Slashdot Mirror
America's War on the Web
An anonymous reader writes "The Sunday Herald is reporting that while the US is continuing to pursue traditional means of protecting national security, they are also planning to launch a new wave of 'information warfare' to help combat a perceived growing threat of IT security. From the article: 'The Pentagon has already signed off $383 million to force through the document's recommendations by 2009. Military and intelligence sources in the US talk of "a revolution in the concept of warfare". The report orders three new developments in America's approach to warfare [...] the Pentagon says it will wage war against the internet in order to dominate the realm of communications, prevent digital attacks on the US and its allies, and to have the upper hand when launching cyber-attacks against enemies.'"
The last time I checked Al-Qaeda uses a rather primitive approach to terrorism. They use incendiary devices in shoes, which often fail, second hand weapons, and other non-technical approaches.
The website for Al-Qaeda should be near the bottom of the list for the defense department.
Everyone has the idea that terrorists will one day hack into the power grid and cripple the stock market. They should focus on protecting the power grids from physical attacks before they start focusing on "cyber terrorism" where they could take the grid by "hacking into the system."
/whisper/ Thanks for the candy!
Once again, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri proves to be the best game ever made:
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
--Pravin Lal
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
The government is going to contract this job out to Cyberdyne Systems in California?
Seriously, we are able (most of the time) to have oversight on what the government is doing to its own citizens, and that hasn't worked out so well in the US so far... can I mention here things like: The pristine bullet, McCarthy, weather control, and a number of other things that 'seemed ok at the time' but later turned out very wrong, and would have been stopped with oversight.
WHO (not the doctor or the World Health Organization) is going to monitor those in the government that will be monitoring the Internet? Mr Orwell, we miss you!
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
to fund terrorist organizations, does that mean no income taxes on April 15?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
... the Pentagon says it will wage war against the internet ...
Is there anything that America doesn't "wage war" against? It's like a mentally retarded child who responds in the same way, regardless of stimulus.
From TFA:
Secondly, psychological military operations, known as psyops, will be at the heart of future military action. Psyops involve using any media - from newspapers, books and posters to the internet, music, Blackberrys and personal digital assistants (PDAs) - to put out black propaganda to assist government and military strategy. Psyops involve the dissemination of lies and fake stories and releasing information to wrong-foot the enemy.
Wow, now that's a good idea. I sure don't see anything immoral here, and certainly no potential for abuse. After all, the only way to have a stable democratic state which protects its citizens' freedoms is if that state controls the media and uses it to knowingly distribute lies and propoganda. The founding fathers knew this, which was why when they wrote the first amendment, they... Oh wait, that's right. The media is supposed to be independent from the state. A state that uses the media to distribute lies is a mortal danger to freedom, and needs to be deposed, quickly.
Thirdly, the US wants to take control of the Earth's electromagnetic spectrum, allowing US war planners to dominate mobile phones, PDAs, the web, radio, TV and other forms of modern communication. That could see entire countries denied access to telecommunications at the flick of a switch by America.
Do I really even need to comment on this one? Combined with their planned propoganda campaign, they're looking to completely exclude targeted populations from recieving accurate and timely information. Again, if the true objective here was to combat terrorists by spreading democracy, this would obviously be massively counterproductive. But of course we all know that this is not about spreading democracy, or combating terrorism, any more than Iraq or Afghanistan were about freedom and democracy. It is about control.
From the Article:
"IMAGINE a world where wars are fought over the internet; where TV broadcasts and newspaper reports are designed by the military to confuse the population; and where a foreign armed power can shut down your computer, phone, radio or TV at will."
Imagine? We don't have to imagine, we are already living it!
The irony is, it's not the military that's waging a ware of dis-information, it's our own government waging a war of dis-information on us! Examples: Terror Alerts, WMDs, Climate Change, Evolution...Contradictory statements are being released by government officials. The government rebrands military operations: The War on Terror, The Global War on Terror, The Long War, or The Global War on Extremism...
This is indeed an interesting time in which we live.
A summary with a bit more information (and without horrible formatting errors), including a link to the actual document, can be found here. Apparently it's been declassified for a couple months now...but better to get this info out a little late then never I suppose.
