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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.'"
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.
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!
Someone has been dropping spam bombs on my mailbox for years now.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Our civil liberties are eroding like a California mud-slide.
E.g. an American creates an anti-us website, and happens to cross-link an image located on a Pakistani website. Now this is considered an "international communication channel" which justifies to the NSA full sniffing of packets, forfeiture of logs from the ISP, etc.
Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/
Submit the targeted server to Agent CmdrTaco. His legion of followers will take care of the rest.
NMG
"We brought the Internet into this world, and by God we can take it back out!"
/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
I'd think that the simplest solution would be to (ironically) wall of the US internet. Of course this would allow the rest of the internet to publish what they want.
So is the US essentially saying that it wants to control (or influence in nicer terms) the entire internet?
It can also be used to say, spread the truth about illegal covert activities by the US against sovereign nations, allow oppressed people to get word out about their plight, give Americans a say in how their money is spent, and generally promote freedom and democracy. I can see why the Pentagon would be so frightened by the Internet.
Sorry to tell the pointy-heads in the Pointy-gon, but you're going to have a hard time bringing down even small portions of the Net. Perhaps you can take out individual sites, or even clusters of sites that reside on the same server farm, but I doubt they could take out enough to stop Internet traffic. They could certainly disseminate false or misleading information, but hey, people do that everyday already. As to dominating communications around the planet, the only thing I know of that can do that is the sloar wind. I think the Pentagon would have itself a cyber-Vietnam on its hands if it ever tried to 'attack the Internet'.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
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
Instead of seeing "Punch the monkey and win an Ipod", we might get "Kill Osama and win $25 million".
... 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.
Who decides who an enemy is? Warfare should be used to fend off attacks, and minimize risk and not to ATTACK the information of someone because they have a different point of view.
Throughout history capturing and using enemy information has been a lot more useful in combat than attacking the information of the enemy.
In the light of the fact that the Dept of Homeland Security just got an 'F' on its recent general security practices and server audits, I wonder what if this is really supposed to intimidate anyone....
Should they not get their house in order firstbefore thinking about greater things?
Mmmm... I think I am starting to see a pattern here.
Z.
While it hasn't yet been modded up enough for me to see it, I'm sure there's already a bunch of whining about how us eeevul hegemonistic Americans are all set to sally forth trampling across the internet in our zeal to wage war.
Sorry, this is just being smart. Keep in mind how prevalent botnets are, how they basically rule all of Asia, Eastern Europe, most of South America, and even substantial chunks of America and Western Europe. Keep in mind how much spam those networks churn out on a daily basis, how much money they earn the people who own them. Then realize that spam is about the *least* harmful thing they could be used for.
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.
The first question that came to my mind when I saw this was, "Which of Bush's big business buddies will this benefit the most?" Of course, that's the first question that comes to my mind whenever I hear of anything the Administration comes up with these days.
"A statesman is a dead politician. Lord knows we need more statesmen." Opus
Just post the URL of such website and before you know it, it will be slashdotted back to the stoneage.
Not to trivialize anything that the government would say (oh precious politicians, you do entrance me so) but isn't the whole "Cyber Terror" idea a bit absurd. You have websites that issue propaganda, and the like, sure, but it's not as if you're forced to look at them, you can just close the window and/or block the site. The fact that they exist isn't threatening in anyway, as you can simply choose to ignore it.
And really large defacements/ DDoS attacks haven't occured much, if at all in recent history. I understand the fear of DDoS attacks on government electronic infrastructure, but the important stuff shouldn't be accessible from outside sources at any rate.
On top of that, why would one require a whole militarization of what overly zealous and patriotic hackers have been doing for quite some time now? Bankroll their cause if you're so interested in combating an enemy digitally.
I Lost My Virginity While Waiting for BSD to Compile.
Don't make me Tomahawk your spam.
War on poverty, war on drugs, war on terror... now war on the Internet...
And here I always thought a "war" was "a state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties."
Well, the Internet is sort of like a party, I guess.
