U.S. Congress Authorizes Offensive Use of Cyberwarfare

smitty777 writes "Congress has recently authorized the use of offensive military action in cyberspace. From the December 12th conference on the National Defense Authorization Act, it states, 'Congress affirms that the Department of Defense has the capability, and upon direction by the President may conduct offensive operations in cyberspace to defend our Nation, Allies and interests, subject to: (1) the policy principles and legal regimes that the Department follows for kinetic capabilities, including the law of armed conflict; and (2) the War Powers Resolution.' According to the FAS, 'Debate continues on whether using the War Powers Resolution is effective as a means of assuring congressional participation in decisions that might get the United States involved in a significant military conflict.'"

Re:Finally

[zill]

The military-industry complex isn't just war profiteering and lobbying; a warmongering populace is also a critical part of the complex.

Congressional oversight my ass

[zill]

and (2) the War Powers Resolution

Let's drop the charade. If robotic aerial bombardment doesn't constitute "war", then sending strings of ones and zeros through a series of tubes certainly doesn't count as "war". There is effectively no congressional oversight because cyber-warfare does not fall under the purview of "war" according to the executive branch. There's also no way for congress to cut funding for cyber-warfare since all the computers and networks are already paid for, and there's very little operational costs to waging a cyber war.

American 'Cyber' militia? 'Cyber' arms?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would this give the citizens of America the right to form a Cyber militia and the right to bear Cyber arms under the constitution?

Re:American 'Cyber' militia? 'Cyber' arms?

[zill]

a Cyber militia

Wikileaks

Re:SOPA?

[lightknight]

While that will be entertaining to see, this beast, having lost its head, will stagger around and flail its limbs, catching others unawares, before it finally succumbs to death.

Re:Offense to Defend?

[lightknight]

Hmm. The ID10Ts have finished building their cyber-command, staffed it with the *cough* best *cough* IT that the marines can offer, and they want to give it a spin. They're looking for a fight. Were I a general, I would not stop b*tch-slapping these people until my hand got tired, then I'd have one of my assistants take over for me: what kind of steroid-abusing, minimum legal IQ, closed-minded, in-bred, patriot (put charitably) goes looking to start a war during a time of relative peace? We have nothing to gain from this venture, and everything to lose.

Has the nation gone full-retard? This kind of behavior is supposed to be out of your system by the time you hit 18, cropping up only when you get a speeding ticket, had a bad day at the office, or are at home with the family for the holidays.

Don't get me wrong, if you need to protect something material, the US military is some of the best. But like Space, Cyber-Space is specifically un-militarized, with only a handful of shadow games being played by somewhat disinterested players (that the internet was started by a military project is not lost on me ^_^). It's a completely different battlefield, with completely different rules, and it's not going to be helped by this addition. The very action of trying to play war with the internet means the US military will succeed where its politicians have failed: the US will end up getting cut off from the global internet, as countries move to protect themselves. This action is the internet equivalent of parking some Soviet ICBMs in Cuba!

You know, once upon a time, the United States had a Department of War. It's job was to ensure that our country was always at war with some other country. We ditched it in favor of a Department of Defense. I am having trouble telling the difference now.

 

Re:Finally

[jc42]

And part of human nature seems to be to frame everything as a kind of "war". But this can backfire. Back in 1964, here in the US, President Lyndon Johnson declared a "War on Poverty". Quickly, millions of poor people started asking where they could go to surrender. That war was quietly shelved soon thereafter.

We just need to find as clever a way to respond to the US government declaring war on the Internet. Is there a good way to make us all look like opponents, so we can surrender and get funds for reconstruction?

Anyone got any good ways to phrase this?

Re:Americans

[Dunbal]

Oh I'm far from angry, just wanted to open the poster's eyes a little. If you have a crack addict who borrows 100K from the Mafia, and gives away 20K to his "buddies" while spending the other 80K on a Porsche he somehow got financing for, more cocaine, bling, and other frivolous things, then you have a fair analogy. Instead of crack read oil. Instead of Porsche and bling read any number of entitlement and useless spending (including inflated "defense" spending that gets you multi-million dollar drones that can be easily captured by Iran), etc. You would not say that this person is rich. In fact you would say that this person is going to be in deep trouble when the Mafia decide to collect. And his "friends" are fair-weather friends of convenience. And it's useless to say "I told you so", because that person is damned certain that there is nothing wrong with their life-style.

Re:Finally

[jhoegl]

If only they'd declared a war on patenting....

Fixed it for you.

Re:Americans

[miserere nobis]

There is nothing wrong with this. This entire discussion thread has taken failing to read the article to a new level. This section of the bill in question affirms that violence commenced via the Internet falls under the same rules as violence with regular guns, and thus it is subject to the laws of war and the War Powers Resolution. It is not a declaration of war, it is not permission to "fire at will." Nor is it an affirmation of pre-emptive strikes. Offensive use of force in defense of the nation is not a new or strange concept. The President has been, since the beginning of the republic, authorized to conduct offensive operations with the military to defend the United States, subject to Constitutional and Congressional limitations and the laws of warfare. This section effectively says, "cyberspace is an arena in which this may also occur." Nothing more. In that regard, it is actually an assertion that there are limits on Presidential use of the Internet for violent acts, although exactly how to apply the established laws regarding warfare to cyber-warfare is obviously a really big question.

Re:Finally

[jc42]

I'm pretty sure that (D)ARPA had no intention of neutrality in terms of who was "supposed to" benefit from the communication.....

It might be informative (and maybe enlightening) if we can get people to look back at what (D)ARPA actually had in mind back in the 1960s and 1970s when they were funding the development that led to the Internet. Their original documents mostly talked in terms of just the sort of "warfare" that people are getting so upset about now.

An important part of the design was multi-path routing that could be rapidly modified, as an enemy found and took out your routers. The idea was that as long as a path existed between two points, the routing system would find it and keep those two points in communication, despite the best efforts of the enemy.

Of course, in current terms, most of the Internet would consider the US government (along with various others in China, Iran, wherever) as "enemy", since people in the US government are talking openly about actively interfering with our communication without knowing or caring who we might be.

One of the major failures in the current Internet is that multi-path routing has been pretty much nixed by the ISPs. How many data paths do you have out of your home or office? 99% of us have only one, which is a blatant violation of the original design. You should try using traceroute to list the machines along the path to a remote site. Do it several times, and see if the same path comes up each time. If so, then you are a victim of single-path routing, and that path can be taken out at any time by an enemy who has access to any of those machines along the route. Or, even worse, they can make a copy of every packet between you and that site, without you knowing that they're doing this . The original ARPA/Internet design was specifically to avoid such security risks.

If we want to keep the Internet safe from "cyber warfare", maybe we should be looking seriously at what the military people are doing with it in their private networks. And we should implement the parts of IP that have been ignored in favor of a fragile design that provides mostly single-path routes.

Then we might be safer from not just the US's perceived enemies, but also from the US government itself.