Slashdot Mirror
Trump, Seeking To Relax Rules on US Cyberattacks, Reverses Obama Directive (wsj.com)
President Trump has reversed an Obama-era memorandum dictating how and when the U.S. government can deploy cyberweapons against its adversaries, in an effort to loosen restrictions on such operations [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], WSJ reports. From the report: Mr. Trump signed an order on Wednesday reversing the classified rules, known as Presidential Policy Directive 20, that had mapped out an elaborate interagency process that must be followed before U.S. use of cyberattacks, particularly those geared at foreign adversaries. The change was described as an "offensive step forward" by an administration official briefed on the decision, one intended to help support military operations, deter foreign election influence and thwart intellectual property theft by meeting such threats with more forceful responses. The Trump administration has faced pressure to show that it is taking seriously national-security cyberthreats -- particularly those that intelligence officials say are posed by Moscow.
If Obama had done something to stop Russian election meddling, Trump and his supporters would have flipped out and claimed he was fixing the election for Hillary. They already Obama was "spying" on them because he was investigating the Russian meddling.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
The problem isn't so much that Trump is reversing a policy of Obama.
The problem is that Trump makes policy by shooting from the hip, with no consideration for the ramifications of it. Nobody does any analysis or planning, just suddenly there is a bad policy dumped one everyone.
Now while saying there was no foreign interference, Trump is protecting us from foreign interference. Which is it? It never happened and we don't need to be protected? Or it did and Trump is still lying about it?
The problem is other countries might decide this is an Unfriendly Act (which is diplomat speak for 'we don't like what you're doing and we're monitoring it'), and if escalates to a Hostile Act (which is diplomat speak for 'now we're really pissed off and things are going to get messy').
Trump is essentially authorising hostile actions against foreign entities without oversight and planning.
Shit like that can get dangerous in terms of relations between countries.
The problems happen when Trump makes policy without consulting with the people who know what they're talking about (you know, 'elites') and instead relies on his own feels and stupidity.
Trump is essentially authorising hostile actions against foreign entities without oversight and planning.
More like Trump is explicitly telling other countries that it's OK to try and hack us. Because it goes both ways. It's like Net Neutrality. Before it existed, there might have been some general intellectual agreement about what was OK and what was not OK. After it was repealed, that's an explicit statement that doing the formerly banned things is explicitly OK. It doesn't revert back to undefined or there would be no motive to repeal.
> he just changed a policy and now he's going rogue
This is /. so we need a car analogy. So, by refusing to buy a new car, I'm obviously against the entire car industry.
That's hilarious. The scale of electronic collection operations increased dramatically under Obama. Or do you think the Utah Data Center was built for shits and giggles?
But regardless, this is not/should not be a partisan issue, and one of the most compelling reasons to limit offensive operations and strengthen vulnerability disclosure rules is that we all use the same shit. If the NSA or other TLA is actively exploiting vulnerabilities in common platforms such as OSes, routers, or cellular infrastructure, then they are, by definition, leaving America's identical technology vulnerable to the exact same attacks by our adversaries. By leaving ourselves vulnerable, we are trading access to our own secrets -- from classified government information, to corporate trade secrets, to political party internals -- for access to information that we should reasonably be able to collect through other means. It's shooting ourselves in the foot and hoping the ricochet hits our enemies.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere