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Law of Armed Conflict To Apply To Cyberwar
charter6 writes "Gen. Kevin Chilton, the head of STRATCOM, just declared that the Law of Armed Conflict will apply to cyberwar, and that the US won't rule out conventional (read: kinetic) responses to cyber-attacks. This means that we consider state-supported 'hackers' to be subject to the Geneva Conventions and Customary International Law, including the rules of proportionality and distinction (i.e. if we catch them, we can try them for war crimes). Incidentally, it also means we consider non-state cyber-attackers to be illegal enemy combatants, which means we can do all kinds of nasty stuff to them."
The whole "illegal enemy combatant" thing is immoral regardless of whether the "attacks" are physical attacks or just attempts made to disrupt digital communications.
They do have a point though - communications infrastructure is very important both for the economic wellbeing of the country, and to allow other branches of the military to coordinate and defend the country.
There really shouldn't be any reason to not consider traditional armed responses to digital attacks. People can cause damage. A teenage hacker may not have the same violent intent as a suicide bomber or a rogue nation plotting a traditional war, but that doesn't stop them from doing something malicious with serious repercussions.
It sounds good in theory, but like the parent, I also look at our country's history of using good judgment in situations like this, and worry.
I thought the whole point of "enemy combatants" was to get around the whole human rights for POW and prisoners. Hence why when the japs waterboarded POWs it was a terrible thing to do (even if they were trying to prevent an attack on civilians involving a WMD), but when the US waterboraded "enemy combatants" it was just enhanced interrogation.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
if the hacker has any sense, he'll hack the U.S. Constitution and restore the backups of Habeas corpus
The Admin and the Engineer
Here, let me fix that for you:
Its original design criteria included the capability to survive WW3.
In principal the technology can, but politically it can't. That is, the internet technology can withstand such an event, but the communications networks in reality don't provide that level of resiliency, at least not globally.
On the commercial internet, a lot of "redundancy" and "massive failover" options are gone, routing policy simply won't allow it.
Nowadays, the internet is highly centralized and commercialized, everyone connects to the big TIER1 providers, and they demand hefty compensation for the privilege to use a relatively small number of high-capacity links.
And if two of them fail critically, it's not like TIER1 provider C will step forward and provide everyone transit to isolated segments of provider 1. All the major providers require massive compensation for such services.
Nowadays on the commercial internet, there are a few major backbones everyone really needs, and any 1 or 2 un-repairable link failures in the right place can cause major communication disruptions, with enormous congestion of smaller oversubscribed links, with possibly 3 or 4 simultaneous un-repairable failures, large "pieces of internet" can be completely isolated.
And with 5 well-placed failures, the internet as we know it is gone for everyone, for however long it takes to fix damage or lay new wires...
From what I understand, these machines only have control of things that can affect money.
Medical records. Operation of automated medical tools. Communications used for bringing police, fire departments, ambulances, and other "first responders" to sites where people are in danger and/or injured. The components of the power grid, which operates life support systems, traffic lights, refrigeration preventing food poisoning, air-conditioning and heating equipment without which the elderly may die of heatstroke or hypothermia, etc. Railroad train signaling (preventing multi-train collisions, derailment - including into nearby structures and people. Water purification equipment. Sewage treatment equipment. Reservoir level control and irrigation water routing (which could lead to massive flooding if fouled). Industrial process control - which manages processes that could cause fires, explosions, and the release of toxic chemicals if fouled.
I could go on.
why is money more important than human life?
Money is crystallized labor. It represents a fraction of lifetime that a person worked to acquire it. Stealing or destroying it is stealing that portion of the person's life - enslaving them. It is well understood that deadly force is an appropriate response to attempts to enslave a person or hold them in slavery.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In some of the other Japanese cases, the "water torture" included strapping people to ladders and dunking them face down into swimming pools until they passed out. This is not the same as waterboarding.
To any normal person typing somebody to a board and making them feel like their drowning is the same thing. Being very specific and defining whats bad as exactly what the Japanese did, and whats ok as exactly what the CIA do, is IMO rather pathetic.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!