A quick survey of recent news . . .
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On 12/5, Tim Maurer wrote a great article for Foreign Policy concerning the U.S. military’s increased role in cyberspace. Remember, after the creation of CyberComm, the U.S. military insisted it was all about protecting its own networks. However, we’ve seen the military creep into the role of defending American networks, especially in light of SecDef Panetta’s speech and President Obama’s recent directive “expanding the U.S. military’s authority in cyberspace to include defense of non-military networks.”
Maurer also questions the applicability of the Posse Comitatus Act, and more importantly, whether we’re headed down a slippery slope. Yes, DoD has more resources and can better defend U.S. cyberspace than DHS, but it is “ill-suited for many civilian tasks” and “can also easily bump up against civil liberties.” Mauer suggests a sunset clause that gives DoD an exit strategy while DHS gets up to speed.
Check out the rest of Tim Maurer’s article for Foreign Policy here.
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The Economist had a wide-ranging article titled Cyber-warfare: Hype and fear.
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Charles R. Morris, for Foreign Policy, with an interesting comparison between the China of today and 19th-century America. Essentially, China is the rising power with a penchant for espionage–as the U.S. was in the 19th-century–while the modern day U.S. is like Great Britain in that we’re “wary of the young upstart” and we place “an intrusive [naval] presence on [China’s] coasts . . .”
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Sens. Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins wrote an op-ed for the New York Times. Both Senators raised the familiar prospect of a cyber Pearl Harbor in arguing that the U.S. needs to pass cybersecurity legislation. Expressing frustration with the Chamber of Commerce’s resistance to cybersecurity standards for critical infrastructure, the Senators noted that the “president’s powers are limited, and the issuance of an executive order is controversial even among some supporters of cybersecurity legislation.”
Along similar lines, Jennifer Martinez reported for The Hill that cybersecurity legislation will be a top priority for the next Congress. This according to the new House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul.
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Foreign Policy’s Christian Caryl wrote an article on WCIT. Nothing really new, but it provides solid background. Also, the article quotes Syracuse University’s own Milton Mueller of the School of Information Studies: “”The real threats to the Internet come from nation states . . . [a]nd that includes some of the Western governments as well as the more authoritarian governments.”
ZDNet’s David Gewritz gives an update on the U.S. delegation’s efforts at WCIT. I previously linked an article suggesting that the U.S. delegation had stumbled because a joint U.S.-Canada proposal failed. Apparently that’s not the case. According to the article, via the U.S. delegation, the joint proposal called for discussion of certain “foundational” issues. Those issues are being discussed at high levels, and the original scope and purpose of the ITR treaty has remained preserved.
Jermyn Brooks wrote an op-ed for the New York Times on why the ITU should keep its hands off the internet.
Finally, BBC reports that hackers took WCIT’s website offline, preventing delegates from accessing material.
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Lee Ferran reported for ABCNews on comments by Robert Clark–“the operational attorney for U.S. Cyber Command–at the ongoing Black Hat 2012 conference in Abu Dhabi. According to the article, Clark argued that “cyberwarfare is not the ‘Wild West'” because “legal considerations are taken into account before cyber attacks are launched.” The article also referenced briefings given on other topics.
There’s an interesting array of briefings going on at black hat. The conference’s website suggests that Clark was supposed to speak on “Legal Aspects Of Cyberspace Operations – Hacking Back, Active Response And More.” The description is as follows:
The past year has seen a lot of articles and briefings on active defense and “legally” hacking back both from computer network defenders and their attorneys. And if the area of computer network attack and cyber warfare weren’t already being discussed in great length, the release of the draft “Tallinn Manual” on cyber warfare now joins an area where legal scholars are trying very hard to make their marks on this community. We will discuss the legal issues associated with these topics and as always, this presentation is strongly audience driven and it quickly becomes an open forum for questions and debate.
I know he gave a similar presentation at the Las Vegas black hat, but is anyone aware of what he said in Abu Dhabi?
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Via Nextgov’s Aliya Sternstein, the U.S. and Russia (in addition to other members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) “could finalize an agreement to warn each other about governmental cyberspace activities that may be misconstrued as hostile acts to avert international conflicts.”
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