I also always thought that it was Congress that had the power to declare war, and that it wasn't war until Congress said it was war.
But, OK, Bush had is way on the war thing, but just let him try issuing a letter of marque and reprisal and a betcha Congress will hit him upside the head with a check and a balance.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Decentralize the comm infrastructure. As widely as technically possible. Redesign it to fail gracefully. Deploy mesh networking as backup system. For cellular telephony, form a mesh network of both the base stations and the handsets themselves, so even if all the bases are destroyed the handsets still can maintain the network themselves, at least for text messaging. Same for wifi routers and other kinds of comm nodes. As a non-military benefit, this could serve as a fallback for cases of "normal" infrastructure overload.
Develop and deploy ultrawideband technology for consumer devices, making it difficult to impossible to jam the band using the military EWAR toys. This should also make the communication more robust against non-military noise sources.
Develop and deploy phase-array antennas for consumer devices, to automatically adjust the antenna patterns according to the position of the comm devices, both saving batteries and rejecting jamming signals from unwanted directions.
Design the civilian infrastructure to be hardened against both intentional attacks and natural disasters taking out swaths of infrastructure. Make it a matter of national security.
All the technologies required are already existing. Now they just have to be brought out of the labs and released on the street.
Last but not least, prepare lower-tech fallback to establish networks disseminating the people's version of truth to counter the occupant's version, as you can not rely on the infrastructure providers. Prepare a diverse range of tactics, from people physically meeting together and swapping printouts and tapes to low-power FM and TV stations made of repurposed consumer equipment (eg. an antenna connected to the modulated output of a VCR - covers only a block or so but better than nothing. Covers significantly more with an output amplifier.) So take out your old book about antennas and read it today. You do not know when your expertise will be needed.
Be ready. Be prepared. Be Pentagon-proof.
The article may have briefly talked about terrorism, but I suspect the real danger comes from state-sponsored cyber-attacks, like from China. Terrorism is just a convenient explanation to use to the public. You can't come out and say you're preparing for an attack by China now, can you?
BTW, for those who think that cyber-warfare is a science-fiction concept, I draw your attention to the following analysis of Operation Allied Force. In particular, the section regarding cyber-attacks on surface-to-air (SAM) missile systems to protect our fighters (F-22, F-35):
Information warfare WILL happen, my friends. In fact, it's happening now. No, you won't find that written up in the newspaper. Do a little bit of googling and see what you come up with. :)
GMD
watch this
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.
During the Spanish-American War (1898), the American Navy cut the oceanic telegraph cables that connected Cuba to the rest of the Spanish Empire. See Cable-Cutting At Cienfuegos. During the first and second world wars, underseas cables were high-priority targets and were often cut.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
SS Web Agent: Mr. President The Chinese are throttling our server, we need a decision now!
President: Let's PHP-Nuke the bastards!
As an American citizen, let me be the first to tell you that you are not alone in finding this abhorent, for many reasons. First, there's the fact that it is hypocritical to claim to be founding a stable democratic state (the current popular excuse for hegemonic wars of aggression) which respects the natural rights and liberties of its citizens (something that no state can do in the long run, democratic or otherwise), while subverting one of the most important institutions in a free society, the press and communications channels. Second, as an American citizen, I have no doubt that this policy would be abused (as if its very existence were not abusive of state power) domestically as well as internationally. Never evaluate a government proposal on the basis of the good it will impart if properly administered, but rather by the harm it will inflict when abused.
It is important to disassociate political states and their actions from the individuals the state opresses and dominates. There are many Americans who do not support or condone the actions of the state, and many others (myself included) who do not recognize even the legitimacy of the state's very existence.
Take this RAND publication from 1996, for example:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR661/
Citizens of western countries like ours should be very familiar with Information Warfare, our states have been practicing it upon us for years.
After I erased my hard drive, my address book was gone! Hah!
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.
the Web attacks YOU ! (via spam, viruses, Internet Explorer, Vista and.. Oh wait)
I too listen to Coast to Coast.
