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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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....

[catmistake]

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

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!

Beware...

[warlock]

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

Time to update the RFCs.

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: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.

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.