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Cybersecurity and Piracy on the High Seas
Schneier points out an interesting article comparing modern cybersecurity to piracy on the high seas in the early 1800s. The article extends the comparison into projected action based on historical context. "Similarly, in many ways, current U.S. policy on the security of electronic commerce is similar to Adams' appeasement approach to the Barbary pirates. The U.S. government's inability to dictate a consistent cyber commerce protection policy is creating a financial burden on the U.S. private sector to maintain a status quo, when those resources could be used to mount a more-effective Internet-focused defense. In the case of financial fraud on the Internet, the costs associated with fraudulent transactions are currently borne by private companies, which then have to pass those costs on to their customers. This basically creates a system in which the financial institutions are paying a type of 'tribute' to the cyber criminals, just as Adams did to the Barbary pirates."
Interesting. Government is less effective than private companies. Who would have guessed?
Err, it's not about software piracy.
***WARNING***
Link in parent is malicious. Do not click.
(Honestly, dude...it's getting old...)
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Looks like modern pirates would have a lot of words to relearn...
Hijacking - 1. Taking over a post on Slashdot.
Terrorism - 1. DOS attack against all the root DNS servers simultaneously. 2. Slashdotting a website.
"Arrrr..." - 1. Phrase uttered by someone who has just been linked to goatse.cz
One-Eye - 1. Asshole.
Pirate Flag - 1. Used to indicate a box has been pwned. 2. Used by Maddox (maddox.xmission.com) as a TM.
Booty - 1. A woman's butt.
...now we have bad boat analogies. Great.
Looks like the argument is "the government should be more involved in actually doing something." This is undoubtedly true; it's the government's job to set safety standards and to fight crime.
But really this is just an article that says "Hey, why not have the government fight crime?" with nautical window dressing. The author's better off scuttling the piracy angle.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
While the religious basis of the Barbary pirates' acts is contentious (as is Washington's supposed insistence that the U.S. is a specifically Christian nation), I'd highly recommend reading up about the Barbary Wars in London's Victory in Tripoli . Most Americans don't learn much about these skirmishes in school, since the usual course is just to skip from the American Revolution straight to the War of 1812 when covering wars. That's a pity, because the fight against the Barbary pirates was a big part of shaping the U.S. military into what it is today. It's not for nothing that the Marine's song references the shores of Tripoli (the Halls of Montezuma line is also a sadly forgotten episode).
I'm of the opinion that the government should be there to hold private industry liable for any breaches of personal data that leads to fraud. If someone steals my credit information and makes purchases with them, the credit card company should be on the hook for not verifying the identity of the person who made the purchase. The merchant should be on the hook for not verifying the identity of the purchaser. The whole system needs to be changed. Instead of giving out free credit, they need to only give credit to those who ask for it. Turn it from a push to a pull system and validate the hell out of the puller.
On an only semi-related tangant, I'm waiting for the explosion in fraudulant health care claims. The health care cards themselves are simple pieces of paper. It is easy to get a picture idea with your picture and someone else's name on it. With the cost of health care skyrocketting in this country it is only a matter of time before people start getting health services under someone else's name. And I already know what is going to happen... the person whose name got abused is going to be liable for it, not the health providers who okayed the procedure in the first place.
The rest of this article is full of similar crap ideas and analogies. Aaron Turner, who manages security technology transfer and commercialization for the Idaho National Laboratory, previously worked in several of Microsoft's security divisions. Oh. I see.
I guess it's easier to create an international body to oversee the internet than get Microsoft to put out a secure product.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
And as the old saying says...
Say no to Piracy! Don't steal ships.
how long until
Software "piracy", entertainment "piracy", phishing ... the author is obviously conflating these things under the banner of IP and suggesting that there's an economic argument similar to one raised when the US was a free republic. The differences are glaring and obvious:
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
Most Americans don't learn much about these skirmishes in school . . . . That's a pity, because the fight against the Barbary pirates was a big part of shaping the U.S. military into what it is today.
There's just not enough time in most school history classes to teach the kids something meaningful about all of the very major wars (Revolution, Civil War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam) that even some of the medium-sized wars (French and Indian, 1812, Korea) get short shrift. It's not a coincidence that Korea is called the "forgotten war." It'd be great if every high school kid had as much curiosity and interest about history as you clearly do, but it's just not the case. One survey, admittedly not very scientific, found that 57% of high school students didn't know that the Civil War was in the last half of the 19th century.
That's pretty bad. I'd much rather fix that than worry about teaching them about Barbary pirates. Maybe the right solution is more edu-tainment programming; it seems that your lesson to be taken from the Barbaray pirates is not dates and places, but more of a zeitgeist about the forces that were acting on the US in the early days. Some of that can be captured in a good period piece--think Pirates of the Caribbean, except not entirely fictionalized.
Similarly, it looks some somebody has already made silly videos about " protecting web booty" to riff on the pirate/cybersecurity theme.
Very few political entities are bereft of terrorism. Schier once again makes numerous mistakes in pointing to the culpable. The culpable are: all of us, ranging from users teaching users, to ISPs, to the website owners, to the makers of protocols with holes like Swiss cheese (and apologies to the Swiss). It could be fixed, but no one wants to claim the nexus of responsibility.
The terrorism label is a red herring, great for propaganda and useless war mongering. No one doubts the existence of many organizations that will murder, some en masse, in the name of their cause.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
At my school we got halfway through the American Revolution, then went straight to the summer break. When we came back in the fall we were studying WWII, leaving me to infer that the colonies had won independence.
I didn't even know there was an American civil war until I visited the south, where I found out it's still being fought.