Cybersecurity and Piracy on the High Seas 116
Schneier points out an interesting article comparing modern cybersecurity to piracy on the high seas in the early 1800s. The article extends the comparison into projected action based on historical context. "Similarly, in many ways, current U.S. policy on the security of electronic commerce is similar to Adams' appeasement approach to the Barbary pirates. The U.S. government's inability to dictate a consistent cyber commerce protection policy is creating a financial burden on the U.S. private sector to maintain a status quo, when those resources could be used to mount a more-effective Internet-focused defense. In the case of financial fraud on the Internet, the costs associated with fraudulent transactions are currently borne by private companies, which then have to pass those costs on to their customers. This basically creates a system in which the financial institutions are paying a type of 'tribute' to the cyber criminals, just as Adams did to the Barbary pirates."
silly (Score:1, Flamebait)
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So what? Piracy is not This. (Score:3, Interesting)
Software "piracy", entertainment "piracy", phishing ... the author is obviously conflating these things under the banner of IP and suggesting that there's an economic argument similar to one raised when the US was a free republic. The differences are glaring and obvious:
Oddly enough... (Score:2, Informative)
The response the US got back from the Barbary ambassador was that their taking captive sailors and forcing them to either convert or be killed was "founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners,
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Re:Oddly enough... (Score:4, Interesting)
There's just not enough time in most school history classes to teach the kids something meaningful about all of the very major wars (Revolution, Civil War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam) that even some of the medium-sized wars (French and Indian, 1812, Korea) get short shrift. It's not a coincidence that Korea is called the "forgotten war." It'd be great if every high school kid had as much curiosity and interest about history as you clearly do, but it's just not the case. One survey, admittedly not very scientific, found that 57% of high school students didn't know that the Civil War was in the last half of the 19th century [cbsnews.com].
That's pretty bad. I'd much rather fix that than worry about teaching them about Barbary pirates. Maybe the right solution is more edu-tainment programming; it seems that your lesson to be taken from the Barbaray pirates is not dates and places, but more of a zeitgeist about the forces that were acting on the US in the early days. Some of that can be captured in a good period piece--think Pirates of the Caribbean, except not entirely fictionalized.
Similarly, it looks some somebody has already made silly videos about " protecting web booty" [reputation...erblog.com] to riff on the pirate/cybersecurity theme.
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There's just not enough time in most school history classes to teach the kids something meaningful about all of the very major wars (Revolution, Civil War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam) that even some of the medium-sized wars (French and Indian, 1812, Korea) get short shrift.
Why are we concentrating on the wars at all? What about the things that shaped our country's history between the wars?
My wife has been reading a 1930s high school U.S. history textbook, and has been fascinated by the descriptions of interpersonal relationships between various politicians at different stages in the country's history. The period between the War of 1812 and the Civil War in a modern text usually merits a page or two about Andrew Jackson, then the build-up to the war in terms of slavery and
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Well, hard to say. First, whether the Vietnam War was "frivilous" is a matter of opinion. It's cast as such. As I see it, the US did have legitimate concerns about the so-called "domino effect", namely that if communism (as practiced by the USSR and China at the time) could establish itself in Vietnam, then neighboring countries would be destabilized as well. A better approach would have been to enable Vietnam to be sufficiently independent of China, like Yugoslavia was from the USSR. That probably would ha
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But this omission is nothing compared to the British history books where the
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And the capitol burned in the Civil War too. By your definition that's a loss.
Rah-rah boosterism is far worse in your head than in real life.
Re:Oddly enough... (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't even know there was an American civil war until I visited the south, where I found out it's still being fought.
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In my high school, we got as far as the Civil War in our History of America class. By which I mean, on the last day of actual classes before finals, our history teacher talked about the Civil War.
And that was the last required history course, meaning that quite a lot of things that happened were sort of, well, skipped in my high school history education. World War II could be learned from the History Channel, but I did have to wonder about the "II" as if it were a sequel...
