Cyberwar Or Moral Panic? Beware Of Ex-Politicians Screaming About Cyberthreats
from the let-it-go dept
We need to re-engineer the Internet to make attribution, geo-location, intelligence analysis and impact assessment -- who did it, from where, why and what was the result -- more manageableIn other words, we need to be able to spy on everyone. To build up this moral panic, McConnell isn't even just getting the press to write articles for him -- he's doing it himself. The Washington Post recently gave him op-ed space to ridiculously claim that the recent hack on Google showed we're "losing the cyberwar." Yet, as Singel points out, that was entirely different. It wasn't warfare, it was espionage. McConnell also played up some bogus threats, such as some old viruses and botnets that are hardly part of some dangerous "cyberwar."
Singel then goes on to connect McConnell's efforts with various other political proposals lately -- suggesting that the government is moving towards more control of the internet and more monitoring. At times, unfortunately, the piece feels like it slips a bit into conspiracy theory territory -- but McConnell's efforts certainly appear questionable. He's pushing a bogus "threat" and he works for a company that could profit tremendously from any "response" to such a threat. That seems like a massive conflict of interest that a lot of people are ignoring.