HAARP is controlled by the Reptilians, right? And to get to their secret lair you just go down Mel's Hole.
There's a federal backdoor in their TOS, if the government wants access to their records, they have it by default.
:(
A great idea, but faulted from a fundamental perspective
I'm sure they intend to fight via the internet, but that appears to be just the beginning. Page six clearly says "We Must Fight the Net. DoD is building an information-centric force. Networks are increasingly the operational center of gravity, and the Department must be prepared to 'Fight the Net.'"
Ever heard of the Project for a New American Century? Believe me, this project is for real. Yes, they really do aim to dominate the world.
It's both. They are both hegemonic and incompetent. Why is that so hard to imagine?
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
Napoleon has a better chance of taking Russia during wintertime than the US does going to 'war' with the entire world wide web and winning. How do you even begin a war on the internet?
"My fellow Americans, during these times of tuhr attacks, the threats of the in - innernets have grown too large. We must stand together and keep these innernets from torturing their citizens and invading our beloved country. I've amassed an army of 80,000 marines to invade the innernets and stop the evil man Osama Bin Laden from striking against the American people with tuhr and hate."
"Uh, sir, you can't attack the internet. It's a network of millions of computers."
"My fellow Americans, I've just changed my mind. I'm going to EMP the entire globe. The scientists have dubbed this project 'Project Escape-From-L.A.' God Bless you and God Bless the United States of America."
I do see your point that we shouldn't be a father to the rest of the world. In fact, I agree. However, a father figure so to speak is needed these days. No matter what boundaries we draw, the world is getting smaller each and every day. The way we separated countries for thousands of years isn't working and fails at bigger levels as the world gets smaller. Simply drawing borders isn't going to prevent the issues of sovereign nations from bleeding over to the rest of the world. I would honestly prefer the UN to be restructured and become more effective. We need it to take the father figure role and hopefully, some day it will. Until then, would we really prefer to have nobody "steering the ship"? Should we all just shut our eyes and tell ourselves that we can all live on our own little islands and ignore what is going on in the rest of the world? Isn't that how World Wars get so large in scope?
I see the worst case scenario that has a likelihood of occurring for Iraq being that it gets divided into two countries and they constantly wage war against each other. There would be the occasional radical going off and bombing a European or American target in an act of retribution for what "Westerners have done". As I said before, what Bush did was desperate. There was a lot of risk in what he did and we would be ignorant to think that he didn't know the risks. I'd guess he had mathematicians, foreign affairs experts and several other advisers trying to predict outcomes of various actions both short term and long term. Before the war, I saw the biggest risk being the consequences that would come. We all knew that many people in the world would see the situation as America the Bully pushing around other countries. What would all the consequences of that mentality be, I thought. That's the risk Bush knowingly took when he invaded Iraq and ousted Saddam, thereby attempting to speed up their civilization's growth. I'm sure it's even more complicated than I see it.
Regardless of what I think, I can understand and even sympathize with the opposing opinions. I'm either seeing the truth and it's pretty damn scary or I'm totally wrong. I actually hope I'm wrong and globalization isn't a big issue. I hope that there isn't so much growth the world will have to endure regarding the way countries interact. It would be so much easier and all the growing pains wouldn't be necessary.
The former: resignation, the latter takes a bit longer to explain:
The US is, compared to any other western society, extremely religious (that Bush actually used the word "crusade" to refer to the Iraq War didn't exactly help, either). Granted, there are quite religious countries in Europe, too (Poland, Ireland and Italy), but not to the same extend, and they seem to be more successful separating it from politics.
You can compare survey data of various aspects of life between countries, and you will find that religion is not as important in Europe as it is in the US. For example, if you look at the results of the question "How important is god in your life?" for the US, Iran, and secular European countries like France or Germany ("Old Europe") the US' relative similarity to Iran, compared to Europe, is striking (sorry, no direct link to the graphs is possible, but trust me it's worth the effort).