To be fair to the history teac
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I never heard anything about Washington saying that, and, specifically, The Treaty of Tripoli, a preliminary version of which Washington himself signed shortly before leaving office, says:
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Muslim != terrorist (Score:3, Insightful)
When you look at the historical record over many centuries, it's hard to say whether Muslims or
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I'd call that terrorism. Fully Koranic-supported terrorism, btw.
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Just to nitpick, the words for "kill" and "murder" in Hebrew differ only in the vowels used. Coincidentally, vowels are rarely (never?) written in Biblical Hebrew.
So, we'll never know if the commandment was "thou shalt not kill" or "thou shalt not murder." But, since later edicts in that book involve stoning people, I'm guessing it was the "murder" one.
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If by "terrorist" you mean someone who forces you to convert to his religion under threat of death or enslavement, then there are plenty of historical examples of "Christian terrorists" as in history well. Forcible conversion is hardly a uniquely Muslim phenomenon.
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Mod Parent UP (Score:4, Insightful)
The terrorism label is a red herring, great for propaganda and useless war mongering. No one doubts the existence of many organizations that will murder, some en masse, in the name of their cause.
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What would they like to do, have a big central server to send everything through? good luck with that.
The best they could do would be to have the seller create a signed pgp receipt of the sale which would be sent to the buyer and would be counter signed with their pgp key, which could be then sent to the bank directly which could then verify their customer pgp key agai
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What would they like to do, have a big central server to send everything through?
How about a giant Linksys router in an underground bunker in New Mexico?
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Say no to Piracy! Don't steal ships.
What do you know? (Score:4, Funny)
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Yeah. Look at what a great job private companies (Bear Stearns, Countrywide, Citigroup) did making loans. They were so effective at making loans, the government had to bail them out.
It's great to criticize government (I'm usually first in line) but when you're comparing something that large to one company, you can't. It's like comparing an oil tanker to a cigarette boat. Who do you think is more nimble?
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People who Bear Stearns owed money to got bailed out. Bear Stearns no longer exists as a company(most of the operations continue to exist under J.P. Morgan).
Countrywide and Citigroup didn't get anything more than cheap credit from the government.
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An "oversimplification", yes.
A "gross and *horrible* oversimplification", I do not think so.
If we keep on bailing out those who fund the gamblers, then we're effectively bailing out the gamblers themselves. Corporate personhood is a fiction anyway. The first line creditors that get bailed out will be the past executives and employees that are owed wages and compensation in arrears, and any other first line
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My parents own some Bear Stearns debt (some supposedly highly rated bonds at a reasonably high interest rate), so I may be biased. Their stock broker so
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Yeah. Look at what a great job private companies (Bear Stearns, Countrywide, Citigroup) did making loans. They were so effective at making loans, the government had to bail them out.
That is the real tragedy of it all the government did not have to bail them out. They chose to at the expense of everyone as well as the future to help at a few people who should have know better. Bear Stearns should have been allowed to fail. The investors should have lost it all. That the game called investing. You can win and sometimes you can lose. Bear Stearns was posting huge profits by investing in risky loans themsevels. This was foolish, lost of people knew it. Lots of people did not get s
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And they're not the only big bank.
The problem is executive focus on short-term profit over, well, anything else.
In the case of Bear Stearns, they had sufficient capital, it's just that no one wanted to trade with them, fearing they didn't. And that resulted in what is essentially a run on a bank. The government didn't step in for Bear Stearns, they stepped in to prevent all the major br
Not much. (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting. Government is less effective than private companies. Who would have guessed?
It seems you (and the authors of the article) are missing a key point. Yes, international trade grew on a foundation of international and maritine law, but only after the Marines went in and kicked some Barbary butt. In that sense, government is more effective than private companies. (At least, private companies that don't have their own army and navy.)
