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."

Comments

Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems like a great idea, until you realize that any american geek who prods too deeply will be branded an enemy combatant.

Who knows what happens to enemy combatants.

Re:Awesome

[Jurily]

Who knows what happens to enemy combatants.

Cyber Guantanamo. Maybe they could swipe a small beach from Cyber Yugoslavia

Re:Awesome

[chris098]

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.

Re:Awesome

[religious freak]

No, those rules are just for THE OTHER guys, not us 'mericans!

(We have domestic law enforcement spying on us)

Re:Awesome

[netruner]

Cyber Guantanamo - wouldn't that be like making them use AOL over a 9600 baud modem? Or would that be considered torture by the Geneva Convention?

Re:Awesome

[Jurily]

Cyber Guantanamo - wouldn't that be like making them use AOL over a 9600 baud modem? Or would that be considered torture by the Geneva Convention?

Sir, you're replying to a comment submitted via GPRS on the Worcester-London train. I now officially hate you.

Re:Awesome

[Forbman]

the modern treatment of "illegal enemy combatant" by the US has been immoral. But, it allows for the summary execution of saboteurs, spies, etc. during times of war.

In my mind, that means sending in the spooks or SpecFor guys and capping them, rather than black-bagging them and torturing the crap [literally & figuratively] out of them. Save that for their hardware.

But, we couldn't really find the Timothy McVeighs almost 20 years ago, and probably couldn't now, either, despite the PATRIOTACT, NSA spying, etc.

Look what a couple of disgruntled kooks from Salem, OR, did a few months ago to a bank in Woodburn, OR. I'm sure their purchase of pre-paid cell phones showed up somewhere (they sure identified them through purchase records fast enough), but not enough to tie that in with whatever else they bought along the way to preempt their plans...

Re:Awesome

[RiotingPacifist]

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.

Re:Awesome

[machineghost]

>>Or would that be considered torture by the Geneva Convention?
Feh, nobody cares about that thing anymore anyway ;-)

Re:Awesome

[causality]

The whole "illegal enemy combatant" thing is immoral

Like many state-sponsored practices which are immoral, it's designed to intimidate.

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.

Assuming that your top priority is punishing those who perpetrate such attacks, this makes a great deal of sense. Now, if your top priority is to prevent computer and network intrusions, I think our efforts and resources would be better spent towards hardening machines and networks, identifying insecure practices, and holding personally responsible the people who are supposed to keep those systems secure.

What I mean by "priority" is that we can do this and still try to locate and arrest the perpetrators, it would just have a lower priority than securing our systems to prevent such intrusions in the first place. In other words, they're not mutually exclusive even though I believe one of those options makes a lot more sense. I just think it's silly to believe that stiff penalties alone are going to prevent the intrusion attempts that anyone running any sort of server already accepts as inevitable.

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 think that if you cut through all the peripheral issues and locate the core principle, this goes back to the idea that "freedom isn't free." What people seem to want is the perfect ability to secure us against all sorts of threats while retaining all civil liberties and preventing the abuse of power. That just isn't realistic and history, particularly that of the 20th century, has been the story of why that doesn't work and isn't going to work. Personally, I'd rather retain my civil liberties and have a government that doesn't have so many easily-abused powers, even if that means that some criminals who do real damage might get away with it (though more likely than not, they'd just be dealt with using the criminal justice system instead of the Gitmo system).

It seems evident that people who value freedom more than a need to "get those bastards", more than their party platform, more than their desire to feel safe from a threat be it real or imagined, more than even life itself, are becoming rare. I am forced to regard that as cowardice. When it comes to the motivation behind poor decision-making, few things are quite so effective as cowardice.

Re:Awesome

[Jurily]

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.

And how do you plan to take down the internet? Its design criteria included the capability to survive WW3.

Re:Awesome

[Roger W Moore]

...it allows for the summary execution of saboteurs, spies, etc. during times of war.

Someone hacking a Pentagon computer from, say, Europe is not doing it from a country that is at war with the US. However, if the US response to that hacker is to blow up his house it sounds like a very good way to end up in a state of war with lots of countries. If local law enforcement will not handle such threats then a proportionate response would be to threaten to break all network ties with that country. Apart from solving the problem there are not many countries who's economies would not suffer greatly from such action (and if they go via another country you either gain an ally against them or ban them as well). It is a shame that subtlety and proportionate response never seem to be strong suits of the US government.

Re:Awesome

[joocemann]

I think you meant to say "... who ignorantly commits crimes and thinks he should not be responsible for his actions."

Know what you are doing or don't do it.

Re:Awesome

[kulakovich]

Yes, and in the future they'll be trying to follow the chain of command back to who authorized Bulletin Boarding.

Re:Awesome

[supernova_hq]

And yet it's still held together by gaffer tape.

Just because something is designed to survive something, doesn't mean it will!

Re:Awesome

[Minwee]

Not quite, but it does mean that an American kiddie who defaced cnn.com would be guilty of High Treason.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

- Remember kids (by the camp fire, outside of the burned remains of the White House), once upong a time there was these things called criminal law and international cooperation. There was also this entity called "administration" which controlled the thoughts of the majority.
- Inconceivable! (gasping)
- One of the administrations invented the necessary concepts to militarize every part of the criminal law and so the Withusoragaistus was born. The ueberish leader at the time was called the Bush.
- Hehe, bush, hehe. (around the fire)
- I know (smiling). Anyway, at the time the Withusoragaistus was only a thought and it took several decades to materialize as the then nations Controller.
- The Controller, huh. (shivering, filled with fear) What happened to the international cooperation?
- You see? (waving hand towards the remains) Well, kids, why don't we eat some of those delicious anticuchos. They look well made already.

Re:Awesome

[Weedhopper]

The whole "illegal enemy combatant" thing is immoral regardless of whether the "attacks" are physical attacks or just attempts made to disrupt digital communications.

No, it's very much moral and necessity. The application of it by the previous administration, however, is outright criminal.

The Laws of Armed Conflict and the Geneva Conventions that provides the clause for "illegal enemy combatants" as a classification to exist, exist for a reason. It's to prevent war from descending to absolute fucking barbarism. War is ugly and brutal enough as it is when everyone follows the rules.

You have no idea how inhuman the actors who play outside of those rules can be unless you've seen it for yourself. The terrible things that criminal things soldiers have done pale in comparison to the gutwrenchingly and heartbreakingly deplorable acts that armed people will do in the absence of good order and discipline.

That we're using illegal combatant status as a loophole legal justification for torture IS immoral, but the rules were there to try to force everyone to behave with some semblance of human civility, no matter how small.

Re:Awesome

[FishOuttaWater]

I thought the whole point of having separate legal rules for war situations was that it was a battlefield with thousands of guys running around shooting people. You can't really apply the normal American legal process on that scale. There aren't enough judges, prosecutors, jurors, and, thankfully, lawyers in the world to do it. It just doesn't seem like this rationale applies to hacking. Still, play it safe, guys. If you must hack military sites, for God's sake, wear a uniform!

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Or worse... it gives our government pretty much any reason to attack any other country.

Our servers were hacked by your people.. We're carpet bombing Dubai in response.

Sorry, but this is utterly insane. Cyber-warfare is a joke. Its' a dirty secret joke us hackers thought up decades ago, and now some dipshit in the pentagon wants to fricking launch missles in response to it.

Jeebus, I can thwart a full on "cyber attack" by yanking a single ethernet cable.

The response is to hire competent IT security people and make a "cyber attack" worthless, not to nuke a hemisphere.

Re:Awesome

[servognome]

I thought the whole point of having separate legal rules for war situations was that it was a battlefield with thousands of guys running around shooting people. You can't really apply the normal American legal process on that scale. There aren't enough judges, prosecutors, jurors, and, thankfully, lawyers in the world to do it. It just doesn't seem like this rationale applies to hacking. Still, play it safe, guys. If you must hack military sites, for God's sake, wear a uniform!

The Pentagon does in fact have lawyers in the field and planning rooms to review the legality of missions before they are performed.
I always thought that the reason for having rules for war was mutually assured security. There are some horrible prospects in war that countries don't want to face, so they agree to rules which prohibits such activities. Don't torture our soldiers and target our civilians and we respond in kind.
Since they come from agreement and not unilateral moral declarations, participants can ignore the rules when dealing with parties not adhering to the accords.

Re:Awesome

[mysidia]

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...

Re:Awesome

[Zordak]

any american geek who prods too deeply will be branded an enemy combatant.

If he's an American geek (as in citizen of the U.S.), there's no "branding" him an enemy combatant. He is a citizen entitled to due process. He would be tried in a federal district court. Unless he's also caught in the hills of Afghanistan carrying a weapon with a Taliban squad, in which case there are those who would treat him as an enemy combatant. But I don't think that's your average geek.

Re:Awesome

[Buelldozer]

Maybe educate yourself?

The Japanese version of waterboarding and the CIA version of waterboarding are significantly different.

http://wizbangblog.com/content/2009/04/27/regarding-those-claims-about-wwii-waterboarding.php

Re:Awesome

[bash-rules_$]

No I'm not!

Re:Awesome

[FishOuttaWater]

Sure, but when it's just a few dozen hackers out there, can't you just haul their butts to jail the old-fashioned way? Why go through the military courts?

Re:Awesome

[ross.w]

Unless it's Israel. Don't hack their computers. They won't care where your house is.

Precedent speaks loudly.

Or for that matter, the French

Re:Awesome

[jav1231]

Not really. The current administration doesn't view such individuals as anything more than criminals. Currently, even terrorism is being viewed as less an act of war and more a crime. So for the next four years "enemy combatant" means very little.

Re:Awesome

[Zakabog]

Cyber Guantanamo - wouldn't that be like making them use AOL over a 9600 baud modem? Or would that be considered torture by the Geneva Convention?

*shudders*

I actually started out on the internet with AOL over a 2400 bit/s modem (back when they charged per hour.) Chat rooms would lag, I would usually get a page of text, pause for 5 seconds, another page of text. It was terrific for me though since AOL over a slower than molasses connection was all I knew of the internet at the time. I remember downloading the first big file (a wav file of a song from a video game) over that connection. Took me about 12 hours to do it (left my computer on all night, my parents didn't like that months bill.) Didn't get a new modem till 56K came out (I just didn't have the money, I was still in junior high.)

Re:Awesome

[Jeian]

IANAL, but it seems to me that if they're a US citizen and get into a government system under orders (real or alleged) from a foreign government, they'd be put on trial for treason/espionage.

In order to be an enemy combatant, you have to be a member of the armed forces of another country.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

The Laws of Armed Conflict and the Geneva Conventions that provides the clause for "illegal enemy combatants"

[citation needed]

As far as I know, the Geneva Conventions do not say anything at all about "illegal enemy combatants". That is a term made up by the Bush administration in their claim that the Geneva Conventions do not apply.

The slightest thought about the phrase shows it to be meaningless.

enemy

1. a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent.

2. an armed foe

combatant

1. a nation engaged in active fighting with enemy forces.

2. a person or group that fights

illegal

1. forbidden by law or statute.

2. contrary to or forbidden by official rules

How can a person or nation actively fighting against you in war be acting illegally simply by the act of fighting against you? Fighting against you is what war is all about. Is the war itself illegal? If so, why did you start it? If not, how is someone fighting against you in that war acting illegally?

The phrase "illegal enemy combatant" has no meaning, legally or morally.

Re:Awesome

[Jeian]

We had this discussion recently on another forum I visit. Waterboarding was standard practice by the Japanese on all POWs to fish for information. In the more recent US cases, it's only been used on specific prisoners (such as KSM) who were believed to have knowledge of imminent attacks against civilian targets.

Re:Awesome

[joocemann]

I love your post and I agree with all of it. But until you've raised your gun to prove yourself otherwise, you've called yourself a coward.

Or maybe you're like me and even though you really care about something and would really like to do something about it, you're still happy to be standing on the side of the fence with the greenest grass with the best ice cream cone in your hand --- realizing that life elsewhere is much harder, that the majority of people on this planet live with less and often have difficulty trying to address needs (leaving very little time to be concerned about 'wants').

I'm not passive because of cowardice, rather I am passive because I'm too happy to frown; and rightly so.

Re:Awesome

[Fred Ferrigno]

I just think it's silly to believe that stiff penalties alone are going to prevent the intrusion attempts that anyone running any sort of server already accepts as inevitable.

Well of course it's silly. Who do you think actually believes that? It's about as silly as saying you should focus exclusively on defensive systems and just letting the enemy attack you at their leisure while they build up their systems with no fear of counterattacks.

Re:Awesome

[tibman]

You got it backwards. Captured Combatants are "protected" under the Geneva Convention. Even from torture. If a fighter does not meet the criteria of a combatant they can't be protected by the document. Don't think it's easy to lose that protection. Here's how to qualify:

Article 4

A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:

1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.

2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:

(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

(c) That of carrying arms openly;

(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

3. Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power. ...

6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.

Sorry, it's much longer, i just left in some of the important parts. So from this list a spy, assassin, or terrorist wouldn't be considered a protected combatant.

Re:Awesome

[argStyopa]

"The whole "illegal enemy combatant" thing is immoral regardless of whether the "attacks" are physical attacks or just attempts made to disrupt digital communications.

No, it's very much moral and necessity. The application of it by the previous administration, however, is outright criminal."

Huh? I agree with you that the concept of a classification of certain types of violent actors as "illegal" and "legal" enemy combatant is necessary. I'm not sure how you go from that to the application by the previous administration being outright criminal?

The United Nations War Crimes commission states clearly that, certain acts committed by civilians in militarily occupied territory are liable to be treated as war crimes, for which the customary punishment has been execution, for example "Illegitimate hostilities in arms committed by individuals who are not members of the armed forces." and "...a civilian who aids, abets, or participates in the fighting is liable to punishment as a war criminal..."

War crimes executions must only be enacted if there is a reasonably fair trial beforehand; however this trial can be summary according to field expediency.

Therefore, for the fellows who were captured in the process of acting as ununiformed combatants (ie, most of them) could have been briefly tried and probably executed. This whole folderol about the legality of military tribunals is farcical - they are EXPLICITLY allowed in the Hague Conventions, and the ones that Bush implemented were a damn sight more laborious and cautious than they really needed to be.

(http://books.google.com/books?id=IyWOF_lzPlYC&pg=RA4-PA108&lpg=RA4-PA108&dq=military+law+and+shooting+of+spies&source=bl&ots=O33sj47Ic_&sig=_Ywd3Vz2cRe-33qU47nNDlX7EFE&hl=en&ei=NxYFSt6MH5eyMavt7aID&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PRA4-PA111,M1)

Re:Awesome

[servognome]

Sure, but when it's just a few dozen hackers out there, can't you just haul their butts to jail the old-fashioned way? Why go through the military courts?

Because international politics treats hostile state-sponsored action in "armed conflict" different than just breaking the law.
A member of a recognized group in armed conflict is given immunity, and would be treated as a prisoner of war. This would mean they would be returned once the conflict is over, and cannot be the target of civil or criminal action.
A hacker bringing down a power grid as a prank would be subject to the laws of a country, while one doing the same as part of an armed conflict would be covered under international conventions.

There are situations where you would prefer to be labeled a [legal] enemy combatant, than a criminal.

Re:Awesome

[causality]

I love your post and I agree with all of it. But until you've raised your gun to prove yourself otherwise, you've called yourself a coward.

I appreciate the false dichotomy you're presenting here. To be specific, you're saying that my only choices are to either brandish a weapon or consider myself a coward. You leave no room for an understanding of how anything ever gets to the point where (hypothetically speaking) armed conflict would even be considered.

Here I am again speaking hypothetically. If it ever actually came to violence, it would only be because a long series of failures occurred that prevented good people from standing up peacefully while standing up peacefully was still possible. There is much truth in that saying about evil thriving because good men do nothing; that is, they aren't good enough. It's a seldom-recognized fact that all of these huge problems like modern totalitarian states were once small problems that could have been dealt with relatively easily. It's not unlike an infection; it starts small and then, if left untreated, it festers and grows until it takes over the host. Identifying it before it gets too far along requires foresight.

I don't mean this in a religious way at all, but what you're really dealing with is what religious people sometimes refer to as "powers and principalities." They are ideas that act through people because those people are compromised. They're not really themselves. They have an identity that is based on a nation, or a group, or an image, or a culture, and have forgotten that real strength is found within. The principle here is that compromised people demand compromised leaders. The condition is therefore systemic. No sane person with any awareness of the available options would ever want to live under a dictatorship. That idea has to be inflicted on them. For that reason, deception, trauma, and a form of seduction are the main methods by which it is realized.

Deception is fairly easy to identify in politics. In fact, it's so common that most people just assume that politicians are liars and no one really cares anymore. Just think about this for a moment. If politicians never make their own decisions as individuals, but rather, cater to the interests of their financial supporters, then are those politicians really acting as human beings or has their humanity taken a backstage so that they can be a mouthpiece for various external interests? A real human being is no one's puppet. The ultimate expression of this mechanism is when you're made to feel like there is something wrong with you for pointing out how phony most people really are. The hardest part about this is that when most people adhere to a group identity, follow trends, or repeat carefully crafted soundbites intended for public consumption, they really believe that doing so is their own original idea. Did you know that a hypnotist can tell a subject up front that he is going to make that subject take off his left shoe, he can then implant the suggestion, and when the subject removes his left shoe he will make up an excuse for why he did so? It's a mindless and suggestible state that is anything other than your real identity.

Trauma, on the other hand, is not so widely understood. The easiest example of that would be the rise of fear-based politics ever since the September 11th attacks. Heightened security and intrusive governmental powers were not sold on the basis of being good ideas; they were sold on the basis of a national enemy who is trying to get us. That's a far cry from open, rational debate and that's no accident. No excuse for the surrender of civil liberties would ever survive rational debate, particularly not for Americans who are actually familiar with the writings of the Founding Fathers. But if a trauma has been inflicted and fear is rampant, that sort of rationality is rendered mute. The ultimate expression of this mechanism was explained by Hegel and is known either as "thesi

Re:Awesome

[siloko]

The whole "illegal enemy combatant" thing is immoral

Like many state-sponsored practices which are immoral, it's designed to intimidate.

Whilst slashdot readers are well aware of hackers' sudden "rebranding" in the eyes of the law I doubt some bedroom activist in China has any idea that he is now an 'illegal enemy combatant' and thus the intimidation factor is likely to be minimal. Unless of course the US really does start robo bombing suburbia.

Re:Awesome

[Paua Fritter]

Very true. But you, when all you have is a hammer, everyone else looks like a nail.

The US is so hypermilitarised that militarism is a natural first response to anything. This is how we get such absurdities as "humanitarian bombing campaigns" and "destroying the village in order to save it".

Re:Awesome

[CarpetShark]

Geek who prods too deeply?

Seems to me that any... say, swedish... citizens who are deemed to harm American corporations could be targetted as terrorists seeking to undermine the US way of life under this act.

Re:Awesome

[Trojan35]

And here I thought that was a real place.

Re:Awesome

[BrokenHalo]

Currently, even terrorism is being viewed as less an act of war and more a crime.

Well, there's some wisdom in that. A significant proportion of the so-called "insurgency" in Iraq and actions of the Taliban in Afghanistan are believed (by US intelligence) to be from plain common-or-garden violent criminals. To treat them as such at least has the merit of being somewhat honest, rather than relying on the bugaboo of "terrorism" to get a knee-jerk response from the rednecks at home.

The previous administration has put a lot of political capital into painting the conflict as a war against Islam (whether they admit it or not), but it doesn't accomplish anything except to get more innocent people killed. Under the laws of their own countries, such criminals face the death penalty for their actions anyway. Branding them as terrorists is meaningless.

Re:Awesome

[RiotingPacifist]

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.

Re:Awesome

[Atari400]

Swatting just reached a new level.

Re:Awesome

[ultranova]

the modern treatment of "illegal enemy combatant" by the US has been immoral. But, it allows for the summary execution of saboteurs, spies, etc. during times of war.

Is there any added value in summary execution as opposed to imprisonment, or even execution after a proper trial? If a bomber pilot who destroys a bridge but is shot down is not executed but merely imprisoned, why should a saboteur who dynamites that same bridge be treated any differently? Sure, he is being sneaky about it rather than painting a huge bullseye on himself, but it could be argued that saboteurs are actually a more humane way to fight a war than bombers, because they are more accurate and usually only strike at military targets rather than carpet bombing a whole city.

There really doesn't seem to be much point in summary executions, besides petty vengeance.

Re:Awesome

[legirons]

the modern treatment of "illegal enemy combatant" by the US has been immoral. But, it allows for the summary execution of saboteurs, spies, etc. during times of war.

It sounds very similar to Commando Order, which might be a problem because that was illegal - and people were tried as war criminals for summarily executing saboteurs and spies (e.g. wikipedia mentions Alfred Jodl who was hanged for behaving as we seem to be encouraging americans to behave)

Re:Awesome

[Punk CPA]

People keep confusing this issue. First, no Japanese officers or personnel were convicted just on the basis of waterboarding. Although they did use it, they were more likely to use something like the Swedish Drink, which causes severe physical damage and painful death.

Think about it for a bit, and ask yourself if the war crimes investigators would have been likely to have gone after someone for waterboarding when there were so many other hideous crimes committed: the Wake Island massacre, the Rape of Nanking, the destruction of Manila, the routine torture and murder of POWs (including the vivisection of an entire bomber crew), the massacres after the fall of Singapore, the Bataan death march, etc. One Japanese general was hanged for selecting prisoners to be slaughtered and eaten! Not every Japanese soldier or official who participated in these far more serious and widespread abuses was prosecuted.

Please apply a little common sense and do a little research before parroting nonsense.

Re:Awesome

[dbrutus]

For physical attacks, not wearing uniforms, hiding among civilians and other war crimes give you a combat advantage and massively up the death toll among civilians. It is very moral to make a distinction between illegal combatants who don't follow the laws of war and get many more people killed and those who do follow the laws of war and get compensatory better treatment when they are captured and/or defeated.

Re:Awesome

[dbrutus]

Screw the Tier1 providers, I want an application that tells me where I'm vulnerable and a marketplace where I can privately arrange for redundancy sufficient for my needs.

There's money to be made for some smart engineers on this issue.

Re:Awesome

[KDR_11k]

Of course a question is what kind of "sign visible from the distance" is expected. Soldiers use camouflage to avoid being visible from far away, would that still count as a sign or would they have to use something that just makes them targeting practice for any enemies nearby?

Re:Awesome

[dbrutus]

Any normal person put in the same situation of having a smirking evil maniac responsible for thousands dead and giving you cryptic bs about follow on mass casualty attacks aimed at killing thousands more civilians would have pulled out the car battery and jumper cables.

The US did its best to walk right up to the line of torture but not to go over. In the sort of circumstances we had in 2001-2003 that's about the best you can hope for. In cases where interrogators did cross the line in an obvious way, there generally have been prosecutions. That's the way things should be. As we fixed the massive FUBAR that was US intelligence on Al Queda we walked away from the torture line.

Re:Awesome

[Two in the Hat]

They could be subject to "circuitboarding" if they don't confess.

Re:Awesome

[tibman]

Almost every country's military uses a small flag. Usually in the same colors you would expect from the original flag. I guess as long as the sign is reasonable, it would be acceptable?

Commercial companies affix their logos onto cars, clothes, and computers that most people can recognize from a distance with a glance. Something about that size on a uniform seems reasonable. Though i'm sure there's a committee somewhere that debated on this and drafted a 100 page document : /

Re:Awesome

[Buelldozer]

Would you care to guess how many people actually died in the Japanese version versus how many died in the CIA version?

Re:Awesome

[tekshogun]

This seems like a great idea, until you realize that any american geek who prods too deeply will be branded an enemy combatant.

Who knows what happens to enemy combatants.

Make them watch Hackers and Antitrust over and over again, until they crash and burn, then we'll pull out the old Prodigy internet service and make them use it at 2400 baud... much worse than AOL at 9600.

Re:Awesome

[jav1231]

"The previous administration has put a lot of political capital into painting the conflict as a war against Islam (whether they admit it or not), ..."

Never heard it called that. I've heard it called a war against "radical" Islam. If it were truly a war against Islam we would have invaded Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Syria, Pakastan, but we didn't.

Re:Awesome

[Alorelith]

If you haven't already, I think you should take a look at the writings of Shaykh AbdalQadir As-Sufi. Even if you are not a Muslim, I think your history of posting shows you to be quite understanding to the position of serious Muslims, the likes of which the world hardly knows unfortunately. Here's a sample but feel free to investigate the website. Peace.

http://www.shaykhabdalqadir.com/content/articles/Art050_08122005.html

Copyright army

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, Hollywood can have all those file sharers declared state enemies. "They could be sharing terrorist plans. Ummmm, yah! That's it"

Re:Copyright army

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else notice slashdot isn't showing comment info on the front page anymore?

Re:Copyright army

[ipX]

I got a 503 and when /. came back the # of comments per article was gone on the front page. Maybe it was something to do with caching problems?

Oil Barons

[lymond01]

This completely explains what happened to my Commodore 64 cluster...

Re:Oil Barons

[wampus]

Slashdot's interface is an abortion and makes javascript jebus cry.

I'd be okay it with if only...

[erroneus]

...if only I get to personally witness the death by execution of the people who write malware, run botnets and spam the hell out of the planet.

Those those trade freedom for security deserve neither. But I would gladly trade some freedom for some revenge against the bastards that really bring hell to the masses.

Re:I'd be okay it with if only...

[Forbman]

You sure have a strange definition of hell. Maybe stop using IE, HotMail/Yahoo mail, etc.?

I'll keep my comfortable air-conditioned, running water & effective sewage treatment, food distribution, job, etc., even if I have to deal with the occaisional spam e-mail (hey, GMail is pretty effective at filtering out that crap) intruding into my personal life when I can choose to use my computer, or not, and still have an enjoyable life, versus living in some intolerant Taliban-controlled backhole, a refugee camp in , any prison, etc., where day-to-day existance is very fragile, indeed.

Re:I'd be okay it with if only...

[erroneus]

Card-carrying Linux user here. I am not vulnerable. It's the "environment" that has become a trashed-out hell. Every machine from government, business of all sizes to your next door neighbor's are the ones being exploited. To put it another way, you can keep your house painted and your lawn delicately landscaped all you want, but that won't save your property value when you've got gang members, white trash, an over-populated house of hispanics and a black woman with 6 kids from 8 different child-support paying fathers living close by.