I also found a poll that said 45% of Americans believe in the biblical creation, 38% in ID creationism, and only 13% that no god had part in it. In a German poll with the same questions the results were 12%/25%/61% (link in German).
The relatively common references to god even by mainstream US politicians, along with the Good/Evil classification, let many things appear religiously motivated, even if not intended. I assume those Americans that don't share the mainstream's religiousity perceive that rhetoric as as frightening as I do.
When there's a culture that believes westerners are the devil, peaceful integration is very difficult to accomplish.
Well, bombing them probably doesn't help making them see us in a more positive light, either.
Peaceful integration is the only way. You can't force somebody to share your believes.
[Bush] had a very difficult decision to make. He could either let things continue to happen organically and knowingly face more 9/11 incidents or he could make a desperate attempt to speed up the integration.
The key to preventing "more 9/11 incidents" lies in understanding the terrorists' motivation. The US' military presence in the Middle East, along with the support for oppressive regimes as in Saudi Arabia and what is seen as agressive Israeli politics/military actions, is a major factor.
I'd like to expand on Iraq in particular because it seems to bring out the most cynical of viewpoints. There are so many people blaming us for the current state of Iraq. I can understand blaming us for Iraq no longer being under Saddam's control and therefore introducing freedoms that the people never had. Nobody seems to want to put any responsibility on the Iraqis themselves.
The US chose to attack Iraq, and as the occupying power carries the responsibility to provide security for the parts of the population not taking part in the fighting. The US created a power vacuum and different factions try to fill it -- that was predicted by many people who opposed the war from the very beginning. You can put some of the blame on Jaafari & Co., on the terrorists, or on the insurgency if you believe resistance was unexpected, but not on the Iraqi people as a whole.
They have many more freedoms that they never had before.
That depends. Actually many women, especially in the Shiite south, probably would point out several freedoms they have lost. Saddam was bad, but he was secular (which, incidently, is why the islamists hated him).
Also, elections are not the same a
It is simple, and cynical, but I don't know if it's too far off-base. I think the war in Iraq was motivated more by politics than by national security. That may or may not be true, but I don't think I'm alone in holding that opinion.
I do see your point that we shouldn't be a father to the rest of the world. In fact, I agree. However, a father figure so to speak is needed these days. No matter what boundaries we draw, the world is getting smaller each and every day. The way we separated countries for thousands of years isn't working and fails at bigger levels as the world gets smaller. Simply drawing borders isn't going to prevent the issues of sovereign nations from bleeding over to the rest of the world. I would honestly prefer the UN to be restructured and become more effective. We need it to take the father figure role and hopefully, some day it will. Until then, would we really prefer to have nobody "steering the ship"? Should we all just shut our eyes and tell ourselves that we can all live on our own little islands and ignore what is going on in the rest of the world? Isn't that how World Wars get so large in scope?
The world is getting smaller, and globalisation is inevitable. I prefer the direction EU is going compared to the USA, however. You're not going to unite the world by tying them together through threat of force. That will last just as long as the force remains viable. Then it will fall apart. The EU's governing body is large, cumbersome and overly bureaucratic. But each of it's member states are there because they feel they need to be there, and they each have at least some say in how the EU is governed.
Most of the world's powers in recent times have been distinct entities uniting: USSR, USA, EU, and most recently, the UAE. Three types of unity are represented there:
- Force. The USSR were united by force, and fell apart when the force vanished.
- Threat. The states of America united against a foreign threat.
- Growth. The EU was established because the only way they could see of remaining relevant in the modern world was to unite.
I'm not sure whether the UAE falls into 2 or 3 - perceived threat from the West, or unity as they realise the power they are beginning to wield on the world stage. But my point is, unless some horrible aliens attack and we have an external threat to unite us, the only way the world is going to be united is discovering that standing on one's own leads to irrelevance as others unite. Being coerced into unity by a glowering father-figure, with his hand on the strap only lasts while the child is still cowed by the strap.Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face