Countries were able to reach peaceful agreements on how they
Guess it's unanimous... (Score:1)
The modern internet piracy dictionary (Score:5, Funny)
Hijacking - 1. Taking over a post on Slashdot.
Terrorism - 1. DOS attack against all the root DNS servers simultaneously. 2. Slashdotting a website.
"Arrrr..." - 1. Phrase uttered by someone who has just been linked to goatse.cz
One-Eye - 1. Asshole.
Pirate Flag - 1. Used to indicate a box has been pwned. 2. Used by Maddox (maddox.xmission.com) as a TM.
Booty - 1. A woman's butt.
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Instead of Car Analogies... (Score:4, Funny)
Looks like the argument is "the government should be more involved in actually doing something." This is undoubtedly true; it's the government's job to set safety standards and to fight crime.
But really this is just an article that says "Hey, why not have the government fight crime?" with nautical window dressing. The author's better off scuttling the piracy angle.
It's IMHO even worse (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean... Umm, excuse me? They don't look at all similar to me. Just because they share one element, it doesn't automatically make two things similar.
If it automatically did, we'd have a hell of a lot of ridiculous "similarities" all over the place. E.g., (A) the government still can't stop cars from killing innocent people, (B) Stalin
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Strangely enough corporations scream louder and attempt to spread more outlandish lies, as the gap between cost and retail becomes greater, greed knows no bounds and the
21st century version of a protection racket? (Score:3)
Apparently so from TFA, ... either that, or it's just more FUD to encourage government control (read taxation) of the internet.
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No, really.
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I don't think "Protection Racket" means what you think it means.
DDoS is the "external threat". But let's go ahead and talk about "There ought to be a law" in regards to DDoS.
Who w
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Because, as long as people pay, the extortionists will continue to attack.
It's the same for the Mafia today. It's still around. Companies could turn to law enforcement (which has no legal liability if attacks happen on their watch, and cannot promise they'd catch them), could invest millions more in security which still might not stop them (law of diminishing returns, infiltration and inside jobs, etc), or just pay the lousy couple grand every year or so and not get attacked.
You gotta pick your battles, and I don't know any corporations that have "oh, and, don't deal in protecti
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DDOS attacks are unblockable but what you can do is increase your capacity so that the ddos has less effect but this costs money.
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You can't have it both ways (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm of the opinion that the government should be there to hold private industry liable for any breaches of personal data that leads to fraud. If someone steals my credit information and makes purchases with them, the credit card company should be on the hook for not verifying the identity of the person who made the purchase. The merchant should be on the hook for not verifying the identity of the purchaser. The whole system needs to be changed. Instead of giving out free credit, they need to only give credit to those who ask for it. Turn it from a push to a pull system and validate the hell out of the puller.
On an only semi-related tangant, I'm waiting for the explosion in fraudulant health care claims. The health care cards themselves are simple pieces of paper. It is easy to get a picture idea with your picture and someone else's name on it. With the cost of health care skyrocketting in this country it is only a matter of time before people start getting health services under someone else's name. And I already know what is going to happen... the person whose name got abused is going to be liable for it, not the health providers who okayed the procedure in the first place.
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I'm of the opinion that the government should be there to hold private industry liable for any breaches of personal data that leads to fraud. If someone steals my credit information and makes purchases with them, the credit card company should be on the hook for not verifying the identity of the person who made the purchase. The merchant should be on the hook for not verifying the identity of the purchaser. The whole system needs to be changed. Instead of giving out free credit, they need to only give credit to those who ask for it. Turn it from a push to a pull system and validate the hell out of the puller.
Yes! This at least makes sense. Now if only there was some way in which we could get congress to do their jobs and actually regulate something useful instead of declaring that they want to regulate p2p by filename.
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False dichotomy. There is no reason a gov't can't have a small set of limited regulatory powers. And don't try a slippery slope response to this post.