Re:I'd be okay it with if only...

[Whatsisname]

Right, because goverments of the 20th century killing 200 million people isn't what really brings hell to the masses! My email inbox being flooded with V1AGR4 is so much greater a crime against society!

Re:I'd be okay it with if only...

[Nicholas Evans]

with 6 kids from 8 different child-support paying fathers

That's a neat trick. I also believe it's possible to do in several states...

Re:I'd be okay it with if only...

[erroneus]

Oh yes... seen it. In Pennsylvania, you can be married to a woman and be completely, medically sterile and you will be responsible for child support if your wife cheats on you and gets pregnant before the divorce is complete. And on top of that, she could move to another state and charge the biological father with paternity and collect from him as well. That's a 2-for-1 and it is completely legal.

I love that I was modded down as flamebait by pointing out truth in its extremes. "Bad neighbors" bring down property values. It's a fact. The examples of bad neighbors I cited are valid, accurate and all too common. What's more, they are covered in a pretty fair and even spectrum.

Re:I'd be okay it with if only...

[erroneus]

The two things you stated are completely unrelated. You may as well have brought up kids with cancer as being worse than spam. NOT RELATED. Mass murder is bayud m'kay? But completely irrelevant. Want to make a point? Keep it relevant.

and the hacker thinks....

[eatvegetables]

"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 hacker thinks to himself ...hmmmm, if I hack the military, they might

1. stick me in a cold, dark, room.

2. feed me old, stale food.

3. keep me away from friends, family, and girls.

4. keep me awake all night.

...(pause), ALRIGHT! Woohooo!. I wonder if I get to play WoW too!/p?

Re:and the hacker thinks....

[markana]

So, they give you a job as a Sysadmin????

(and the high-value prisoners they make Windows admins???)

Re:and the hacker thinks....

[baKanale]

the hacker thinks to himself ...hmmmm, if I hack the military, they might
...
3. keep me away from friends, family, and girls.

Oops, too late for that one.

Re:and the hacker thinks....

[Plekto]

  the hacker thinks to himself ...hmmmm, if I hack the military, they might

1. stick me in a cold, dark, room.

2. feed me old, stale food.

3. keep me away from friends, family, and girls.

4. keep me awake all night.

5. do a low level reformat on them from orbit.

That said, I personally think it's long overdue that we started treating these botnets and hacking rings as criminal organizations.

Re:and the hacker thinks....

[martin-boundary]

  ...(pause), ALRIGHT! Woohooo!. I wonder if I get to play WoW too!/p?

No, it's not on the list. I'm afraid you can only choose one of these:

List Games

FALKEN'S MAZE     GUERRILLA ENGAGEMENT
BLACK JACK        DESERT WAREFARE
GIN RUMMY         AIR-TO-GROUND ACTIONS
HEARTS            THEATREWIDE TACTICAL
BRIDGE               WAREFARE
CHECKERS          THEATREWIDE BIOTOXIC AND
CHESS                CHEMICAL WAREFARE
POKER             GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR
FIGHTER COMBAT

tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe
tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe
tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe tic tac toe

Re:and the hacker thinks....

[catmistake]

if the hacker has any sense, he'll hack the U.S. Constitution and restore the backups of Habeas corpus

Re:and the hacker thinks....

[djcapelis]

> That said, I personally think it's long overdue
> that we started treating these botnets and
> hacking rings as criminal organizations.

I agree. However this policy treats them as foreign military which is much different.

Very few hacking incidents these days (not that we have terribly good data on this) are military operations. Criminal ones are likely to be far more common. It is important to preserve the distinction and hopefully there will be some effort to do so.

Re:and the hacker thinks....

[Barny]

And for the problem prisoners, Daikatana.

Re:and the hacker thinks....

[genner]

And for the problem prisoners, Daikatana.

Anyone who would do that should be charged with a war crime.

With apologies to Martin Niemoller...

[Tackhead]

the US won't rule out conventional (read: kinetic) responses to cyber-attacks.

So, with geolocation services, we could finally make all the jokes about ICBM addresses come true?

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."

First they tortured the terrorists,
And I felt kinda iffy about that,
Even though it worked on TV.

They they tortured Iraqi civilians,
And I felt pretty embarassed,
Even though I was safe at home in America.

Then they tortured people they thought were suspicious,
And I started to get scared,
Even though I didn't hang out with anybody like that.

Then they started torturing the spammers, the botnet herders, and the malware authors,
And I'm sorry, Professor Niemoller,
But that makes up for everything!

Re:With apologies to Martin Niemoller...

[omnichad]

You'd have to blast a pretty big area to ICBM over IP. I have a dynamic IP address from a pool based 45 miles from me.

You'll see it on the news, not in person

[davidwr]

Sorry, when the Pentagon comes for the hackers and delivers their "kinetic response" you won't be there to see it live.

You may be able to see the smoking crater of what's left of them and their botnet command and control center on CNN though.

I do hope you won't be too disappointed.

Re:You'll see it on the news, not in person

[erroneus]

I wouldn't be so sure of that. We got to see Saddam hanged. My god! What a defiant-to-the-end asshole. (We set'm up! We knock'm down!)

Re:more reasons..

[david.emery]

OK by me...

Hey!

[Alex Belits]

Isn't "illegal enemy combatant" a new term invented by Bush administration to describe people they sent to Guantanamo prison in violation of Geneva Convention and pretty much all other laws or treaties relevant to those people?

Re:Hey!

[bkpark]

Isn't "illegal enemy combatant" a new term invented by Bush administration to describe people they sent to Guantanamo prison in violation of Geneva Convention and pretty much all other laws or treaties relevant to those people?

Bush administration may have invented the term, but you can't really blame them. After all, you have to call them something. They are not uniformed soldiers. They don't even have any affiliation with any sovereign nations as far as their actions go, and if the allegations about what any of these detainees did or planned to do turned out to be true, they sure weren't "innocent civilians".

So, Bush administration can call them either "illegal enemy combatant", or "terrorists", or if they really wanted to, even "freedom fighters". It's just words. It doesn't change the essence of what (a good majority of) these people are.

Re:Hey!

[Alex Belits]

since none of those sent to Guantanamo fell into the definitions

Says who, Bush and Gonzales?

Re:Hey!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, says Article 4 of the Geneva Convention
Since those captured do not fall under the definitions of Article 4, they're not subject to the protections granted by it.

It's pretty simple, if you get off the 'blame Bush' mode for a few minutes and check the facts.

Re:Hey!

[Alex Belits]

1. They are definitely members of "organized resistance movement" -- otherwise how can they be declared to be "combatants" in the first place?

2. When the war is claimed to be waged against "terrorists", it would require some very special kind of logic to claim that "terrorists" (again, by attackers' own definition) fighting it are not a party to the conflict.

3. The intent of Geneva Convention is not to exclude any category if people that may be captured during a war that is not already protected by other laws. It is assumed that whoever is not protected by Convention, would be protected under local laws related to civilian population. Treating Geneva Convention as an invitation for loophole hunt is nothing but word games on part of Bush administration.

Re:Hey!

[martin-boundary]

Bush administration may have invented the term, but you can't really blame them.

Are you nuts? That's what blame is. You find who started the craze, and you point a finger at them so that everybody knows.

Re:Hey!

[bkpark]

To clarify what I mean, Bush administration invented term because they had to.

They had to call these guys something, and they had to do something about these guys. Perhaps some of the things Bush administration did weren't the best they could have done in the hindsight, but then, no one claimed they were perfect.

To set the record straight, no American started "the craze". Some 19 terrorists did. What we did was by no means unprovoked—and, for some time, the world agreed with us.

Re:Hey!

[Opyros]

Not entirely. It's essentially a synonym for "unlawful combatant", a term for persons engaged in hostile activities without having the legal right to do so; see the Wikipedia article. (Neither term is used in either the Geneva or Hague conventions, though.)

Re:Hey!

[Tubal-Cain]

The idea that they don't meet any of those definitions is tenuous at best, and a downright lie at worst.

I see the list as an AND filter, not an OR filter.

Re:Hey!

[CrimsonAvenger]

The intent of Geneva Convention is not to exclude any category if people that may be captured during a war that is not already protected by other laws. It is assumed that whoever is not protected by Convention, would be protected under local laws related to civilian population. Treating Geneva Convention as an invitation for loophole hunt is nothing but word games on part of Bush administration.

This is pretty much true, if you're looking at all of the Geneva Conventions (note the plural). Alas, the USA never signed onto the last two protocols of the Geneva Convention, which were deliberately designed (by the Soviets) to hamstring US efforts in Vietnam. Excluding those last two sections (which we never signed) actually DOES leave some gaps that aren't covered by either local laws or the Conventions.

Which, of course, is why those last two sections were generally considered acceptable.

Note, by the way, that the Soviets never signed on to those last two protocols either. Even though they authored them.

Note also that "intent" is meaningless in international law - if it's not written into the Treaty, it's not relevant, even if you "intended" it to be covered by the Treaty.

Re:Hey!

[martin-boundary]

I don't think that trying to rehabilitate the Bush administration is a good idea. They were trying to have their cake and eat it, too.

Logically, if those weren't state actors, then there was no reason to blow up two countries in retaliation. But if those were state actors, then the Geneva conventions should apply and torturing prisoners is a no-no.

Re:Hey!

[Alex Belits]

Since they do not fulfill those conditions, they cannot be considered to be 'members of organized resistance'.

Again, says who? Resistance movements (or military) have no obligations to act openly toward their enemy. In either case, if they are not resistance, they are criminals -- who are protected by both US and Iraqi law.

This is such a naive statement that borders on the ridiculous.

Oh, wow, defender of Bush decided that something is "naive" and "ridiculous".

You cannot be afforded the protections of the treaties if you do not follow the rules in them. That's the trade-off.

Geneva Convention does not apply to prisoners, it applies to government. Nothing a person does can absolve the government from obligations to recognize his rights -- everything else goes on top of that.

Re:Hey!

[techno-vampire]

There's one class of combatant that you haven't mentioned that also applies:

6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.

However, that also includes that unpleasant clause about respecting the laws and customs of war that liberals and Democrats like to pretend doesn't exist, because if they admitted it existed, they'd also have to admit that the insurgents in Iraq don't have any respect for the laws and customs of war, and thus disqualify themselves from being protected by the Geneva Convention.

Re:Hey!

[techno-vampire]

Do you really believe for a second that these Taliban men captured in Afghanistan were not any kind of organization nor were carrying arms?

I'm sure they did. However, I'm also sure that they did not respect the laws and customs of war themselves, and that too is a condition for them being covered by the Geneva Conventions. If you're going to insist on citing the definition, you're going to have to accept all of it; you can't just cherry pick the parts that fit your side of the argument and ignore the rest.

Re:Hey!

[Repossessed]

International law is irrelevant and a red herring. US law still applies, and what has been done to 'illegal combatants' is still a capital crime, regardless of who the victim is or what country it was done in, or who they pawned the job off to. Just making the plans is enough for a conviction, they didn't even have to carry them out successfully.

Re:Hey!

[warGod3]

First of, if we want to drag this into a lengthy discussion regarding the politics of a defunct administration, the Geneva Convention is quite clear in Article 2.

Article 2 In addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peace time, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them. The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance. Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.

Second, the part that I find interesting about the philosophy of treating this as an aggressive attack, possibly led by another nation, is that there will be a need to differentiate between a high school punk that is trying to probe something and someone else actually doing something. Now, also, reverse the position. What happens when the positions are reversed and some kids are able to break into a government system and commence the same kind of cyber "attack" against China or Russia or North Korea or Iran? How are we going to feel if they want to respond in kind? There is a HUGE difference between an "attack" and what amounts to "vandalism", "breaking and entering", "criminal trepass", denial of service, and whatever else some Feds can decide to come up in an attempt to nail someone. As for domestically, once determined, the individual(s) would be Federal crimes such as those or whatever else could be conjured up by an imaginative prosectution team in concert with authorities. Of course, the punishment would just mean you would wind up at some Federal Country Club...

Re:Hey!

[Alex Belits]

This is not true. I'm not sure where you're getting your information from, but you need a serious reality check.

There is no "information", it's in the definition of a "treaty". Individuals are not a party of a treaty, governments are.

Re:Hey!

[Alex Belits]

If an individual (or a group of individuals) does not follow the 'rules' in the Geneva Convention, they're not entitled to its protection.

As I have mentioned in my previous response, this is not true.

This is why we had the the Nuremberg Trials, which (among others) was instrumental in shaping the protocols of the Geneva Convention.

Nuremberg Trials were anything but an established legal procedure. While I agree with their "spirit", formally they were kangaroo courts imposed by victors on the defeated organizations. They also had some extremely poor standards for proof and evidence. Even so, they still applied general ideas of reasonable scope of accusations -- they charged people involved in egregious acts, not everyone who fought on the Nazi side. Scale and nature of those acts were so far removed from anything any existing law was prepared to deal with, those trials were the only reasonable way of dealing with it.

This is also why people like Slobodan Milosevic were prosecuted for things like genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of the customs of war, and breaches of the Geneva Convention.

For all intents and purposes, Milosevic was charged as a proxy for the whole Serbian government and military, so legality of the whole thing was questionable from the very beginning. He also died before the end of the trial, conveniently leaving a lot of questions no longer necessary to answer. And yet, that was far, far more than anything Guantanamo prisoners and other "illegal combatants" ever got.

Beware...

[warlock]

Launching an ICMP attack might get an ICBM response...

Time to update the RFCs.

Rules of Engagement would still apply

[NimbleSquirrel]

Those in charge of US CyberCommand have stated for a long time now they want the ability to a physical attack in response to a cyber attack.

They state that they want the Law of Armed Conflict to apply. This would also mean that the Rules of Engagement would apply as well. Generally, the Rules of Engagement state that they are only allowed to use deadly force if there is an imminent threat of death or injury. That means they won't be dropping bombs on hackers' houses anytime soon. But then the US military does have a record or "shoot first, ask questions later".

What they want is for a cyber attack ot be deemed an act of War. This is hardly going to stop attacks from China (where a large proportion of the attacks currently originate). Needless to say that sending a cruise missile into mainland China to take out a hacker's house would be a very bad move for the US in the current climate.

Re:Rules of Engagement would still apply

[Chmcginn]

Needless to say that sending a cruise missile into mainland China to take out a hacker's house would be a very bad move for the US in the current climate.

Well, unless you thought the Fallout games were a training simulator.

Re:Rules of Engagement would still apply

[REggert]

Needless to say that sending a cruise missile into mainland China to take out a hacker's house would be a very bad move for the US in the current climate.

I'm intrigued. In what climate _would_ doing that be a good move?

Re:Rules of Engagement would still apply

[gandhi_2]

I guess you've never been to combat. The "ROE" states no such thing. If you find the enemy, you kill them. An enemy soldier can be eating lunch, he's still fair game.

In a war, the necessary designation is PID or positive identification. A soldier has PID if he sees someone who is 1: committing a hostile act or 2: exhibits hostile intent. The guy watching your convoy with binoculars is not a direct threat, but he has proven thru action to be the enemy. Road-side digging without approval can be designated by the commander to be hostile. Certain clothings (uniforms, et al.) can be designated as PID.

By your logic, logistical services (convoys, supply depots) couldn't be targeted. Of course, they can be.

There is no requirement to let the enemy prove their resolve first.

Re:Rules of Engagement would still apply

[Tubal-Cain]

But then the US military does have a record or "shoot first, ask questions later".

Yet we haven't nuked a city since WWII...

Re:Rules of Engagement would still apply

[praksys]

the Rules of Engagement state that they are only allowed to use deadly force if there is an imminent threat of death or injury

The ROE for ground troops on peace-keeping missions sometimes set the threshold that high. In an actual war the threshold is never set that high.

What this really means is that the people and infrastructure used in a cyber attack are now considered to be legitimate military targets. So as far as the laws of war go, very little justification would be needed for a counter attack against such targets. A counter attack would merely have to serve sufficient military purpose to justify any harm that might be done to non-combatants.

So, for example, assassinating people known to be involved in the cyber attack would be just fine, as long as the risk of hitting the wrong people were low enough. Of course that is unlikely to happen. A much more likely response would be the destruction of internet links out of the country involved.

Re:Rules of Engagement would still apply

[NimbleSquirrel]

You give the impression that there are fixed "Rules of Engagement" specified somewhere that are always applied to everything. Actually, Rules of Engagement are very flexible and tailored to specific theaters, missions and combatants.

You do clarify that Rules of Engagement are tailored to a situation, but there are rules set out by NATO, the UN, the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Conventions. Rules of Engagement do exist. At the end of the day, the people who push the button or pull the trigger do have to have justification, and can be held accountable, even if it is a "target of opportunity".

Sure, war is war and the Rules of Engagement aren't the first things on a soldier's mind when stuff is going to hell around them. But the context of STRATCOM's statement isn't a combat situation. They have plenty of time to consider their actions under the Rules of Engagement. Perhaps this is why they they seek to deem independant hackers as 'enemy combatants', so they can sidestep the NATO and UN rules and the Geneva and Hague Conventions like they have with the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Fortunately, you don't run the world.

And I am glad I don't run the world. That really wold be an awful job.

Re:"State-Supported" Hackers

[Phroggy]

From the the summary:

This means that we consider state-supported 'hackers' to be subject to the Geneva Conventions and Customary International Law,...

