Congress Halts New Cyber-Command Due To Boring Privacy Concerns
The Pentagon is attempting to merge the nation’s offensive and defensive cyberwarfare units into a single program, housed at the NSA under the Pentagon’s Strategic Command.
Sounds good, right? Well, it’s not that simple, which is why Congress is holding up the program, which was to launch on October 1st. The hold-up is due to some surprisingly basic questions, as outlined by the Washington Post this morning:
When do offensive activities in cyberspace become acts of war? How far can the Pentagon go to defend its own networks? And what kind of relationship will the command have to the National Security Agency?
These are all really good points. When does hacking into China’s spynet go from covert due diligence to an act of aggression? Should the Pentagon tap every existing gateway into the country to protect us from cyber-attack, even though that’d involve a massive infringement on private internet carriers? And can we trust the NSA, who ran Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, to not use its newfound powers to destroy our privacy?
Many of these questions will be answered down the road, after the command is launched, and perhaps some won’t be answered for years, defense officials said.
Dammit, Pentagon, I want answers now!
Source: Washington Post
