegal to do a DDOS attack, it is legal to attack someone in war.  It is legal to state your opinion, and fight for what you believe in.  The difference between a cyberwar and a real war is that you can easily identify who is attacking you so you can take proper action.  This makes DDOS attacks much more dangerous than traditional war.  It would be fair game as far as having enough manpower to destroy these companies who try to stop Wikileaks.  However, in the time when these companies can get their sites back up and running, they do not know who to look at as their enemy.

Most importantly, at the end of every war is a solution.  People do not engage in war for no reason at all, and the solution is how we declare a winner.  In the case of DDOS attacks, there seems to only be a gain of power and information for a limited time.  I have to ask the same question Jaron Lanier asks, what do these hackers do with extra information?  "For more moderate sympathizers, if information is truth, and the truth will set you free, then adding more information to the Internet automatically makes the world better and people freer."  We all know this is not the case.  One can only imagine if our country was hit with a DDOS attack putting all of us at stake.  Then we'd all be asking "who just did that?"

How secret is too secret? It's a secret.

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

Remember that quote? It's from Eric Schmidt, and we addressed it during our first week of reading. I rejected that statement then as it applied to the public sector of internet users, and I reject as it applies to governments as well. International diplomacy and national defense are complex issues, and with so many different interests at work, it is necessary to keep some communications under wraps.

But it's difficult to discuss issues of secrecy when we're dealing with a concept as nebulous as, well, secrets. How can those of us in the civilian sector say that the government is hiding too much when we don't know what they're hiding? Likewise, how can we say with absolute surety that the government deserves the right to secrets when we don't know what they might be keeping from us, and of what use it might be?

Despite being anti-Wikileaks, Jaron Lanier summarizes exactly why we need it: "There is certainly an ever-present danger of betrayal. Too much power can accrue to those we have sanctioned to hold confidences, and thus we find that keeping a democracy alive is hard, imperfect, and infuriating work." Any government should ultimately be at the service of its people, and the degree to which it keeps secrets should be a carefully measured means to the end that is the safety and well-being of the populace.

Wikileaks is not just a website. It's a movement, and it demonstrates a surprisingly widespread desire to look deeper into the workings of our own government. If we didn't have such an opposing force, we could sleepily drift into a kind of subtle fascism -- a Secret State, you might say. The fact that Wikileaks has American supporters shows a healthy level of skepticism for government, not a vengeful desire to tear it apart completely.

We may find ourselves pushing too far. Assange's politics are becoming more lucid, but Wikileaks is ultimately a wildcard organization. We are essentially watching from the sidelines as a largely anonymous group chooses to release or self-censor various sensitive documents. Is this dangerous? We have to find out.

However, we can't make much progress on either side by resorting to immature and ineffective tactics like DDOS. As The Economist notes, they are no substitute for a real protest. Neither is attempting to remove Wikileaks from the internet a permanent or level-headed solution. The best response by governments worldwide will be to engage in dialog with Wikileaks and prove that they are responsible enough to maintain their own transparency.

Wikileaks: Not worth the consequences

Having thought I knew the Wikileaks story well, I was at first planning on reading redundant facts that have been all over the mainstream media sites for months. Wikileaks seemed like a good thing to me when I first heard about it (last summer). Giving the American public a good look in the mirror at what their own country has been up to overseas in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

After reading the assigned articles and listening to the NPR talk-show, I realized that many of the supporters of Julian Assange and Wikileaks also support the group known as Anonymous. Anonymous uses sites, such as 4chan, to gather sheeple (sheepish people) into IRC chat rooms in order to organize Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDOS) attacks on corporations that are unsupportive of Wikileaks. In a 2600 News Magazine press release posted in December 2010, Emmanuel Goldstein describes Anonymous as a, "Misguided effort that doesn't accomplish much at all. DDOS are incredibly simple to launch and require no technical or hacker skills (to participate in)."

Besides the lack of morality Anonymous has shown, they are also fighting to protect an organization that has put several secret informants at risk of being murdered. While the cybercrime Anonymous commits may result in large financial burdens for the corporations they attack, it's not a life or death battle these amateurs have fought. While the sheepish Anonymous posse has no real serious risk of being killed for their actions, the informants that they have revealed do face possible death. Do these so called activists fully understand the ramifications of their actions?

As New Yorker author Seymour Hersh writes, "Cyber-espionage is not cyber-war." While mainstream media likes to use the buzz term "Cyber-war," in actuality, nearly all questionable activity taking place (involving Wikileaks and Anonymous) should fall under the term"Cyber-espionage." The word "War," should be used in conjunction with much more grim conflicts, those that actually involve direct loss of life. DDOS attacks tend to be cases of cyber-espionage with economic consequences, not actual loss of life. Remotely disabling a passenger plane would be an example of cyber-warfare (or cyber-terrorism).

