BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Does The Cybersecurity Act Of 2012 Mark The Beginning Of The War On Cyber-terrorism?

Following
This article is more than 10 years old.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 is the latest effort by Congress to do something about the threat of cyber attacks and cyber crime. Fortunately, and perhaps thanks to the efforts to quash SOPA and PIPA, the Act is quite a bit more restrained in scope than its predecessors.

You can read the whole thing here.

Still, one can't help but be a little bit nervous about this sort of thing, especially when the usual suspects in Congress start rattling their sabers.

Slashgear pulled together some choice quotes from our political leaders who are selling this bill:

“Hackers are stealing information from Fortune 500 companies," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, "breaking into the networks of our government and security agencies and toying with the networks that power our economy.”

“A Norton study last year calculated the cost of global cybercrime at $114 billion annually," said Sen. Susan Collins. "When combined with the value of time victims lost due to cybercrime, this figure grows to $388 billion globally, which Norton described as ‘significantly more’ than the global black market in marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined.”

“Alongside terrorism, cybersecurity is perhaps the number one threat facing our nation today," Sen. Dianne Feinstein said, "but many obstacles exist that prevent the cooperation and coordination needed to deter this growing threat.”

“This bill would begin to arm us for battle in a war against the cyber mayhem that is being waged against us by our nation’s enemies," Sen. Joe Lieberman said, "organized criminal gangs, and terrorists who would use the Internet against us as surely as they turned airliners into guided missiles.”

Who are these terrifying villains the US government is so worried about?

Alongside possible Chinese and Iranian cyber-terrorists, Anonymous itself, it turns out.

Writing in The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal notes that the group is being described as "stateless." Other far more dangerous groups have been labeled with the "stateless" title as well, including Al Qaeda. Here's a snippet from the 9/11 Commission Report:

"Our enemy is twofold: al Qaeda, a stateless network of terrorists that struck us on 9/11; and a radical ideological movement in the Islamic world, inspired in part by al Qaeda, which has spawned terrorist groups and violence across the globe." [emphasis added by Madrigal]

Or take a look at this piece from the Wall Street Journal that Madrigal links to. The article, rich with ironically anonymous sources, asserts that the hacking group is bent on taking down the power grid - something Anonymous fiercely denies.

"U.S. intelligence officials already have found what they say is evidence of Chinese and Russian cyberspies snooping in computer systems that run the electric grid," the WSJ reports, "possibly in preparation for a conflict with the U.S. The governments of China and Russia have denied any involvement."

The piece continues: "A stateless group like Anonymous doesn't yet have that capability, officials say. But if the group's members around the world developed or acquired it, an attack on the power grid would become far more likely, according to cybersecurity experts."

Notice that stateless designation again. It's a short step from calling a group stateless and then labeling its members as such and choosing to detain them indefinitely in US military prisons. The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 may not get us nearly to that point, but I think it's reasonable to see tyranny as something that happens rather than something that just is. We lose freedom incrementally, even subtly, at times. Certainly this has been the case with the War on Terror. Brace yourselves for the War on Cyberterror.

"So, now we know the frame through which the intelligence community sees Anonymous," Madrigal writes. "That helps make sense of the scenarios that officials floated linking Anonymous to enemies of the United States."

Is it at all surprising, given the hornet's nest Anonymous has involved itself in and the reaction of state officials, that we have a brand-new cybersecurity law chugging its way through congress? The Patriot Act only does so much in our digital domain - it's not surprising that the government would want to bolster that law with a security law aimed at cyber crimes.

Thankfully the bill does appear pretty tight and restrained, but that's cold comfort these days.

Anonymous represents a serious threat to corporate and government opacity, but has never made any attempt to do any harm to civilians or to infrastructure. The war Anonymous and groups like Wikileaks have been waging is an information war only.

"Evidence to sustain such dire warnings is conspicuously absent," Jerry Brito and Tate Watkins point out in Wired. "In many respects, rhetoric about cyber catastrophe resembles threat inflation we saw in the run-up to the Iraq War. And while Congress' passing of comprehensive cybersecurity legislation wouldn't lead to war, it could saddle us with an expensive and overreaching cyber-industrial complex."

Anonymous may not be the most sympathetic group, but they've no doubt done some public good by making secrets public. Still, the process through which this has been achieved is very opaque itself.

"One doesn't have to support Anonymous' methods, goals, or aesthetics to worry about the US response to them in the intelligence community," Alexis concludes. I agree.

That's the thing about overreach - even when we agree on the problem, or on most of the problem, and even when there is a legitimate threat to life and property posed by cyber terrorists, I worry more about the overreaction. This is something Ron Paul has pointed out in regards to Iranian nukes over and over again in the GOP debates, but it's just as important to point it out when talking about anti-piracy or anti-cyberterror legislation.

Sometimes good intentions really do pave the way - if not to hell - than to a loss of civil liberties that are more precious than our sense of security.

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Read my Forbes blog here.