It's a real dilemma, IMHO...stories like this, "
Pentagon Plans New Arm to Wage Wars in Cyberspace," running on the front page of today's NY Times, that make the little kid in many of us just turn off our political brains, along with our sense of reason, and just exclaim: "How cool is that?!"
So many cool new words and phrases, too: cyberoperations, cyberspace command, offensive and defensive computer warfare, cyberwarfare, cyberstrike, cybercommand, cyberczar...just to name a few.
Neal Stephenson (the author of "Snow Crash," "Cryptonomicon" and many other "cyber-cool" works) must be smiling today.
But, the politically liberal adult in me, running a small software business that processes thousands of records containing "personal-private" information everyday, thinks this is both long overdue and extremely important for our country's security, but at the same time an area that potentially encroaches upon our personal freedoms as U.S. citizens.
As a paragraph from this article also indicates (see the last paragraph in the blockquote, below), and as recent history has already demonstrated to us, it gives me great pause to think how easily these efforts could be utilized to perpetuate advanced domestic spying tactics. As I learned long ago, once "it's" online (no matter how much we'd like to think otherwise), information will fall into the wrong hands, sooner or later. But, as I tell my own clients, "One can never have too much data security." And, therein lies the rub.
Pentagon Plans New Arm to Wage Wars in Cyberspace
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By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER
Published: May 28, 2009
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials said Thursday, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare.
The military command would complement a civilian effort to be announced by President Obama on Friday that would overhaul the way the United States safeguards its computer networks.
Mr. Obama, officials said, will announce the creation of a White House office -- reporting to both the National Security Council and the National Economic Council -- that will coordinate a multibillion-dollar effort to restrict access to government computers and protect systems that run the stock exchanges, clear global banking transactions and manage the air traffic control system.
As the story tells us, President Obama hasn't been formally presented with the military plan, so he won't be talking about that aspect of the program in today's announcement. And, if/when it's discussed in the future, much of the military aspects of this effort will be highly classified. The President is expected "to sign a classified order in coming weeks that will create the military cybercommand," officials said.
...It is a recognition that the United States already has a growing number of computer weapons in its arsenal and must prepare strategies for their use -- as a deterrent or alongside conventional weapons -- in a wide variety of possible future conflicts.
--SNIP--
"It's the domestic spying problem writ large," one senior intelligence official said recently. "These attacks start in other countries, but they know no borders. So how do you fight them if you can't act both inside and outside the United States?"
I'm sure there'll be lots of follow-up on this story, both in the press and right here. What are your thoughts?