IP can be considered tangible goods in every since of the word. But I seriously doubt the military gives a damn about the nuances of copyright law in this instance. They went directly to classifying the material protected under the laws governing military and state secrets. Even if copyright laws were being applied the theft and dissemination of the information would be like hacking into a publishers library and downloading a new unreleased novel or song before it was officially released under the applicable copyright laws. Basically encouraging theft for the purpose of avoiding the restrictions of copyright laws. The really sad thing in this whole situation is that none of the material released so far has been of any great importance or impact. No grand conspiracies or lies exposed that are worthy of spending 1 year let alone 25 years in jail.
"I was pretty young when Israel attacked one of our ships and killed people on it"
That ship was a US intelligence operation. Israel was in a war. Bad things happen in war. At the time the US was not a big supporter of Israel. They were only there to keep an eye on the Soviets who were supplying and training the Arabs. Friendly fire happens in every war and pillorying Israel on this particular incident is just another indication of the double standard that gets applied whenever Israel is involved. The Arab Spring is just a shuffling exercise that will most likely leave a lot of people worse off than they were before. And the US should stay out of it, including the Israeli issue. Israel is more than capable of defending themselves and with the US not hovering over their shoulder they can end the conflict decisively the next time an Arab country is stupid enough to give them a reason.
You are correct about the French support but they were more interested in damaging England than they were of nation building. I imagine they were also looking at a future where England would be defeated an then they could start grabbing up real estate in America. Never the less their help was needed and appreciated at the time.
I agree the "culture of blame" has been the driving force in these security related issues. No one wants to be blamed for the next attack. However, on the other side there are the people who complain loudly about the governments actions but they are also the first ones who pop up to blame the government for not doing a enough. You can reduce risk but you can never eliminate it totally and frankly I think life would be boring as hell with no risks.
I imaging you would have a slightly different opinion if someone was to crack your system and get a hold of your personal information. Going after large organizations to inflict damage in protest is one thing but nobody seems to recognize that they have caused more damage to the customers than to the company. There is a world wide market for stolen customer data, especially credit card info. How many people had to contact their credit card company for new cards after some of these attacks? How many customers will have to recover from the damage to their credit rating if their information actually gets used fraudulently?
And finally the guys perpetrating these acts have handed the government all they need to start passing laws and restrictions on the Internet.
That's like saying I can steal your car and then leave it in parking lot some where with the keys in the ignition. This doesn't mean the car is suddenly in the public domain. Any one taking the car would be charged as an accessory to the original crime or charged with accepting stolen property.
In this case the military information was acquired illegally under US law. The military documents were definitely not in the public domain. I imagine that the only people who could be charged are those that released the material first. After the information was released publicly once it was then in the public domain and I don't think any crimes were broken in that instance. The guy charged with the theft has so far only been charged in respect to the military material. The punishment for breaking these laws are sever and I am afraid they guy is going to be at the mercy of the military prosecutor who will ultimately make the decision on exactly which charges they are going to be pursuing when it gets to trial. The government is probably using the charges which have the harshest penalties such as execution in an attempt to gain his cooperation. Personally I hope the military and government prosecutors show some restraint if the guy is convicted.
The only law I can see anyone possibly breaking would be accepting stolen property and then selling it for profit which Wiki leaks has been doing. In normal situations a journalist or news outlet is protected by law when it comes to questioning the source of their information. In this case everyone knows where the information came from and the US is attempting to refine their knowledge on the actually path the information took once it was stolen. I don't really think they will be able to do anything but stranger things have happened and the released information has not caused any real harm yet other than embarrassing some diplomats and government leaders around the world.
Maybe you should take another look at history yourself.
The Bell System divestiture of AT&T, was initiated by the filing in 1974 by the U.S. Department of Justice with an antitrust lawsuit against AT&T. MCI and Sprint were the major corporations driving this action because they could not compete with AT&T in the long distance telecommunications market because the cost of entry was to high for them to realistically compete. Prior to the breakup broadcast networks also relied on AT&T's infrastructure such as their microwave relays, coaxial cable networks, and broadcast-quality leased line networks to deliver their programming to local stations. This also gave a boost to their competitors in other areas as well. This thread started with questioning whether one party could use a competitors assets, which IP is considered to be, to compete. In the AT&T case it's competitors were awarded access to the infrastructure AT&T had built. This breakup also created chaos for AT&T during their attempt to re-group. While AT&T was busy with just surviving it's competitors got the chance to continue thier competitiveness without having to worry about AT&T. The one thing AT&T gained in this breakup was government permission to enter the computer industry which they had been locked out of due to anti-trust issues. This effort also failed all accept for Bell Labs who were able to succeed as a premier research, education, and consulting firm. One of their more noteworthy contributions was developing Unix. And finally I am not saying I personally think the actions against AT&T were needed and a lot of people benefited in the end but their competitors get something for nothing.
These guys are a godsend to those fighting to clamp down on the Internet. They have already given enough ammunition to those looking to increase government monitoring and restrict both access and content. They are also playing with fire. If you don't think the government 3 letter agencies have access to both the people and technology needed to identify groups like this you fooling yourselves. And the penalties being leveled these days on those who are caught are severe.
In the case of telephone communications it was the government who helped break the AT&T strangle hold on that industry. They basically broke the company up and AT&T was required by decree to provide access to their communication infrastructure. This allowed new companies into the market because they didn't have to spend the enormous amount of money it would have taken to build their own infrastructure.
There is no privacy today for anyone. The only real privacy relied on good manners and a modicum of respect to others but these attributes are sadly absent today by anyone's standards. Whether it's a government agency or just some knucklehead publishing stolen customer information online privacy is gone.
Have you ever been to the US or just formed your opinion by gathering your information from the www.ihateamerica.com or the www.blametheusforalltheworldproblems.com websites?
Go ahead and correct anything I said. Everything I said was true and I am not going to write a dissertation just to ease your understanding. Your first post brought to mind the picture of a loser who feels so emasculated and fearful that the only thing he can do is rage at the system that has stood in the way of his success in life and calls everyone who doesn't think the same as him an idiot. You lack both the intelligence and honesty to look at the state of the country or world events in context and analyze the differences from the proper perspective. The one overriding element in today's world is the ability for liars, propaganda specialists, and idiots to distribute there idiotic ramblings like a virus across the world using the net. And do you need some help purchasing your plane ticket out of the country you obviously can't stand? Maybe we can take up a collection.
Well you better hop on the next bus or plane and leave before your head blows up. A bloody revolution is just what we need alright just look how wonderful that strategy works for the rest of the world. It's ridiculous easy to charge the barricades and destroy something but building it back up is not easy and chances are what does get built will be no better or even worse than before. Take some time and study the history of the US and tell me where you find a single year in which someone was not declaring loudly that the country was doomed. Take a good look at all the problems the country has dealt with since it's founding. The religious right in the late 1800's and early 1900's make todays religous right look like look godless heathens. They were able to inact prohibition for god's sake! The left side of the political divide loudly and whole heartily supported leaders like Lenin,Stalin, and Mao while ignoring the millions of people who were purged to create a society of their liking. The disparity of wealth in this country is loopsided but it is still more balanced then it was at the beginning of the industrial age. Look up "Robber Barons" and compare them against today's corporations. Take a look at the civil rights struggles in th 60's and see some really aggregious behavior perpetrated by the police, court systems, and both the federal and state elected governments. This entire country is still very much a work in progress and shouting at the sky and throwing your hands up in the air will not help anything. But maybe we can all just rely on your superior intellect to save the day for the 75-85% of the people you proclaim as ignorant.
That comparison is stupid. He doesn't really care one way or another about Sony because it would not effect him personally. However, you don't have to be in a concentration camp for it to effect you personally. It's called individual choice and it can vary widely.
You made a reference to the Laws of War in regards to killing civilians and my point was the winner of a war gets to decide what is and what is not lawful. I also have a problem when people use the term "illegal war". I doubt the US or any other military power have surrendered their sovereignty and made thier legal systems subservient to international laws.The biggest part of any legal framework requires the ability to enforce those laws and I don't see anyone stepping up to do that on the international level.
The problem with your suggestion is that computer systems are a constantly moving target. Taking the guarantee 100% security in a system would result in taking a very long time. By the time you are done the tech has moved on and your sitting on an outdated system. Some very smart people have been trying to build secure systems for the past 30+ years and there are still no shortages of vulneralbilites and risks. The best defense for critical military and infrastructure systems is isolation from external access and even that can be beat by physical intrusions into a secured facility. The initial payload for Stuxnet was delivered via a thumb drive.
I call BS on the lack of CS/IT jobs in the US and pretty much the rest of the post considering I don't think anyone is expecting to build cyber security team using marines. If you can't find a job either you are not looking very hard or your an idiot. Post a resume on a popular job site and see how many calls you get. I made the mistake of putting my resume online and had over 200 calls and 300+ emails within 4 days. Even after removing my resume 3 months ago I still get an average of 10-15 inquiries a day.
I was sort of wondering about the proxy thing. People who are intelligent enough to initiate these types of attacks are surely capable of obsfucating the trail back to them. Hell it's not even that hard for a single person let alone a government.
The nuclear payload from just 1 submarine is capable of more than payback. And your scenerio also does not take into consideration that there are protocols in place to respond to certain types of threats even with coms down. That's even assuming they could take down the military coms at all. Do you think the military has not gone to great pains to harden their systems against EMP and position redundant satellites? The civilian communication networks could be crashed but I don't believe the military has their ICBM launch controls wired into the Internet.
Your friend is dead because of those who kidnapped her. Period. Making disparaging remarks against the people who attempted to rescue her and describing the attempt as "sad" and "American" does nothing but validate the actions of those who actually took her and encourage them to do it again.
Switzerland camps out because it would last about 15 minutes in a war against any of the bigger militaries in the world regardless on how much they spent on defense. The only thing that would prevent this would be possesion of 1 or 2 nukes or a close friendship with another military dominate country. Sort of like Israel's ultimate fall back plan.
I did not question anyone's technical competence when it comes to building and releasing bug fixes or imply this particular exploit was particularly damaging or earth shattering. I was just commenting because I was amused at how this problem was being addressed when compared to similar problems on some of the other OS's. It is amazing that the patches can be released as fast as they are. The amount of work needed to study, fix, re-test, and distribute is the daunting to say the least. This can include re-testing the OS as well as any applications that might be effected by the patch. Things are particularly nasty if the fix touches upon 3rd party drivers. MS has run into situation over the years. (As a matter of fact it was usually 3rd party drivers causing the BOD's) With all that said I would not be surprised at all to see more advanced exploits targeting OS X as well as Android in the future.
It seems like everyone is going out their way to rationalize Apple's behavior in this matter. Your solid business policy excuse is right on the money though. Heaven forbid they admit they might have a problem. The actual steps to eradicate or at least prevent future infections were pretty straight forward for this minor problem but next time things could be more serious. I also know another company that has violated their "Patch Tuesday" policy on occasion when a serious problem occurs. I just can't help feel that had this been a MS problem people on this site would be calling for Congressional Hearings and recommending UN sanctions be put in place to punish someone for this monumental and egregious attack on the worlds innocent computer users. Oh the children!!
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IP can be considered tangible goods in every since of the word. But I seriously doubt the military gives a damn about the nuances of copyright law in this instance. They went directly to classifying the material protected under the laws governing military and state secrets. Even if copyright laws were being applied the theft and dissemination of the information would be like hacking into a publishers library and downloading a new unreleased novel or song before it was officially released under the applicable copyright laws. Basically encouraging theft for the purpose of avoiding the restrictions of copyright laws. The really sad thing in this whole situation is that none of the material released so far has been of any great importance or impact. No grand conspiracies or lies exposed that are worthy of spending 1 year let alone 25 years in jail.
"I was pretty young when Israel attacked one of our ships and killed people on it" That ship was a US intelligence operation. Israel was in a war. Bad things happen in war. At the time the US was not a big supporter of Israel. They were only there to keep an eye on the Soviets who were supplying and training the Arabs. Friendly fire happens in every war and pillorying Israel on this particular incident is just another indication of the double standard that gets applied whenever Israel is involved. The Arab Spring is just a shuffling exercise that will most likely leave a lot of people worse off than they were before. And the US should stay out of it, including the Israeli issue. Israel is more than capable of defending themselves and with the US not hovering over their shoulder they can end the conflict decisively the next time an Arab country is stupid enough to give them a reason.
You are correct about the French support but they were more interested in damaging England than they were of nation building. I imagine they were also looking at a future where England would be defeated an then they could start grabbing up real estate in America. Never the less their help was needed and appreciated at the time.
I agree the "culture of blame" has been the driving force in these security related issues. No one wants to be blamed for the next attack. However, on the other side there are the people who complain loudly about the governments actions but they are also the first ones who pop up to blame the government for not doing a enough. You can reduce risk but you can never eliminate it totally and frankly I think life would be boring as hell with no risks.
I imaging you would have a slightly different opinion if someone was to crack your system and get a hold of your personal information. Going after large organizations to inflict damage in protest is one thing but nobody seems to recognize that they have caused more damage to the customers than to the company. There is a world wide market for stolen customer data, especially credit card info. How many people had to contact their credit card company for new cards after some of these attacks? How many customers will have to recover from the damage to their credit rating if their information actually gets used fraudulently? And finally the guys perpetrating these acts have handed the government all they need to start passing laws and restrictions on the Internet.
That's like saying I can steal your car and then leave it in parking lot some where with the keys in the ignition. This doesn't mean the car is suddenly in the public domain. Any one taking the car would be charged as an accessory to the original crime or charged with accepting stolen property. In this case the military information was acquired illegally under US law. The military documents were definitely not in the public domain. I imagine that the only people who could be charged are those that released the material first. After the information was released publicly once it was then in the public domain and I don't think any crimes were broken in that instance. The guy charged with the theft has so far only been charged in respect to the military material. The punishment for breaking these laws are sever and I am afraid they guy is going to be at the mercy of the military prosecutor who will ultimately make the decision on exactly which charges they are going to be pursuing when it gets to trial. The government is probably using the charges which have the harshest penalties such as execution in an attempt to gain his cooperation. Personally I hope the military and government prosecutors show some restraint if the guy is convicted.
The only law I can see anyone possibly breaking would be accepting stolen property and then selling it for profit which Wiki leaks has been doing. In normal situations a journalist or news outlet is protected by law when it comes to questioning the source of their information. In this case everyone knows where the information came from and the US is attempting to refine their knowledge on the actually path the information took once it was stolen. I don't really think they will be able to do anything but stranger things have happened and the released information has not caused any real harm yet other than embarrassing some diplomats and government leaders around the world.
Maybe you should take another look at history yourself. The Bell System divestiture of AT&T, was initiated by the filing in 1974 by the U.S. Department of Justice with an antitrust lawsuit against AT&T. MCI and Sprint were the major corporations driving this action because they could not compete with AT&T in the long distance telecommunications market because the cost of entry was to high for them to realistically compete. Prior to the breakup broadcast networks also relied on AT&T's infrastructure such as their microwave relays, coaxial cable networks, and broadcast-quality leased line networks to deliver their programming to local stations. This also gave a boost to their competitors in other areas as well. This thread started with questioning whether one party could use a competitors assets, which IP is considered to be, to compete. In the AT&T case it's competitors were awarded access to the infrastructure AT&T had built. This breakup also created chaos for AT&T during their attempt to re-group. While AT&T was busy with just surviving it's competitors got the chance to continue thier competitiveness without having to worry about AT&T. The one thing AT&T gained in this breakup was government permission to enter the computer industry which they had been locked out of due to anti-trust issues. This effort also failed all accept for Bell Labs who were able to succeed as a premier research, education, and consulting firm. One of their more noteworthy contributions was developing Unix. And finally I am not saying I personally think the actions against AT&T were needed and a lot of people benefited in the end but their competitors get something for nothing.
These guys are a godsend to those fighting to clamp down on the Internet. They have already given enough ammunition to those looking to increase government monitoring and restrict both access and content. They are also playing with fire. If you don't think the government 3 letter agencies have access to both the people and technology needed to identify groups like this you fooling yourselves. And the penalties being leveled these days on those who are caught are severe.
In the case of telephone communications it was the government who helped break the AT&T strangle hold on that industry. They basically broke the company up and AT&T was required by decree to provide access to their communication infrastructure. This allowed new companies into the market because they didn't have to spend the enormous amount of money it would have taken to build their own infrastructure.
There is no privacy today for anyone. The only real privacy relied on good manners and a modicum of respect to others but these attributes are sadly absent today by anyone's standards. Whether it's a government agency or just some knucklehead publishing stolen customer information online privacy is gone.
Have you ever been to the US or just formed your opinion by gathering your information from the www.ihateamerica.com or the www.blametheusforalltheworldproblems.com websites?
Go ahead and correct anything I said. Everything I said was true and I am not going to write a dissertation just to ease your understanding. Your first post brought to mind the picture of a loser who feels so emasculated and fearful that the only thing he can do is rage at the system that has stood in the way of his success in life and calls everyone who doesn't think the same as him an idiot. You lack both the intelligence and honesty to look at the state of the country or world events in context and analyze the differences from the proper perspective. The one overriding element in today's world is the ability for liars, propaganda specialists, and idiots to distribute there idiotic ramblings like a virus across the world using the net. And do you need some help purchasing your plane ticket out of the country you obviously can't stand? Maybe we can take up a collection.