I really don't know what any of this means. First, what's with the "state-supported" bit? Why would that matter? Second, what does it mean to be subject to the Geneva Conventions - that we can't torture them if we catch them?

It means a foreign government is attacking the United States, either directly or by outsourcing the task to private contractors. This decision says that just because they're doing the attack over the Internet instead of physically doesn't mean we should treat it any differently.

On the other hand, if it's just some Chinese script kiddie in his basement, acting alone (without the support of the Chinese government), we're not going to retaliate by bombing Beijing, because that would be stupid.

Re:more reasons..

[OrangeTide]

You must be a weapons contractor.

Win!

[Lady Serena]

Epic win. I was wondering when they'd grow some fangs for this.

Try other countries for war crimes?

[sealfoss]

How in the hell is the United States government going to try ANYBODY for "War Crimes" ??? note- I am a American, and I am an OIF Veteran.

It's necessary and inevitable..

[slenver]

I think we've all seen the Terminator.

Re:thank god for a change...

[joocemann]

How is it insane to begin regarding cyber attacks as equal to any other already-addressed form of attack (such as military, terrorism, and intelligence)? Cyber attacks are damaging and disruptive to a degree that SHOULD be taken seriously.

Let me guess, you will care when the internet faces intermittent shutdowns and your investments are dropping because the companies you've invested in have suffered massive database damages and cannot maintain progress...

If I deleted all your digital photos, or I go to your house and stole/burned all your photographs I could find.... Whats the difference?

So now

[gringofrijolero]

We make our lives so subservient to the machines we must imprison and kill people to protect them? Does this mean robots are allowed to kill humans? Uh oh.

What could possibly go wrong?

[scruffy]

it also means we consider non-state cyber-attackers to be illegal enemy combatants

Categorizing all those in Gitmo "illegal enemy combatants" has really worked out well for us.

Re:What this really means

[siddesu]

Actually, with a Real Doll case mod, some misunderestimated types may be able to.

in worst case....

[dezent]

Geeks will either get their house bombed, or get deported to AOL

Reasonable response!

[fluffy99]

I think it's a perfectly good answer. You don't want to tell China that a physical response is off the table, otherwise they'll get the idea that they can contine their cyber attacks without any danger of real consequences. So long as the response is in proportion to the offense, then there is no issue.

Remember if we can't consider it an act of war, then a physical response means we just started the war.

What happens if for example, they escalate from simple intrusions and information theft to destructive acts like dropping power grids or destroying systems. If it involves significant loss of life or property? Do we simply ignore it and pretend they haven't just committed an act of war? Do we cyber-hack them back? We'd probably target the building full of PLA that are actively hacking us with something stronger than an internet feed (and yes, we already know who they are and where they are operating out of).

Re:Reasonable response!

[smoker2]

How about you don't put those things on the internet in the fucking first place !

There is a saying - if you owe the bank 4000 and can't pay, you are in trouble, if you owe the bank 40,000,000 and can't pay, then the bank is in trouble.

It strikes me that if anybody can take your critical systems offline using the internet then you have bigger issues than the internet. The first question when tracing any intrusion is, how did they get in ? Well, the system is connected to the internet, is not a good answer. Yes we know hacking is illegal, but how does that help now we have no power/C&C/credit/etc !

Reminds me of a girl I once dated. Visited me in the UK (she was american) and while in the pub she left her bulging wallet on the bar. There must have been £500 in there, about $1000 at the time. I just stared at her for a moment but eventually had to tell her to put it away. Duh. Some people are just born victims.

Re:Reasonable response!

[Datamonstar]

LOL and that was the perfect response to someone named "Fluffy" trying to school the internet on war.

Re:Reasonable response!

[Xtravar]

So quick to judge.

A "cyber attack" doesn't necessarily mean "internet attack". They could very well send a spy to do the "cyber damage" on an internal network.

Re:Reasonable response!

[fluffy99]

Yes, the insider threat is certainly part of the problem. I do agree that the DOD has too much of its network internet connected. A certain level of connectivity is needed for a number of functions though such as administrative, email, communicating with external contractors, etc. I believe as we move forward, you will see greater isolation. The NMCI network is a big improvement in many security aspects, but absolute homogeneity of the network is a huge risk as well.

Re:"State-Supported" Hackers

[budgenator]

I really don't know what any of this means. ... what does it mean to be subject to the Geneva Conventions - that we can't torture them if we catch them?

The traditional responses to spys and saboteurs varied, summary execution was very popular, especial after prolonged torture to extract information. This wasn't the pseudo-torture we're seeing in modern times, but real stuff like thumb-screws, racking, eye-googing ect. The Geneva Convention applies to uniformed combatants engaged in declaired hostilities between states.

Re:thank god for a change...

[Alex Belits]

Espionage is damaging, too, however it is never treated as an act of war.

Damn Wozniak and those Homebrewers!

[MarkvW]

Who'd a thought that the Homebrewers would create something that people who like to kill would like to kill for!

World's a crazy place.

Re:more reasons..

[LaskoVortex]

You're buying the bombs? Jesus H. Fucking Christ, you must be rich!

Re:whoa! whoa! whoa! whoa! whoa!

[slenver]

From what I understand, these machines only have control of things that can affect money

Whoa, 1983 called etc...

Re:"State-Supported" Hackers

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The Geneva Convention also gives a much lower standard of protection, if any at all, to those combatants who DON'T go around in uniforms, work for a nation or non-nation organization that can negotiate a cease-fire surrender which the combatant will honor, adhere to the principles of the Geneva Convention themselves, etc. Spies and saboteurs are still largely fair game.

This is at least partly to encourage everybody to play by the same rules.

Policy first

[gmuslera]

Probably a good amount of "misbehaving" black hats/botnet owners/spammers live within US. Long before even thinking going hostile over another country some house cleaning should be in order.

In the other hand, could this give a future government the perfect excuse to attack whatever country they want?
- Infiltrate agent (in the case is needed a physical person for that, a hacked pc would do the work too)
- Make him hack something thru internet
- ???
- INVADE!

About time...

[AnAdventurer]

I am glad there are some better defined rules for engaging the enemy on this field. Once we can ID the "hackers" and whether they are state sponsored or not we can take an action like sending a cruse missile to their little hacker training camp. Don't know if I am joking? Don't worry your not alone.

Re:"State-Supported" Hackers

[smoker2]

This wasn't the pseudo-torture we're seeing in modern times, but real stuff like thumb-screws, racking, eye-googing ect.

two words

Extraordinary Rendition

Re:whoa! whoa! whoa! whoa! whoa!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.

I am reminded of Kosh

[earlymon]

These simple words - and so it begins.

(Yeah, yeah, Tolkien, yadda, yadda - it's my post.)

counter-attack against whom?

[darkuncle]

so the Law of Armed Conflict applies - great. Who are you retaliating against? The IP that attacked you? o rly? I submit that the US Armed Forces cannot even reliably identify the ultimate source of a network attack, much less the identity, motivation or affiliation of an attacker (all of which are necessary in order to provide justification for a measured physical response).

It's going to take another couple of generations before we end up with people commanding the armed forces who grew up on the Internet and have at least some basic clue that you can't just prepend "cyber-" to all your standard tactics and rules of engagement and think you're prepared.

Re:counter-attack against whom?

[fluffy99]

Well, most terrorist organizations are happy to stand up and announce they did it. If we are in the middle of open hostilities with a nation state, they would certainly be the first suspect but you couldn't rule out a third party trying to provoke the situation.

You would be surprised at the amount of IDS and monitoring going on at the DOD connection points to the general internet. They can produce packet captures months after the fact. Granted that only gives them the first hop, and no way to tell if that IP was compromised as is often the case. Blocking Chinese IPs is pointless because they simply rent or hack a US IP address as the launching point.

Just Suppose

[DaveAtFraud]

Just suppose that foreign crackers penetrated the air traffic control system or the power grid and either caused massive casualties due to lack of air traffic control or they turned off the lights to major portions of the country also causing significant casualties and economic losses. Further, let's suppose that we are able to identify the source of the attack. It sounds like the majority of the posters so far think we ought to call up their ISP and ask that their account be terminated.

I think a cruise missile would be more appropriate or maybe a few precision guided weapons applied as needed. The source of such an attack is a legitimate target and sending a message that such targets well be dealt with in a manner proportionate to the damage they inflict makes a lot of sense to me. If the attack is state sponsored, retaliation that is far out of proportion is called for since the attack constitutes an act of war.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Just Suppose

[djdavetrouble]

Wait until they find out that was a Starbucks I was cracking from !

Re:Just Suppose

[Knackered]

Just suppose that foreign crackers penetrated the air traffic control system or the power grid and either caused massive casualties due to lack of air traffic control...

Just how do you suppose they could cause "massive casualties" due to the lack of air traffic control? Every one of those planes has a pilot in command, who is quite able to fly the plane and land it safely without air traffic control lifting a finger. If flying IFR, the PIC also has a lost comms procedure to follow in case contact with ATC is lost.