As governments continue to spy on each other and their citizens, as they have done for centuries, the public is beginning to spy back on their government. Clearly the U.S. government has underestimated the technical knowledge of its opponents. In April 2001, a U.S. spy plane got in an accident with a Chinese military plane over Chinese waters. The spy plane's N.S.A. provided equipment was at the risk of being recovered and analyzed by the Chinese government after the plane was forced to make an emergency landing at a Chinese military base. In a New Yorker article entitled, "The Online Threat: Should we be worried about a cyber war?" Seymour Hersh explains, "The Navy's experts didn't believe that China was capable of reverse engineering the plane's N.S.A. operating system." Sure enough, just months later the N.S.A. detected the Chinese using N.S.A. proprietary technology to signal that they had indeed figured out the operating system and more than likely gained access to highly classified data.

Just as Wikileaks and Anonymous has shown that the U.S. government is not as secure as they like to think they are, the Chinese have shown that they too have the intelligence to spy on the U.S. government. Perhaps if the U.S. government was more transparent about their interests and activities, the rest of the world wouldn't be as tempted to spy back.

WikiLeaks Needs To Go!

 

     The issue of WikiLeaks is extremely interesting in the overall scheme of cyber war.  It begs questions such as: Aren’t some things better left unsaid? Should information be shared or censored?  In a sense WikiLeaks in nothing new, the information is just more sensitive.  While premeditated leaks and other types of unauthorized disclosures are nothing new, he adds, digital technology makes it much easier for "one disgruntled individual" to unleash massive troves of information almost instantaneously.  As mentioned in previous posts, I am an advocate of Free Speech, but WikiLeaks is dangerous and should be eliminated.   

     The relationship between government and citizens in terms of shared information has been tense for years.  We, the citizen, have been on a “need to know” basis since this country began.  There are obvious reasons, our safety being one. Alas, we have always had this sense of revolt, or need to fight the establishment.  Riots, demonstrations, protest, have been our main forms of rebellion before the Internet.  The most obvious lesson [of the WikiLeaks case] is that it represents the first really sustained confrontation between the established order and the culture of the internet. There have been skirmishes before, but this is the real thing.  Sustained being significant in that protests, riots, and even peaceful demonstrations have always come to an end.  Shutting down WikiLeaks only momentarily solves a small battle in cyber war.  Other websites will be created and eliminated, in this ongoing battle, but this is different than grass root protest. 

     Because the Internet delivers information at such high speeds a website can create devastation in mere minutes.  Picture this, before the internet a group of 20 people are angered and decide to demonstrate on the U of M Dearborn campus.  They are peaceful, non-offensive, but just as annoying as a swarm of mosquitoes.  Within 20 minutes the police arrive, break-up the protest, and by mid-afternoon everything returns to normal.  Now, imagine the same scenario but these individuals have access to the Internet.  A Facebook post about the demonstration goes viral, and 20 becomes 100 in minutes!  Now it is understood why WikiLeaks, and cyber war is like the tsunami that hit Japan.  Another important aspect of WikiLeaks is in the root of the word, Wiki.  The Internet is fantastic in the abundance of information readily available, but we never consider that information’s creditability.  How many times have you used Wikipedia as a reference only to find the information was wrong?  This may be extreme, but what if WikiLeaks was wrong due to someone’s political agenda and started WWIII.  I don’t know about you, but I am not willing to hide in the mountains with Patrick Swayze (yes I know he is dead) and Charlie Sheen (although could be fun) because some cyber activist posted the wrong information.

     According to The WikiLeaks Battle: Should Information Be Shared or Censored, it does boil down to trust!  I unfortunately trust our government.  I have been on this earth 35 years, and even in the aftermath of 911, I have never feared for my safety.   In the aftermath of the WikiLeaks furor, Pentagon and State Department officials have said some foreign officials now seem reluctant to trust U.S. officials. "We have already seen some indications of meetings that used to involve several diplomats and now involve fewer diplomats," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. "We're conscious of at least one meeting where it was requested that notebooks be left outside the room." Other countries need to trust America in order to preserve peace.  Some have a more difficult time than others, and we do not need websites like WikiLeaks pissing in our Kool-Aid.  This is already happening and needs to be squashed immediately!  

WikiLeaks...it's a good thing

I just want to start by saying that I don't think that denial-of -service attacks are a fair way to engage in war. While they may slightly effect websites like Paypal they can do much greater damage to ordinary citizens. The small business person that uses Paypal to take payments or the small Ebay seller could be left without the money they rely on to feed their families. Are these hackers concerned about who may be hurt in the crossfire or are they more interested in proving a point?