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You say I'm using a slippery slope argument. I'm making the assertion that ever expanding governmental regulation is the way the government w
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That's your definition of "give them an inch and they'll take a mile"? That they have a few more employees that they started with? Jeeze, a mile isn't what it used to be. But ok, I'll give it a shot: NASA? the post office? the department of the interior? the EPA? The EPA is getting less and less effective and less and less regulatory as time goes on.
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The "give them a
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You said:
You are correct that there is no reason that the government can't have a small set of regulatory powers. In theory I could have a driveway made of milk chocolate. When looking at the REALITY of how the government functions, if you give them an inch they will take a mile.
I responded:
This is a slippery slope argument (and not even a reasonable one) and I said no slippery slopes. :) The point does not stand.
You said:
...I challenge you to find a Federal government level institution that has been around for more than 20 years that hasn't expanded its responsibilities and oversight capabilities. Find me a department that still has the same number of employees and hasn't been absorbed by another department that was expanding its own influence.
I responded to your challenge:
... The EPA is getting less and less effective and less and less regulatory as time goes on. ...
Now you want me to limit my responses to "agencies that actually might be responsible for securing the internet," in effect making me choose DHS, FBI, or NSA. Your argument keeps shifting. If you want to restate and refine your initial argument, then who knows, maybe I'll even agree with it.
The "give them an inch and they'll take a mile" is the analogy that you've come up with and that you're using.
"give them an inch and they'll take a mile" is a direct quote from an earlier post of yours.
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Now you want me to limit my responses to "agencies that actually might be responsible for securing the internet," in effect making
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Also, where do I state that legistlators can be trusted? I don't. Because I'm picking at your argument doesn't mean I take the exact opposite position. Law makers are people. Sometimes they do the right thing, sometimes they don't. The "ideal" world doesn't exist and neither does its inverse. Things are always m
So that that would be like, (Score:2)
WTF is this guy talking about? (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest of this article is full of similar crap ideas and analogies.
I guess it's easier to create an international body to oversee the internet than get Microsoft to put out a secure product.
Dude, WTF are YOU talking about? (Score:3, Interesting)
Did the street price of booze go up or down during Prohibition? I'm betting up.
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Purity is really the wrong term. What has gone up is strength, because a stronger product packs more value into a smuggled pound. I don't know what happened to prices during prohibition, but Prohibition definitively changed the nature from a land of beer drinkers into a cocktail party nation.
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I would *love* to see the logic behind that one. I'm sure you have no citation because it doesn't make any sense.
http://www.ondcp.gov/publications/price_purity/fig1_38.pdf [ondcp.gov]
From 1981-2003, the general trend has been lower prices and higher purity.
In the interest of full disclosure, price/purity has been recently been trending in the opposite direction.
Did the street price of booze go up or down during Prohibition? I'm betting up.
Sigh.
Prohibition lasted 13 years and immediately sparked a running battle between police and moonshiners/bootleggers.
The alcohol industry was then quickly taken over by organized crime.
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/file.aspx?Guid=cf0541b8-adda-4c54-ab20-f72fe6f9a3aa [hawaiireporter.com]
Summ
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Prices are certainly higher though, I don't know where the GP came up with that one. The fact that it is controlled and not availible though other sources or comoditized is why its smuggled it. The deals can charge almost whatever they want to.
Re:WTF is this guy talking about? (Score:4, Interesting)
And whoever decided to call tenager who were thinking of copying music pirates, sould realise 2 thing:
1) You cant copy a bar of gold only take it, so the analogy is as fundamentally flawed as all those Wifi analogies!
2) Pirates are cool
Infact who ever made pirates of the carabian really shot themselves in the foot with regards to piracy "Come watch our film, because pirates are cool. NOOO! dont copy it pirates are bad!"
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Really, lower prices? You don't think that drugs produced by private enterprise or even the gov't would be cheaper? You don't think that if Bayer produced drugs like they produced aspirin that they'd be cheaper?
