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Obama Authorizes Penalties For Foreign Cyber Attackers
An anonymous reader writes President Barack Obama has today signed an executive order extending the U.S. administration's power to respond to malicious cyberattacks and espionage campaigns. The order enforces financial sanctions on foreign hackers who action attacks against American businesses, institutions and citizens. It will enable the secretary of the Treasury, along with the attorney general and secretary of State, to inflict penalties on cyber criminals behind hacking attacks which "create a significant threat to U.S. national security, foreign policy or economic health or financial stability of the United States," Obama said. Sanctions could include freezing of assets or a total ban on commercial trade.
Should I serious have to look up every single country's law before I do something, just to make sure I'm not breaking some obscure country's law?
Yeah, you should probably check a country's laws before you electronically infiltrate their corporations, banking system, or military computers. This isn't about citizens in other countries simply minding their own business. For those that are wondering how foreigners can be charged with US law, look up "extradition treaty". For those with whom we haven't signed such a treaty, look up "financial sanctions" or "asset forfeiture".
How purposefully obtuse do you have to be not to get this?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
This is ridiculous. Law is part of the agreement between citizens and their government. Citizens get certain benefits like public education and healthcare, and in return must pay the government taxes and obey their laws. If the citizen disagrees with this, he can resign his citizenship, but by doing so loses the benefits of citizenship as well.
Foreigners, on the other hand, have no such agreement, and therefore it's ridiculous to charge them. What's next, Saudi Arabia charges me for having a beer tonight? North Korea charges me for criticizing their regime? Should I serious have to look up every single country's law before I do something, just to make sure I'm not breaking some obscure country's law?
He's not charging them. He's not arresting them. He's got multiple sets of powers, and he isn't using the law enforcement one here because there is no actual statute passed by Congress to deal with the problem.
He's using his military powers, which are incredibly broad because the Founders really did not want Congress and the Supreme Court to stop expeditions against Tecumseh-types on any basis whatsoever. He has an enemy that is partly military (China's cyber-ops unit is in the military), so he's probably good as long as he doesn't start abusing the law.
I agree that asset forfeiture against citizens isn't warranted unless those assets are the direct gains of illegal activity. There are already punitive laws in place. This practice seemed to emerge with the "war on drugs", and continued with the war on terror.
I think a case could be made for asset seizure against foreign criminals, as there's no other way to punish them for crimes committed. I don't see why an "armed response" would be warranted if there's criminal activity involved. Of course, the big gotcha in all of this is that it's incredibly difficult to actually *prove* who's behind a cyber attack unless you can seize the person's personal computer.
Honestly, I think this is mostly saber-rattling aimed at NK and China, telling them that the US is willing to impose some financial hardships on anyone who attacks any US interests via the internet.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
That is the least relevant statute on the books.
Why?
Because the Founders clearly didn't want Congress to have any say over day-to-day military operations. They explicitly designed the President's powers to totally pre-empt any Congressional claim to such control. Their reasoning was quite simple: in 1789 there was no telegraph, so a message to Congress asking for authorization to deal with a Spanish Governor who was trying to eat a little bit of Georgia would not be dealt with by Congress until everyone was already dead. The local garrison commander had to have the ability to order his forces into combat without Congressional authorization. Since he gets his legal authority from the President, that means the President also has to have the authority to authorize small-scale military operations without asking Congress.
Congress's checks on the local Army commander's authority were the facts that a) Congress could eliminate his regiment in the next budget, which would fire him, and b) since all military officer-level jobs are Congressionally confirmed they could also refuse to let him have another job.
The Declaration of War clause doesn't actually justify give Congress much power over anything but a Total War we start, and couldn't apply here because if the Chinese are attacking us we get to attack them back. They have started the War.
The "Necessary and proper" clause, combined with the changes in technology that have made Congressional control possible, would a good enough rationalization for a sane Supreme Court. But we do not live in a world where the Supreme Court is sane. We live in a world where the Supreme Court is dominated by textual Federalists who think the solution to this problem is to go through the Amendment process.