[governance] Cyber Security 2011

[Milton L Mueller]

> These reports were on the BBC this morning, in case they are any help.
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12371056  William Hague: UK is under cyber-attack

Typical of the distorted dialogue around this issue, this article screams "UK is under cyberattack!!!" and when you read the details you see a bunch of uncoordinated routine problems, such as viruses embedded in attachments, and some espionage probes, many of which were successfully blocked. And then we have the mother of all nonsequiturs: "Mr Hague said these kinds of cyber-threats called for a "global response", with like-minded countries agreeing standards of behaviour on the internet." So, to translate this into meatspace terms, the fact that there were and probably still are Russian, Israeli, Syrian (and maybe even a few American) spies in the UK required a "global response" too. And of course govts will pass high-sounding resolutions not to do that, and of course they will continue to do it if they can get useful intelligence from it and get away with it. My problem with all this is that whenever UK and US govts start talking cybersecurity it is their own citizens' freedom and privacy they start chipping away at, not those of other govts.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20111031/2ab54264/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t