Get a grip and become informed before playing along with the fearmongers' ludicrous Hollywood movie plot scenarios.
I suggest you start by reading "Risk - The Science and Politics of Fear" by Dan Gardner, ISBN 978-0-7535-1553-2.

Re:Just Suppose

[Plekto]

Just suppose that foreign crackers penetrated the air traffic control system or the power grid and either caused massive casualties due to lack of air traffic control or they turned off the lights to major portions of the country also causing significant casualties and economic losses. Further, let's suppose that we are able to identify the source of the attack. It sounds like the majority of the posters so far think we ought to call up their ISP and ask that their account be terminated.

I think the real reason that we are doing this is to force the governments in question to actually crack down on their own problems. Russia won't want to risk an international incident, for instance, and will gladly remove the botnets running out of their country if they have to. So will China. Probably with lots of bullets and other measures if need be.

And as for it not causing harm, well, besides my ex having 4 layers of protection and not doing anything wrong either, I just spent 6 hours fixing her bot infested machine. And then there's what happens if say, they compromise a site with personal data on it for 160,000 people...

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/uc-berkeley-suffers-breach-of-student-health-data/

Nah, that could never happen... I mean what are the chances...

Re:Just Suppose

[Datamonstar]

Yes. Especially considering the posibility your scenario raises of another nation taking control of a botnet and launching an attack against a government just to elicit a "kinetic" response. Start a war... in under 10 clicks!

Re:Just Suppose

[DaveAtFraud]

So have you ever been in a small plane "under positive control" (instrument flight rules) and very limited visibility? It's quite an experience to be in the right seat especially. We flew with a friend of ours who had her instrument rating through a rather heavy rain. All I can tell you is our pilot could only do what the controller told her to do. There were four of us in a Cessna 172 and we were completely dependent on air traffic control to get us to a runway and back on the ground and not run into anyone else while doing so.

Now lets try that with a few hundred commercial airliners with some of them attempting to land in the same sort of bad weather. You should also note that all traffic above 15,000 feet is under positive control since there is very little likelihood that traffic can see and avoid each other. If you don't believe me on this, check out the number of mid-air collisions that have occurred back when "see and avoid" was thought to be sufficient. Big sky and all that and you'd think it shouldn't happen but the bottom line is that it has happened several times. All it takes is a couple of mid-air collisions and I think you'd have what qualifies as "massive casualties."

Why don't you try flying in instrument conditions in a small plane before spouting stuff you read in book? And then still tell us how unnecessary air traffic control is?

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Just Suppose

[DaveAtFraud]

Good point about the threat possibly being enough to bring about a change.

My take though from reading the news is that quite a bit of the cracking from China is state sponsored while the bulk of it from Russia originates from criminal sources (possibly tolerated by the government; govt' gets the secrets, crooks get the money). Alternatively, the Russians may be just as active as the Chinese but all of the criminal botnets mask their espionage cracking.

I don't think we would do anything overt to either one unless the issue was on the order of what I described in my original post. On the other hand, anything even approaching being a threat from a minor player (e.g., Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea) would probably elicit an interesting display of force. This is especially true if we're looking for an excuse to do so.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Just Suppose

[Anonymous Coward]

You make the assumption that government isn't corrupt.

Re:Just Suppose

[Maelwryth]

Just suppose that air traffic control and the power Grid weren't connected to the Internet in the first place. In one way this is the same reasoning as, 'woman shouldn't wear provocative clothing because they get raped'. In another way it's the reason you don't get insurance without house locks.
To make a blunt analogy: Having your power grid taken down by a foreign hacker is on the same level as walking through Pyongyang with a tshirt saying,

Fuck Kim Jong-il
America rulz
Fuck yeah!

If you put infrastructure like that on the Internet you deserve it, and you are just as responsible for it as the person who takes advantage of it.

Re:Just Suppose

[Knackered]

So have you ever been in a small plane "under positive control" (instrument flight rules) and very limited visibility?

Yes, I have. In the left seat. Any pilot who doesn't have the situational awareness to know where they are and what their "plan B" for deteriorating conditions (including lost ATC comms) shouldn't be there.

Re:Just Suppose

[lkcl]

I think a cruise missile would be more appropriate or maybe a few precision guided weapons applied as needed. The source of such an attack is a legitimate target and sending a message that such targets well be dealt with in a manner proportionate to the damage they inflict makes a lot of sense to me. If the attack is state sponsored, retaliation that is far out of proportion is called for since the attack constitutes an act of war.

not being funny or anything, but you _really_ haven't thought that through.

1) "since the attack constitutes an act of war", if you actually CALL it war, it's a DECLARATION of war, and then the people you are attacking (with the cruise missiles) are allowed, under international law, to retaliate, including killing any citizens of the country that made the declaration.

so, by making it into "a war", you've just "excused" the deaths of the very people who ended up being killed [at the airport, or whatever]

2) typically, internet attacks are made by teams of people who will be coordinating using distributed infrastructure and will be in totally different physical locations.

attacking one single location serves absolutely no purpose other than to piss off not only the rest of the people in the cyber team but also the host nation. ... you didn't think that the attackers were actually in their own country, did you? they'll be holed up in areas where the collateral damage would be immense, in a NEUTRAL country.

think about that for a minute.

Re:Just Suppose

[DaveAtFraud]

Responses:

1) Nobody declares war anymore. There hasn't been a single conflict since WWII where the combatants have actually declared war. I don't make up history but that's the way the world works now.

2) Absolutely true regarding most of the typical computer crime attacks. When it comes to actually attacking a country, the procedures followed to ensure secrecy argue strongly against a geographically distributed attack in which the actual perpetrators are in a variety of locations. They may use botnets or proxy chains to hide where they actually are but distributing the perps makes it hard to keep the action a secret. The more people who are involved in such an action, the lower the probability that the action can be kept secret.

#2 May be the rational reason behind this threat. Letting the perps know that that the response may be a cruise missile *may* cause them to distribute their origin thus making such an attack easier to discover and then prevent.

Think about the whole game for a minute not just the tactics.

Cheers,
Dave

Not so friendly fire

[FatherDale]

While I totally love the idea of declaring hackers as enemy combatants, I can just see some Bad Guy spoofing the IP of a Starbucks, and Cyber-Captain Spiff calling in an airstrike.

Re:Not so friendly fire

[Tubal-Cain]

Cyber-Captain Spiff calling in an airstrike...

...from Starbucks.

Laughable conclusion!!!

[rts008]

I dare/challenge them to actually 'pull this off'....while laughing!!!

Re:thank god for a change...

[joocemann]

Sure it is. FIS agents, if caught, will be tried for their crimes.

I called that an "intelligence" attack in my previous post.

The world is involved in intelligence wars, but I am sure the players are working independently of the'response in kind' combat model and are more in the realm of 'fuck me? I already fucked you!'.

Don't think this was crafted for Blackhats....

[TiggertheMad]

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 suspect that this law is mostly a diplomatic message being sent to China, to let them know we mean business if they use extra-military actors to engage in cyberwarfare. There have been a number of announcements from the pentagon that Chinese hackers have been actively poking at the military systems.

This is the polite heads up to their intelligence service to let them know that we are going to hold their China responsible for the activities of their nationalistic and zealous hackers and if they don't ease up, the counter stroke will be to park a cruse missile in the block of apartments that they are operating out of.

It sounds heavy handed, but States don't fuck around with playing games in courts when they view other states as being hostile. So if it seems like a pretty drastic measure, it is because it was likely a response crafted to deal with another state on the levels that states operate. It's possible that another Kevin Mitnik type could get dragged off to federal prison using this, but that would probably be some local prosecutor trying to show how 'tough' they were on cybercrime.

Re:Don't think this was crafted for Blackhats....

[Rich0]

Makes sense - nations have a responsibility to police their own borders. If some Chinese hacker crashes Wall Street the US isn't going to be happy if the Chinese government simply states that it isn't their problem since they didn't sanction the attack.

If some guy set up a big gun in New York state and took to shelling random towns in Canada the Canadians are going to expect the US Government to do something about it. Such a person would be HEAVILY prosecuted and very swift actions would be taken to stop the attack. In the very bizarre case that the US governemnt didn't act swiftly to stop the shelling the Canadians would certainly be within their rights to launch a military strike against the attacker. Certainly such an incident would have huge negative effects on US-Candian relations, and of course it would never be allowed to happen in real life.

Cyber attacks should be no different. Sure, proactively preventing any hacker attack from any rogue actor is going to be just about impossible (though if anybody can do it the Chinese can with their firewalls). However, if the Pentagon calls up the Chinese ambassador and points out that such-and-such an IP is being used to hack into some military installation they would expect the Chinese to halt the attacks and to see somebody punished for it.

Likewise NO government limits retaliation to a tit-for-tat response. If you steal a car on the streets of France and are caught, the police do not merely take it back, and maybe just take your bicycle as well. In order to deter crime the fear of the penalties for being caught when weighed with the liklihood of getting caught needs to be large. So, if you rob a car you get captured in a roadblock, tossed around a bit, and end up in prison for five years. If some Iran-sponsored terrorist cell blows up a UK airplane the UK government doesn't blow up an Iranian plane in retaliation or ask for a million dollars in restitution - they take measures guaranteed to at least cost the Iranians billions, if not outright invading.

A Cyberattack that causes real damages should be responded to in ways that cause real harm to the real people who allowed it to happen. Of course, if a foreign government is generally cooperative in prosecuting the crime then diplomacy should be employed - nobody is going to bomb Germany over a German hacker breaking into some bank since everybody expects the German government to be genuinely horrified by the incident. However, you can't turn a genuinely blind eye towards real harm being done to real people and claim innocence when confronted with the results.

hacking

[Homer's Donuts]

If I code in my underwear, am I a nonuniformed combatant?

Well, hey!

[Jane Q. Public]

I would not rule out a "kinetic" response if someone messed with my computer, either! Where's the surprise?

Give me a break

[Jiro]

Try this without the "cyber". Imagine a Slashdot article which says "the General has determined that the law of armed conflict applies to enemy armies with guns. This also means that we consider non-state gun attackers to be illegal enemy combatants". The article then goes on to suggest that we will now be sending bank robbers to Guantanamo.

Would that make sense? Of course not. Just because sending people with guns at us is an act of war doesn't mean that non-state actors with guns are all illegal enemy combatants. Why does this change when you replace guns with cyber-?

Note also that the illegal enemy combatant thing was made up by Slashdot for the summary and isn't actually part of the article.

Rules of war ? GO FUCK YOURSELVES!

[billcopc]

Maybe it's the idealism talking, but I've always thought these laws/rules were a joke. War is genocide, plain and simple. If someone is looking to destroy me and everyone that looks, talks and walks like me, there is no piece of paper in the world that will protect them from my wrath. Fuck the Geneva Convention, fuck the rules of engagement - wearing a uniform, waving a flag and following arbitrary rules doesn't automagically pardon mass murder. This ain't fucking Parcheesi!

We already have laws to define criminal activities. If some foreigner breaks into a few servers, you arrest and prosecute them for computer abuse. They didn't hold a gun to your head, they didn't threaten thousands of lives with religious zealotry... so why call it war ?

Plans? Fuck plans!

[denzacar]

If a thousand "hackers" (and if you can set a digital clock - you are a hacker) "torrent" a single episode of Simpsons each - they would be stealing so much money to effectively ruin FOX Broadcasting Company financially, thereby destroying the only reliable news source in America (possibly the only one in the world) and disrupting the communication across the entire planet.

Hacking Judicial Precedents

[mbstone]

This would actually be a cool hack. You'd have to pwn Lexis and Westlaw, and print up some bogus law books (numbered reporters of legal decisions such as Federal Reporter 3d and United States Reports) and plant them in all the law libraries and courthouses (just mail them out in official-looking West Publishing cardboard boxes). Presto, habeas corpus is back. Your legal brief in your next case would read something like this: "We hereby overrule our previous precedent in Jones v. Fatootie denying habeas corpus. Potrzebie v. Holder, 779 U.S 998 (2009)."

Re:Rules of war ? GO FUCK YOURSELVES!

[paziek]

We rely on computers those days a lot. And in many cases computer failure or unexpected behavior might cost lives. Its almost like blowing up something.

Also, if some1 steals some confident information and that will cause loses in - for example - actual war, then why not punish them like spies?

Echelon???

[janwedekind]

If the German government would take the same stance, what would the meaning of installations such as ECHELON be?

Hypocrites!

Impossible?

[AliasMarlowe]

woman with 6 kids from 8 different child-support paying fathers

Please explain...

Re:Impossible?

[erroneus]

See one of my previous comments.

Non sequitor

[Mathinker]

None of your examples have anything to do with the discussion in question. Or did I miss something? The acts which you link to are not retaliation for cyber-attacks. The French action wasn't even retaliation at all.

Re:Non sequitor

[ross.w]

They were examples of blowing things up or otherwise causing mayhem in other people's countries. This was a response to a post that suggested that there would be a problem with blowing up someone's house if a cyber attack originated from there. My point being that some countries (in this case both of them modern Western democracies) would have no problem at all with doing this.

Finally!

[AlgorithMan]

Finally we don't need ANY proof of being "under attack" (TM by Herman Göring) anymore to start a war... just say "they opened cyberwar on us - here are the logs that (ahem) proove it!"

Re:US citizens as enemy combatants

[Zordak]

Normally ACs aren't worth replying to, but just a couple of points. The article he linked to describes a citizen of Qatar, not an American citizen. So that doesn't have anything to do with anything. My point was that your average geek is not engaged in armed conflict against U.S. military personnel, and is therefore NOT in danger of being labeled an "illegal enemy combatant."

Now, the AC might have linked to something on Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which would be a little closer to the point. Like I said, there are those who would like to hold Hamdi as a combatant without the benefit of habeus corpus. But the Supreme Court held (rightly, I believe) that a U.S. citizen has constitutional rights, even if he's captured while fighting with the enemy. So AC, what's your point?

War crimes?

[volpe]

I don't get the part about trying state-sponsored hackers for "war crimes". If you're going to treat this as a form of warfare, then why aren't they (the hackers) ordinary soldiers? Why are they "war criminals"? Why is this a war crime and not just ordinary war?

Re:thank god for a change...

[Alex Belits]

Sure it is. FIS agents, if caught, will be tried for their crimes.

Tried according to a local law, not sent to a torture-and-death camp.

Best. Slashdot. Comment. Ever.

[chris-chittleborough]

Thank you, Tackhead!

Re:Rules of war ? GO FUCK YOURSELVES!

[meringuoid]

War is genocide, plain and simple. If someone is looking to destroy me and everyone that looks, talks and walks like me, there is no piece of paper in the world that will protect them from my wrath.

That's not usually the objective of war. War with intent to exterminate the enemy population is uncommon. More usually, war is fought as a result of disputes over land or resources. Your ideal outcome in such a war is that the territory in dispute is seized and becomes firmly yours, and that you are then able to agree a peace treaty with the enemy that recognises this state of affairs and prevents further wasteful violence. The enemy's ideal outcome is exactly the same, except that he ends up in control of the disputed territory.

In such a war it makes sense for both sides to observe rules of conduct with regard to civilians, prisoners of war, and so forth. They expect the war to end relatively soon, and afterwards they expect to have to live as reasonably good neighbours, so committing gross atrocities is a major long-term negative.

Now, since you're speaking English and arguing in favour of extreme belligerence and unrestrained violence, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you're American. Let me now point out that right now there is only one country on earth capable of destroying all the Americans and that country is Russia. They have absolutely no interest in doing anything of the sort. There are also large stockpiles of WMDs, along with delivery mechanisms that can reach the USA, in Britain, France and China. None of these nations have any particular intention of blowing up America either. So I'm not sure who it is that you're afraid of, but if you can identify this genocidal bogeyman then I'm sure it would be most illuminating.

declaration of war: the right to attack back

[lkcl]

unfortunately for these idiots who want to declare cyber attacks as an "act of war", the implications are that that means it _becomes_ a declaration of war.

and when you do that, it's a whole new ballgame.

not least is the fact that when you declare war on a citizen of a country, that citizen has the right - the RIGHT - to attack and kill any citizens of the country that has declared war.

by making this "a war", the united states government can expect these "cyber criminals" to have some serious weaponry to hand, and, importantly, if the united states army, police or even ordinary united states citizens turn up on the doorstep of the "crimminnall" and the "crimmminnalll" kills them, the "crimmminnalll" can claim, "well, the united states declared war on me, what do you expect??"

and they will be allowed to walk away, having killed everyone that was sent to stop them, because, under international law, that's what you're allowed to do, in war.

so i don't think the united states government has really thought this one through. if it's left as a "crime", then they can be tried for "crimes".

but if they try to treat them as "war criminals", then that's _actual_ war, and they're absolutely entitled, under international law, to defend themselves and kill anyone that tries to attack them.

*some* countries?

[Mathinker]

> My point being that some countries (in this case both
> of them modern Western democracies) would have no
> problem at all with doing this.

It's still a non sequitor since the reasons for the attacks have nothing to do with the particular kind of retaliation this whole discussion is about, namely, physical retaliation as a reply to cyber-attack. Your assumption that just because France was willing to sink a ship in order to be able to carry out a nuclear test this necessarily means that it would assassinate a foreign hacker who defaced some government website (or even who did actual damage to French intelligence interests) is just silly. And the same goes for the Israeli example (BTW, the fact that Israel mistakenly killed an innocent during that operation is also totally off-topic).

Re:thank god for a change...

[joocemann]

Also, in case the movies have distorted your understanding, most people convicted of espionage are local to the nation they spied against.