What is your reasoning here?
who's paying the tribute? (Score:1, Offtopic)
I didn't agree with TFA... (Score:1)
Credit card fraud? Bah (Score:2, Insightful)
His analogy works far better when talking about Net Neutrality. You could say that ISPs are charging tribute based on packet type. The closest you could get is if a foreign country started blocking traffic to Amazon, or if say
At this point, they are just trying to piss me off (Score:2)
The only reason I can imagine for the US government to discourage or jail our millions of ambitious hackers instead of enlisting them is that they don't want the holes found. Either that or arrogance and stupidity on such a massive scale that I can't actually picture it.
Hmm, but then it is the US government we're talking about. Never mind.
This game sucks.
Shhh! (Score:2, Funny)
As History Shows (Score:3, Informative)
Hell, lets resolve this like they did back then. Give me an unit of marines, a naval squadron, and three times as many mercenaries. I will just shoot the hackers. Sing the song be damed, we'll just shoot them in the head.
Apples and Oranges (Score:2)
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Idiotic comparison (Score:2)
Pathetic idiotic idiots soaked in their idiocy.
The concept of intellectual property exists since middle ages, when craftsmen corporations were guarding their technological secrets. That would be better, but still utterly useless train of analogy.
There is nothing comparable in the technological ease with which modern digitized intellectual property is stolen. Absolutely
BooHoo, poor banks and credit companies (Score:1, Interesting)
This is a case of banks and credit companies not wanting to change their approach because it's cost prohibitive and puts their business model at risk (hmm, where else are we seeing this right now?). Welcome to an interconnected world, there's a price to pay, maybe you shouldn't have sat on your @$$ all this ti
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Cyber (Score:2)
Imperialism! (Score:1)
Piracy on the high seas (Score:1)
Why don't they learn? (Score:2)
Rudyard Kipling covered this already [newcastle.edu.au]. Why don't they learn?
Oblig. (Score:1)
This is useless drivel (Score:2)
At first intrigued by a somewhat interesting analogy (cyberspace, pirates, seas), it quick became apparent this author has no real understanding of how "cybercrime" is perpetrated. Seriously, how can we expect the US government to aggressively thwart botnets? The analogy basically falls flat on its face primarily because as a somewhat anonymous, automated and decentralized structure, it would be impossible to target the sources.
There is,however, an interesting analogy the author totally missed. There is
No,it's not.Let Leviathan try and prove its point. (Score:2)
Authorities the world over have been trying to erode everyone's privacy in communications (with alarming success) based on the claim that they could then combat precisely this type of thr
Arrr! Join me in drunken song lads! (Score:1)
We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot
Drink up me hearties, yo ho
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot
Drink up me hearties, yo ho
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me
We extort, we pilfer, we filch and sack
Drink up me hearties, yo ho
Maraud and embezzle and even high-jack
Drink up me hearties yo ho
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me
We kindle and char, inflame and ignite
Drink up me hearties, yo ho
We burn up the city, we're really a fright
Drink up me hearties, yo ho
We'
Issue with analogy (Score:1)
This title had so much potential (Score:1)
I watch too many bad movies.
umm not really.. (Score:2)
Re:Pah (Score:4, Informative)
Link in parent is malicious. Do not click.
(Honestly, dude...it's getting old...)
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Indeed. Some preliminary information regarding the hosted linked which I wouldn't know what to properly do with:
Domain Name: NOTLONG.COM
Registrar: DOTSTER, INC.
Whois Server: whois.dotster.com
Referral URL: http://www.dotster.com/ [dotster.com]
Name Server: NS.LEVEL22.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
That's just "better cannon" (Score:2)
The three mile limit was created because that was essentially the maximum range of cannon at the time: A shore battery could only hit something within that range, so that's how far the countries could claim their territory extended.
The cannon on pirate craft had an only slightly lesser range. A pirate, raiding a town, could bombard it from a couple miles out.
Modern alalogical "pirates", shouting