Cyberwar? I Hardly Know Her!

A great takedown of cyberwar fear-mongering, and the myth that government can protect us from, well, anything online.

"The United States is fighting a cyberwar today and we are losing it," former National Security Agency chief and national intelligence director Mike McConnell wrote in a recent op-ed column in the Washington Post. "It's that simple."

It is neither simple nor true. Failure to distinguish between real acts of war and other malicious behavior not only increases the risks of war, but also distracts us from more immediate threats such as online crime.

Think about how hard we work, and what rights we trample on, just to keep a few (morally reprehensible, seriously foul) kiddie porn snaps offline. Think we can keep out cyber-criminals without serious costs? Note: the costs of "militarizing the Internet" are the same whether or not the cyber criminals/terrorists/warriors are real.

I've bitched about the use of the outdated prefix "cyber" by governments before. And more on the topic of cyberwar from Brian Doherty.

Via Jim Harper.