"Cyberwar" As a Carrot For Those Selling the Stick 115
New submitter sackbut writes with a story at Wired about the often-discussed concept of "cyberwarfare," and the worst-case scenarios that are sometimes presented as possible outcomes of concerted malicious hacking. According to Wired, which calls these scenarios "the new yellowcake," "[E]vidence to sustain such dire warnings is conspicuously absent. 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."
Writes sackbut: "Perhaps good for programmers, but not so good for rights."
Nope (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:21st century--The era of perpetual war (Score:5, Interesting)
Orwell tried to warn us. See also his work on the use of language and using it as an agent of control (Chomsky says basically the same thing).
Orwell got a lot of things right, but his arguments about use of language were pretty wrong. You can't actually create Newspeak. If you start calling copyright infringement piracy, people start to think that pirates are cool and piracy means sticking it to The Man. If you decide that calling it piracy is no longer cutting it and start calling it theft, people will soon start making references to Robin Hood instead of Captain Jack Sparrow. (You must admit that the pigopolists bear a closer resemblance to the Sheriff of Nottingham than they do to the British Navy.)
Chomsky has it more right, but despite being a linguist his points aren't as much about language as information: The issue is that selection bias allows you to tell part of the truth, and then defy anyone to prove that your biased selection is empirically false rather than merely intentionally incomplete, leaving the general public with the impression that the things the media says are irrefutable because no one is allowed any opportunity to refute them. In other words, the problem is not that powerful people choose what you are allowed to say or even how you are allowed to say it, it is that the content of your message determines how large of an audience you are allowed to reach.
Re:21st century--The era of perpetual war (Score:4, Interesting)
Orwell got a lot of things right, but his arguments about use of language were pretty wrong. You can't actually create Newspeak. If you start calling copyright infringement piracy, people start to think that pirates are cool and piracy means sticking it to The Man. If you decide that calling it piracy is no longer cutting it and start calling it theft, people will soon start making references to Robin Hood instead of Captain Jack Sparrow. (You must admit that the pigopolists bear a closer resemblance to the Sheriff of Nottingham than they do to the British Navy.)
First, most of the "people" you're referring to are proles in Orwell's vision. As long as they get their free bread, beer, and entertainment, they don't care about any of that stuff. As to the outer party members, or proles who are unfortunate enough to be perceptive and discontented, well, that's what the Thought Police are for. Either the malcontents accept Newspeak voluntarily, or after a visit to Room 101.
I think Orwell had that much right. If you can control the vocabulary, you can control the discussion. If you control the discussion, you can control the conclusion.
The only thing lacking right now is the means and will to unequivocally control the vocabulary. The pigopolists understand this, and probably concede they can't do that by force now, so they just beg their argument ("copyright infringement is theft because it's stealing from artists") and then power through the rest of the debate feeling confident they already have chosen the ground for the conflict. And by working behind the scenes and shaping laws (which are the only meaningful vocabulary in the whole milieu), they have a chance of succeeding.
Re:21st century--The era of perpetual war (Score:2, Interesting)
Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945. The surrender documents were signed on the USS Missouri on 2 September 1945. Therefore the US has not been at war since 2 September 1945.
So anyone who says we are at war is full of it.
The President does have limited war powers without a declared war. The President can attack another country and has 60 days to get Congressional approval. See the War Powers Act. By the way, the 60 day limit officially makes Obama an actual war criminal (as opposed to "The President has an R/D after his name and I like the D/R team - therefore he is a war criminal" type of war criminal), since he hasn't sought, and still hasn't gotten, Congressional approval to attack Libya.