Bush Orders Guidelines for Cyber-Warfare

Jeremiah writes "The pending Iraqi war promises to deliver quite the display of modern, smart technology well beyond what we saw in '91. President Bush recently ordered the development of rules for cyber engagement by the military. Beyond the numerous special forces on the ground like in Afganistan, the US will use soldiers in office chairs to disrupt Iraqi infrastructure."

Comments

My question...

[mmol_6453]

Are these going to apply to United States citizens?

Are these going to apply to people operating in the US?

Are the info-soldiers within the US?

Are these going to be subject to constitutional limitations?

Posting as AC since I'm in this line of work...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you attend US military conferences, you know that they're quite proud of their CND (computer network defence) ability, but refuse to comment on their CNA (computer network attack) capability. That's partly because they had no RoE.

In fact, some other industrialized nations are pushing for CNA to be considered a weapon of mass destruction, since the effects of most viruses and DDoSes can't be predicted until they're launched (your attack on a power plant takes out a hospital...and another...and another).

As for Iraq's dependence on the 'net, don't think about SAM batteries with IP addresses. Think about Info Ops. Think Wag the Dog. Think about pro-Iraqi websites suddenly "reporting" US victories. Or US sites suddenly being "attacked", giving the FBI justification to round up those Iraqi-Americans on its watch list.

Far-fetched? Right about the time that the latest Osama video was being "authenticated", a senior US officer was bragging to me about how advanced their video morphing technology was getting.

Good for opensource

[Tyreth]

For other countries who fear a US attack, this could be a great reason for them to pursue open source software. There is more chance of them identifying flaws so long as they keep their machines up to date.

They can fix problems quickly. They will not rely on the software of the country attacking them.

Re:Something Awful Wasnt Far Off!!

[Rojo^]

It bothers me that you think the U.S. is going to war for oil. Ernie at Ernie's House of Whoopass sums it up best.

I speak now to the clueless imbeciles who say, "Iraw doesn't have any weapons of mass destruction -- that's why the US can't produce any proof that they do!" Listen closely now, because I'm only going to say this one time. Ya ready?

You stupid fuck.

Yeah produce proof for the world to see, that's what we need to do. That'd kind of shortsighted thinking has gotten our asses into hot water before, and if we make the same mistake here, we'll just be setting ourselves up for more devastating terrorist attacks in the future. Hey, wanna know the last time the US was forced into revealing secret evidence just to win the world opinion? After the bombing of the American and Israeli embassies in Manila back in 1994, we had to reveal taped phone conversations to support the indictment of the bombers. So classified recordings of conversations between Osama and his dipshit followers saying things like, "Hell yeah we did it", along with the knowledge that the US had these advanced eavesdropping capabilities, were laid bare for the scrutinizing eyes of the world, both friend and foe alike.

You see Osama was using encrypted satellite phones which were supposedly 100% secure and impervous to electronic eavesdropping -- probably the only reason he felt comfortable enough to openly admit this connections to the planning and execution of the bombings. And until the tapes were released he didn't know that US surveillance could tap into his secure phones, so he thought he was safe and discussed his business without reservation. So guess what? Ever since then we haven't been able to eavesdrop on any of his phone conversations, because there haven't been any. Knowing his phones were compromised, he abandoned them in favor of "word to ear" communications and in doing so took away one of our best abilities to defend against future terror attacks.

If the secure phone tapping advantage wasn't given up, would we have had enough of a warning to prevent Sept 11th? Well, it's kind of a stretch, but I suppose it's certainly conceivable. We didn't have any warning about the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania back in 1998. Or the USS Cole bombings that killed 17 sailors just three years ago. Both of which were the handiwork of Osama and his Al Queda brethren.

So now we are forced to publicly show evidence on Iraq, and potentially lose another advantage in the war of information, all to appease the peaceniks who say there's no reason to invade Iraq. Kids, I'm here to tell ya the proof is there. We ain't getting all dressed up for this because some balloonheads think G.W. has a score to settle for his pappy, we're getting dressed up because there's a reason. I just hope we don't have to sell our souls to the devil again, just so the fucking French and the rest of the Europeans don't have to sneer when they say "Bah, American cowboys."

For the record, we aren't going to war. We haven't been in a war since WW2. This is a police action, enforcing maybe not international law, but justice nonetheless. Saddam has lied about the existence of weapons of mass destruction, been consistently evasive and obstinate in his compliance with U.N. inspectors, and even gone so far as to threaten to use his non-existant weapons on the U.S.

I've rambled enough about this. Someone else take over. Time for a smoke break.

Re:I Like How the Article Begins...

[UncleGizmo]

It's only page 1 of econ 101 stuff. I'm sure in your statistics classes, you learned about how to look at numbers in different ways. On a pure dollar basis, the rich pay the majority of taxes. But as a percentage of money they earn, it's much more even across income levels [IIRC, the NYT had an article on this recently, although I'm too lazy to look it up].

But even if you want to complain that you pay too much to live in the greatest country in the world, the 'rich' only make up 1% [or 5%, depending on your definition] of the population. So, let's go back to econ 101: We live in a service economy. To stimulate it, you don't give breaks to a small percentage of people [the ones who already have a level of disposable income, btw], you give it to a large percentage - those who don't have as much disposable income - so they can go to the movies, and go out to eat once in awhile, etc. Our economy thrives on large numbers of small consumer transactions, not the other way around.

You're making the wrong argument anyway. Tax cuts do not stimulate our economy...JOB SECURITY does. When people know their job is going to be there tomorrow, they are less concerned about putting something on the ol' credit card. That's why during the bubble [when everyone had tons of money, and infinite upside, remember?], the amount of personal debt was also higher than ever. Even those of us who weren't making the big bucks 'knew' we could pay off our debt tomorrow, because jobs were plentiful - a source of income was virtually guaranteed.