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U.S. Congress Authorizes Offensive Use of Cyberwarfare
smitty777 writes "Congress has recently authorized the use of offensive military action in cyberspace. From the December 12th conference on the National Defense Authorization Act, it states, 'Congress affirms that the Department of Defense has the capability, and upon direction by the President may conduct offensive operations in cyberspace to defend our Nation, Allies and interests, subject to: (1) the policy principles and legal regimes that the Department follows for kinetic capabilities, including the law of armed conflict; and (2) the War Powers Resolution.' According to the FAS, 'Debate continues on whether using the War Powers Resolution is effective as a means of assuring congressional participation in decisions that might get the United States involved in a significant military conflict.'"
may conduct offensive operations in cyberspace to defend
You see nothing wrong with this. Then you wonder why the world hates you.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
and (2) the War Powers Resolution
Let's drop the charade. If robotic aerial bombardment doesn't constitute "war", then sending strings of ones and zeros through a series of tubes certainly doesn't count as "war". There is effectively no congressional oversight because cyber-warfare does not fall under the purview of "war" according to the executive branch. There's also no way for congress to cut funding for cyber-warfare since all the computers and networks are already paid for, and there's very little operational costs to waging a cyber war.
Would this give the citizens of America the right to form a Cyber militia and the right to bear Cyber arms under the constitution?
Yeah, who needs SOPA when you have the US military to enforce royalty payments!
Yes, it's a new age of intellectual property imperialism! Except instead of the huge royal navies of England and France fighting pirates and collecting royalties on trade routes, we'll have the DoD DDoS attacks taking down all parties that don't pony up!
It's suiting for the US, much of whose wealth and economy is now based on imaginary assets, like patents and copyrights on, well, just about anything having to do with "popular" culture or business processes. What better way to make money for nothing than to have a piece of legal paper that says that people have to pay you money for doing ${thing}s? And then having a bunch of other people fund your military, the largest in the world, to enforce those payments?
Subjugation! Success!
"Interests" is an interesting term. We have well defined (codified in law) ideas of who our allies and what our nation is, but interests can range anywhere from democracy to oil to bombing airplane manufacturing plants in Brazil and China to protect our (civilian) areospace industry.
Diplomatic cables have already revealed that we lean pretty heavily on our allies to buy Boeing and Locheed Martin products, both civilian and defense oriented. If anyone needs a reminder, we just "convinced" Japan to buy 150+ still on the drawing board F-35 stealth fighters, (things yet to fix: major fire hazards, lack of stealth, weak airframe, buggy software, bad aerodynamics) rather than the EuroFighter earlier this week, right after Kim Jong Ill died.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II
http://www.washingtonpost.com/japan-to-pick-lockheeds-f-35-as-new-stealth-fighter/2011/12/13/gIQAbuYUrO_story.html
moox. for a new generation.
And.... the internet was supposed to be a neutral utopia for spreading ideas and knowledge.
Yet somehow we made it a battlefield.
somebody in the u.s. hasn't been reading the geneva convention. if the U.S. is hell-bent on linking the words "cyber" and "warfare", then the U.S. had better be ready for the consequences. the consequences of "declaring war" on another country are very very simple: under the Geneva Convention, a declaration of war legitimises and grants the right for any citizen of the country being attacked to immediately take offensive action, no matter where they are, against citizens and against all soil of the aggressors.
in other words, should the United States respond with physical force against another country's citizens just because a computer which was wide open to the world (with 3 letter passwords), that is an "act of war", and the citizens of the country being attacked are automatically granted the right to take immediate offensive violent action against any United States Citizens or against any United States "property" and soil.
in other words, this is an incredibly stupid thing for the United States Government to be doing. especially given that many people in the United States Military have absolutely no idea what constitutes a cyber attack, and they certainly don't understand that 3 letter passwords are an invitation to go "cooeeee! i 0wn youuu!"
madness. absolute madness.
Network connectivity doesn't change human nature. When you move civilization onto the internet, you don't get a utopia, you just get better data transfer.
Visit the
The Constitution does not give Congress authority to delegate their war-making powers to ANYONE else, including the President.
If this can legitimately be considered "warfare", then there is no question whatever that it is unconstitutional. The "War Powers Act" notwithstanding... it is unconstitutional, too. You can't use one unconstitutional law to justify another.
If Congress hasn't declared war, then it's not a Constitutional (legal) war. Period. And that means we haven't had a legal war in over 60 years.
The moment nations - any nations, US included - decided that the Internet was territory that could be owned rather than a virtual complex of ideas where data merely happened to reside in certain machines at certain times and where wiring merely happened to be the transport of choice for now, cyberwarfare was inevitable. That the Internet has adopted a spanning tree topology in many places, rather than a mesh topology, has worsened things. It's very easy to set up roadblocks on a spanning tree, it's much much harder to shut down a mesh.
(If you can't own it and can't prevent others using it, then you have nothing you can fight over. Ownership and conflict are only possible where resource denial is possible. Which is fine for end-points, I've no problem with end-points being owned and governed, but it should never have become fine for the backbone.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The nationalization and segmentation of Internet has begun. It was a nice place with no borders and equal for everyone. But of course, old power-greedy bastards has awoken and now want to subjugate everyone under their rule, claim "territories" that they own and build armies to fight with each other. And common folks as always are blinded with "patriotism" propaganda, while really are just used as a resource for some self-proclaimed sociopathic "leaders". Since the dawn of ages. Humanity, will you ever learn?
Hmm. The ID10Ts have finished building their cyber-command, staffed it with the *cough* best *cough* IT that the marines can offer, and they want to give it a spin. They're looking for a fight. Were I a general, I would not stop b*tch-slapping these people until my hand got tired, then I'd have one of my assistants take over for me: what kind of steroid-abusing, minimum legal IQ, closed-minded, in-bred, patriot (put charitably) goes looking to start a war during a time of relative peace? We have nothing to gain from this venture, and everything to lose.
Has the nation gone full-retard? This kind of behavior is supposed to be out of your system by the time you hit 18, cropping up only when you get a speeding ticket, had a bad day at the office, or are at home with the family for the holidays.
Don't get me wrong, if you need to protect something material, the US military is some of the best. But like Space, Cyber-Space is specifically un-militarized, with only a handful of shadow games being played by somewhat disinterested players (that the internet was started by a military project is not lost on me ^_^). It's a completely different battlefield, with completely different rules, and it's not going to be helped by this addition. The very action of trying to play war with the internet means the US military will succeed where its politicians have failed: the US will end up getting cut off from the global internet, as countries move to protect themselves. This action is the internet equivalent of parking some Soviet ICBMs in Cuba!
You know, once upon a time, the United States had a Department of War. It's job was to ensure that our country was always at war with some other country. We ditched it in favor of a Department of Defense. I am having trouble telling the difference now.
I am John Hurt.
I think the term human nature is thrown about too carelessly. Human nature would imply it's in the genes. Sure, the genes allow for war and all bad things, but how about the power of culture? I think the world of today is shaped more by culture and ideas, than by genes. We are not just monkeys. We can do what we think is right.
The powerful shape the world in a way that benefits them, but humanity as a whole wouldn't want this mess, I think. It's not the genes. It's history. The history of power, money and ideas, more than it is human nature. Culture and ideas we can change. Nature, not so much.
We can overcome any genes for rape, murder an oppression with some ideas of doing the right thing. Ideas will evolve. And the Internet should help accelerate that evolution.
Aren't we in the midst of a great "evolutionary leap"? It just doesn't show in our genes. It's our collective consciousness that is getting more saturated with truth. Some powerful players are of course against all this truth, but humanity can prevail, I think.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.