Even though I am against DDOS I am pro WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has the power to bring important information to ordinary people. As long as the information they are providing is not going to be endangering someone's life then they have the right to free speech and we should have the right to read what they post. As tax paying citizens of the United States we have the right to know what our government is doing. Like why do they threaten the use of deadly force if anyone gets too close to area 51? What are they hiding? Maybe finding out what is so top secret in area 51 should be WikiLeaks next goal. The government may not be too happy about WikiLeaks because they are providing information to ordinary citizens. Information equals power and the last thing the government wants is large masses of educated, empowered citizens. Not surprisingly the government is using the activity of these hacktivists to try to gain more control over the internet which would then give them more control over people. General Keith Alexander said that he needs "more access to e-mail, social networks, and the Internet to protect America". Isn't that what the government always says when they want to invade our privacy? I think enough is enough and the government should stop edging their way into our lives. If people want to look at or post on WikiLeaks, post a video on youtube, or even go without a seat belt they are not hurting anyone and the government should leave them alone.

WikiLeaks: Harming our country?

WikiLeaks is the controversial website that has been posting classified government documents that has been affecting our country and our access with the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I can't believe that there is even a website out there that displays our classified government documents. Why is this legal? In my opinion, this should not be allowed on the Internet because of all the access that it gives to other people in other countries. Not only does this give our classified government documents to our enemies, but it can also lead us to having potential new enemies. I think Kevin Werbach explains it well when he says, "WikiLeaks is a fascinating microcosm of a larger trend --that the Internet allows freer flow of information, including things we want to be available and things we don't." This is exactly what the website WikiLeaks does and it allows information to be spread all throughout the Internet for anybody to see. Julian Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks and is currently being held in the United Kingdom with no bail. A recent release by WikiLeaks gave out confidential U.S. State Department cables that has implications for business and corporations. Is it time to put an end to all of this? Should WikiLeaks be allowed to release confidential United States government information?

I really think that WikiLeaks could be very dangerous not only to the American government, but to all of American society. I even consider it treason. The reason I feel this way is because WikiLeaks seems to be a betrayal of the American nation and sovereign. It opens up our nation's private information and reveals it for others to see like it's not a big deal at all. I really believe that WikiLeaks will continue to put our nation in danger and it can only lead to worse situations and circumstances. The information that is being revealed is affecting corporate communication and Joseph Turow says, "The cables that have been released look incredibly tame compared to the e-mail that people send around corporations." I think that betraying your country by supplying information to the whole world should not be tolerated. I understand that the information could be a public concern and the public deserve to know about it, but I think the information shouldn't be released to a later date. WikiLeaks remind me of the Pentagon Papers and the H-Bomb court cases. In the Pentagon Papers case, the information was not restricted because it occurred several years after the Vietnam War and was no longer a threat to American Society. However, the H-Bomb was not allowed to be released because of the danger and threat it caused to America. In newspapers, there are 5 exceptions on things that you can't write or publish:

1.) Obstructing military recruitment

2.) Publish true sailing or movement in war

3.) Obscenity

4.) Promote violence

5.) Attempt to overthrow American government

I believe that these 5 reasons should come into play when publishing an article or information online. In this instance, it would be aimed towards WikiLeaks and displaying confidential information towards the American government. It could have a huge affect on our status in the war in Iraq. America is known as being a strong nation, but there are some people who are trying to affect our great reputation and stature. WikiLeaks harms public interests, cause a crackdown on government security, and have a bad effect on foreign relations.

This link helps to argue my points on why WikiLeaks is dangerous towards America. http://www.debate.org/debates/Resolved-Wikileaks-is-a-threat-to-United-States-national-security./1/

WHAT DO YOU THINK? DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH ME?

Are We Addressing the 'Online Threat?'

The online threat is real. I know firsthand the extent of computers and networking, all lined to the World Wide Web, has on the infrastructure of this nation. Working on safety systems that people depend on that are coded is scary, to say the least. Soon, our cars will be networked and require the latest security patches to keep up with the trends. Groups like Anonymous, although best intentioned, could jeopardize lives.

With the increasing dependence on our LIVES, are we properly addressing the online threat? According to the article “The Online Threat,” security is a major growth industry … create what has become a military-cyber complex. The United States, along with companies like SAIC that are pushing cybersecurity, has developed a team ready for war. A quick search even reveals a Department of Homeland Security website for Computer Readiness with helpful information.

In the end, like any warfare, we have prepared, but not enough. Much more has to be done on the software design level to prevent attacks. Computer software should be tested and rated for security, eliminating many of the problems that we run into. The warfare needs to be shifted from reactive to proactive and make it harder to infiltrate in the first place.