This article and summary seems like a huge troll to me. It's carefully worded to be inflamatory, and appears to be, in large part, wrong. The US isn't preparing for war "on" the internet... as much as it's preparing for a war via the internet. The article goes on to use a bunch of careful prepositional games where I have to guess whether the US is actually thinking about attacking the internet... or considering how warfare will be conducted via the internet. It then goes on to quote a bunch of unnamed military guys saying things that I've never heard them say before...
Every plan I know of details a plan for electronic warfare using the internet.... yet here you have some terrible editorial trying to stir the spot, feeding into the slashdot groupthink and... stirring the pot. You already have people talking about the US "attacking" the internet. This is just shoddy journalism and bad editorializing to preach to a bunch of sheep. And the sheep cometh...
The US should always have a strong military but I don't think we should project it the way we do. I think we should mind our own business and I'm sure I won't have trouble finding people to agree with that simple view.
Recently I downloaded "Why We Fight" a BBC documentary detailing the buildup and creation of the US's Industrial Military Complex. It goes a long way to explain how it happened, why it was useful and why things are the way they are today. It spells out in great detail, for example, how the US put Saddam Hussein into power and GAVE him his weapons of mass destruction. (The US was fine with them using them as long as the humanity they used them against were considered enemies of the administration in power at that moment.)
Watching this really helped me to change my perspective on what "war" is and how it's being abused by the current "system" in power in the US. In short, it's all about power and making money. It has nothing to do with world peace or spreading democracy. I believe now more than ever before that we can spread peace and democracy through peaceful and genrous means.
Whether you agree with the information presented or not, I urge anyone to see this. Refute it or believe it. But I think it's quite enlightening.
This is why conservatives don't trust American liberals (leftists).
And its sad that both words have been hijacked. Today's liberal is in reality a socialist,
while today's conservative would be either authoritarian or national socialist.
Classical Liberalism
Classical Conservatism
It is truly a shame that the country has wandered so far from its roots....
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Because you've been trolled by yellow journalism. The US isn't attacking the internet. He is using prepostional magic to feed anti-US sentiment. The US is preparing for a war via the internet... That's a big difference then "ON", which implies the internet itself is the target.
I think it's both... They want to be devious co-conspirators who want to rule the world but they really are clueless bumblers.
Unfortunately, their clueless bumbling is a threat to world stability without any real control ... worst of both worlds.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Strange...the Bush crew is often portrayed as bumblers who can't do anything right, then they are accused of being devious co-conspirators to rule the world. Which is it guys?
I think it's a case of stupid-productive people.
Given a matrix with two qualities: smart vs stupid, and productive vs unproductive
smart productive people are the best - they do lots of stuff and do it well
smart unproductive people are generally non-harmful - they do stuff well, but just not much of it
stupid unproductive people are generally non-harmful too - they might do stupid stuff, but they don't do much of it
It's the stupid-productive people that you really have to watch out for. Not only do they do stupid stuff, they do a lot of it.
We are the only remaining superpower. We have a huge responsibility to set an example for the rest of the world and to help mature all of our societies. We have to try and steer the whole damn world into globalism at a pace that isn't threatening and is respectful to all of our cultures.
Why? Where's your authority to act as the world's authoritarian father-figure? Because you have the largest, most well-equipped army? This is the sort of attitude that gets planes flown into tall American buildings - "We know best; when we bomb you, it's for your own good".
It's not America's responsibility to "steer the whole damn world"; it's America's responsibility to steer America. That's what makes sovereign nations sovereign - they steer themselves. The reason many people react against the war in Iraq is because it shows how much America respects the sovereignty of other nations; it doesn't. It wages a war that much of it's populace is against, that was not sanctioned by most other nations, and that, after the fact, has little evidence supporting the original justification for it.
People are are against America because they're afraid of America. You are the last superpower. And you go to war on little more than a whim.
Ultimately, it's up to them.
So if they decide, democratically, to institute a fundamentalist religious government, you're not going to blow the crap out of them again? If it was ultimately "up to them", then you should have left their country alone, and let them sort it out themselves. You're not some school teacher intervening in a fight between school-kids. You are one adult telling all the others how they should behave at the point of a gun.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face