The Washington Post reports on sky-is-falling government warning of impending cyberattacks:
The U.S. government on Thursday warned of a heightened risk of a cyberattack that could disrupt the control systems of U.S. companies providing critical services such as electricity and water.
No doubt it's more than coincidence that, as tenacious WaPo reporter Ellen Nakashima writes:
The alert comes as the Obama administration is ramping up efforts to share more information about threats and encourage greater computer network security.
And that this alert comes just as the White House and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are
working on a plan to overhaul all surveillance laws in order to make it easier for the government to obtain Americans' online data, like communications using Facebook and chat rooms.
I've written for months that cyber is the new frontier in terrorism, and amorphous warnings about "cyber attacks" ("DHS officials did not provide details on the nature of the latest threat. . .") are used as the new excuse for lucrative government contracts and privacy-compromising changes to the law. The reality does not match the dramatic warnings. From WaPo:
. . . they are also increasingly concerned about the threat of a potentially destructive cyberattack.
Such attacks are rare.
(emphasis added)
The rarity of such attacks is not consistent with the frequent urgent warnings. In February, cyberattack warnings included headlines such as
Chinese cyberspies have hacked most Washington institutions
These constant "alerts" create a constant state of urgency and fear, an atmosphere that makes Congress more ready to shell out taxpayer dollars for protection and Americans more ready to needlessly sacrifice their privacy in return for more security theater.
Rather than worrying about another "impending cyberattack," perhaps we should be more concerned about our own government's domestic spying activities. As the government fear mongers about cyber attacks, my client, National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Bill Binney again warned us about rampant, unconstitutional domestic spying on Huffington Post Live. Rather than giving credence to the government's warnings, which haven't panned out, we should listen first to the whistleblowers about how the national security state has used fear to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on security theater that largely fails to actually detect or deter national security threats.