Today the Heartland Institute is publishing my policy brief, U.S. Cybersecurity Policy: Problems and Principles, which examines the proper role of government in defending U.S. citizens, organizations and infrastructure from cyberattacks, that is, criminal theft, vandalism or outright death and destruction through the use of global interconnected computer networks.
The hype around the idea of cyberterrorism and cybercrime is fast reaching a point where any skepticism risks being shouted down as willful ignorance of the scope of the problem. So let’s begin by admitting that cybersecurity is a genuine existential challenge. Last year, in what is believed to be the most damaging cyberattack against U.S. interests to date, a large-scale hack of some 30,000 Saudi Arabia-based ARAMCO personal computers erased all data on their hard drives. A militant Islamic group called the Sword of Justice took credit, although U.S. Defense Department analysts believe the government of Iran provided support.
This year, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have had computer systems hacked, allegedly by agents of the Chinese government looking for information on the newspapers’ China sources. In February, the loose-knit hacker group Anonymous claimed credit for a series of hacks of the Federal Reserve Bank, Bank of America, and American Express, targeting documents about salaries and corporate financial policies in an effort to embarrass the institutions. Meanwhile, organized crime rings are testing cybersecurity at banks, universities, government organizations and any other enterprise that maintains databases containing names, addresses, social security and credit card numbers of millions of Americans.
These and other reports, aided by popular entertainment that often depicts social breakdown in the face of massive cyberattack, have the White House and Congress scrambling to “do something.” This year alone has seen Congressional proposals such as Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), the Cybersecurity Act and a Presidential Executive Order all aimed at cybersecurity. Common to all three is a drastic increase the authority and control the federal government would have over the Internet and the information that resides in it should there be any vaguely defined attack on any vaguely defined critical U.S. information assets.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.