Well you better hop on the next bus or plane and leave before your head blows up. A bloody revolution is just what we need alright just look how wonderful that strategy works for the rest of the world. It's ridiculous easy to charge the barricades and destroy something but building it back up is not easy and chances are what does get built will be no better or even worse than before. Take some time and study the history of the US and tell me where you find a single year in which someone was not declaring loudly that the country was doomed. Take a good look at all the problems the country has dealt with since it's founding. The religious right in the late 1800's and early 1900's make todays religous right look like look godless heathens. They were able to inact prohibition for god's sake! The left side of the political divide loudly and whole heartily supported leaders like Lenin,Stalin, and Mao while ignoring the millions of people who were purged to create a society of their liking. The disparity of wealth in this country is loopsided but it is still more balanced then it was at the beginning of the industrial age. Look up "Robber Barons" and compare them against today's corporations. Take a look at the civil rights struggles in th 60's and see some really aggregious behavior perpetrated by the police, court systems, and both the federal and state elected governments. This entire country is still very much a work in progress and shouting at the sky and throwing your hands up in the air will not help anything. But maybe we can all just rely on your superior intellect to save the day for the 75-85% of the people you proclaim as ignorant.
That comparison is stupid. He doesn't really care one way or another about Sony because it would not effect him personally. However, you don't have to be in a concentration camp for it to effect you personally. It's called individual choice and it can vary widely.
You made a reference to the Laws of War in regards to killing civilians and my point was the winner of a war gets to decide what is and what is not lawful. I also have a problem when people use the term "illegal war". I doubt the US or any other military power have surrendered their sovereignty and made thier legal systems subservient to international laws.The biggest part of any legal framework requires the ability to enforce those laws and I don't see anyone stepping up to do that on the international level.
The problem with your suggestion is that computer systems are a constantly moving target. Taking the guarantee 100% security in a system would result in taking a very long time. By the time you are done the tech has moved on and your sitting on an outdated system. Some very smart people have been trying to build secure systems for the past 30+ years and there are still no shortages of vulneralbilites and risks. The best defense for critical military and infrastructure systems is isolation from external access and even that can be beat by physical intrusions into a secured facility. The initial payload for Stuxnet was delivered via a thumb drive.
I call BS on the lack of CS/IT jobs in the US and pretty much the rest of the post considering I don't think anyone is expecting to build cyber security team using marines. If you can't find a job either you are not looking very hard or your an idiot. Post a resume on a popular job site and see how many calls you get. I made the mistake of putting my resume online and had over 200 calls and 300+ emails within 4 days. Even after removing my resume 3 months ago I still get an average of 10-15 inquiries a day.
I was sort of wondering about the proxy thing. People who are intelligent enough to initiate these types of attacks are surely capable of obsfucating the trail back to them. Hell it's not even that hard for a single person let alone a government.
The nuclear payload from just 1 submarine is capable of more than payback. And your scenerio also does not take into consideration that there are protocols in place to respond to certain types of threats even with coms down. That's even assuming they could take down the military coms at all. Do you think the military has not gone to great pains to harden their systems against EMP and position redundant satellites? The civilian communication networks could be crashed but I don't believe the military has their ICBM launch controls wired into the Internet.
Your friend is dead because of those who kidnapped her. Period. Making disparaging remarks against the people who attempted to rescue her and describing the attempt as "sad" and "American" does nothing but validate the actions of those who actually took her and encourage them to do it again.
In war it's the winners who decide what is right not some policy devised 200 years ago.
Switzerland camps out because it would last about 15 minutes in a war against any of the bigger militaries in the world regardless on how much they spent on defense. The only thing that would prevent this would be possesion of 1 or 2 nukes or a close friendship with another military dominate country. Sort of like Israel's ultimate fall back plan.
I did not question anyone's technical competence when it comes to building and releasing bug fixes or imply this particular exploit was particularly damaging or earth shattering. I was just commenting because I was amused at how this problem was being addressed when compared to similar problems on some of the other OS's. It is amazing that the patches can be released as fast as they are. The amount of work needed to study, fix, re-test, and distribute is the daunting to say the least. This can include re-testing the OS as well as any applications that might be effected by the patch. Things are particularly nasty if the fix touches upon 3rd party drivers. MS has run into situation over the years. (As a matter of fact it was usually 3rd party drivers causing the BOD's) With all that said I would not be surprised at all to see more advanced exploits targeting OS X as well as Android in the future.
It seems like everyone is going out their way to rationalize Apple's behavior in this matter. Your solid business policy excuse is right on the money though. Heaven forbid they admit they might have a problem. The actual steps to eradicate or at least prevent future infections were pretty straight forward for this minor problem but next time things could be more serious. I also know another company that has violated their "Patch Tuesday" policy on occasion when a serious problem occurs. I just can't help feel that had this been a MS problem people on this site would be calling for Congressional Hearings and recommending UN sanctions be put in place to punish someone for this monumental and egregious attack on the worlds innocent computer users. Oh the children!!