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

[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

[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.

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!