Slashdot Mirror
USAF Considers Creation of Military Botnet
sowjetarschbajazzo writes "Air Force Col. Charles W. Williamson III believes that the United States military should maintain its own botnet, both as a deterrent towards those who would attempt to DDoS government networks, and an offensive weapon to be used against the networks of unfriendly nations, criminal groups, or terrorist organizations.
"Some people would fear the possibility of botnet attacks on innocent parties. If the botnet is used in a strictly offensive manner, civilian computers may be attacked, but only if the enemy compels us. The U.S. will perform the same target preparation as for traditional targets and respect the law of armed conflict as Defense Department policy requires by analyzing necessity, proportionality and distinction among military, dual-use or civilian targets. But neither the law of armed conflict nor common sense would allow belligerents to hide behind the skirts of its civilians. If the enemy is using civilian computers in his country so as to cause us harm, then we may attack them." What does Slashdot think of this proposal?"
I'm Surprised that they are not doing this already. That begs the question, who's computers would host the bots? Patriotic Americans who allow the govt to install software on their machine to attack the enemy is all well and good but what happens when the alphabet soup figures out that the govt has software on most of America's PC's?
No good can come of this.
A botnet is like a disease. Not a bomb. Deliberately infecting your own computers is a horrible idea.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
You have 4 windows updates to install:
Security hotfix for XML services KB0453456
Security hotfix for Windows
Microsoft Silverlight
US DoD anti-terrorist cyberwarfare battle attack bot v3.1
Do you think they really wouldn't do it?
We must not allow a botnet gap!!
"If the enemy is using civilian computers in his country so as to cause us harm, then we may attack them"
It might be found that the enemy botnet just doesn't respect political borders and will be using machines within ones own country. What happens then?
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
if China or Iran or some other enemy country wants to attack the USA and the US government wants to start a botnet let me know i have 2 PCs on 24/7/365 on cable broadband, i will volunteer my PCs to work for the US Government as part of a botnet, Bush may not be my favorite president but i am still an American and know what side my bread is buttered on (just make a Linux version too)...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Slashdot: Internet Ranks Vanilla as the Best Ice Cream Flavour Ever
Read the article. And don't mod people insightful before reading the article yourselves!
It specifically states, in no uncertain terms that they will only use USAF computers for this. And that it will be a way to use retired computers from other sections of the government that would normally be slated for destruction.
The one where the superior military, that could crush its opposition anywhere they stood and fought, couldn't defeat an army that kept slipping in to the countryside?
The one where the "evil" greater power could be demonised every time they caused collateral damage or took reprisals on the people the weaker force hid behind?
The one where the great general George Washington brilliantly used geurilla tactics to make up for never having more than 17,000 men in the field at any one time?
The one where, soon after winning its largely guerilla war, they wrote the second ammendment to their constitution to enshrine the right to that kind of combat?
The one where the larger but distant power regarded the attacks on its own holdings as terrorism - the term just wasn't widely used yet?
It's ironic that a nation formed on, and celebrating in its constitution, the principles of armed insurrection, guerilla warfare and terrorism when it was the weaker power gets its panties in such a collective bunch when people do exactly the same thing that worked so well for it back again.
Remember: If you win and you're powerful enough to write the history, it's noble. If you lose, it's evil terrorism. Until it's decided, which one it's viewed as simply depends on which side you're on.
Do you even know what a Botnet is?
I can just hear the Pentagon tech-office now.
TECH GUY 1: "Hey, we go this guy here who WANTS us to infect his PC with that Botnet thingy"
TECH GUY 2: "Lemme check. [CLICKITY-CLICK] Nope, already got 'im"
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Did you know that they really don't protect civilians under "contemporary" conditions ? It specifically states that if "the enemy" (anyone whom you're at war with) does not clearly identify itself (which is defined to mean military bases OUTSIDE of population centers and CLEARLY uniformed troops) that civilians, enemy troops AND casualties are fair game ?
As in, if there is a faction using people as human shields, any army fighting them is completely within their rights to shoot all the human shields first. (think about what rights this theoretically gives Israel in fighting Gaza, they go above and beyond what Geneva requires of them, since a genocide in Gaza would be clearly within Israel's rights under the Geneva conventions)
Even in an open war a military is completely within their rights to let a civilian population starve. Everything except direct, unprovoked attacks is not the subject of the Geneva conventions.
The convention also CLEARLY states who gets to judge (obviously without possibility of appeal) whether the provisions of the Geneva conventions allow you to shoot a certain person : the field commander. His decision is final, and he gets to be judge, jury and executioner.
Besides, there isn't a single warring faction in the world today, except the United States (and Israel, Turkey and "maybe" China (insofar you call Tibet a war, besides I doubt you will find China respecting Geneva in Africa)), that even pretend to respect the Geneva conventions. E.g. hezbollah has declared upon multiple occasions that it doesn't, nor does it ever intend to (and then they say something about some prophet not respecting them as justification).
Lots of other warring parties don't respect Geneva : the islamist government of Sudan, Egypt (in it's south), Iran, Pakistan,
Never mind civilian computers being fair game. These conventions date from immediately after WWII (not that anyone really thinks Hitler would have respected them if they existed, in fact he would probably have used them to his advantage, but hey, one can hope, right ?)
Also let's not forget, article 29(3) of the Human Rights :
"(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations."
In other words, anyone attempting to abolish the human rights treaty (one obvious party would be islamists) does not have any human rights.
In practice you will find provisions like that in just about any constitution, in constitutions as varied as both the US constitution and the Iranian one (you know the one that requires the state to execute gays).
And most (real, not the jingoist xenophobic crap that passes for it now) threats to national security are surrounded by innocent civilians who lack the "sophistication" (or are just scared sh*tless) to overthrow an opressive regime themselves.
Now, since we're not talking about injuring or killing people--just essentially jamming their net connection for a little while, and maybe messing up their computers--I'm much less concerned about "civilian casualties" of a botnet war. (That is, until the botnets send the robots to come kill us).
A hostile ant isn't biting you because it's mean, it's instinct since you've been perceived as a threat to the colony. Hostile antbites also don't result in millions of dollars lost when mission critical infrastructure is brought down.
Let's take some of your statements:
What the conventions actually say is that it's forbidden to perform certain acts. However, if one party commits such acts, it doesn't mean that any civilian population is then "fair game". Civilians are never "fair game".
The fact that some of the acts of one party are forbidden, doesn't mean the other party may commit crimes in response. Specifically, the Geneva conventions talk of proportionality: "Art. 53. Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations." Given furthermore the fact that Israeli's occupation of Gaza is illegal by international law in general, any action taken by Israel to keep Gaza occupied is in fact a crime (though not necessarily by the Geneva conventions, which only deals with very specific humanitarian issues).
Actually the Geneva conventions cover several aspects about war that have humanitarian consequences: the treatment of prisoners of war, the treatment of a population by their occupier, and so on.
It's the responsibility, not the discretion of the commander.
It's very true that no army ever respects the Geneva conventions. Israel, the United States and many other countries tend to profess how humane their acts of war are. Ofcourse, the harder they claim this, the more of a lie it usually is. (Collective punishment in Palestine, 10,000s of civilian prisoners of war without any outlook on a trial, but with rampant torture going on, the United States ofcourse has Guantanamo Bay, the en-masse destruction of civilian infrastructure in Iraq during both wars there, and so on). Regarding the statement you make about Hezbollah's declarations on multiple occasions, would you mind providing a reference to one such declaration?