Fyi. When do invasion your territories become an act of war?
WHEN DO HARASSMENT AND PREVENTION OF YOUR FISHER FOLKS FROM MAKING A LIVING IN YOUR OWN TERRITORIES BECOME AN ACT OF WAR?
Now....When
will the idiots in Malacanang realize that a WAR HAS ALREADY BEEN GOING
ON AND ITS PEOPLE ARE ALREADY SUFFERING, ITS MARITIME PATRIMONY
DESTROYED AND LOOTED, AND THE FUTURE OF THE NATION IS AT STAKE?
National Security
When Does a Hack Become an Act of War?
Large-scale cyberattacks have in recent years become effective national-security weapons
The headquarters of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in Washington, D.C. ENLARGE
The headquarters of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in Washington, D.C. Photo: Bloomberg News
By Damian Paletta
June 13, 2015 6:00 a.m. ET
128 COMMENTS
WASHINGTON—A
tremendous number of personnel records—including some quite personal
records—have likely been stolen by computer hackers. The White House
won’t say who did it, but a number of U.S. officials and even some
lawmakers have said all signs point to China.
The
Chinese government has denied it, but the staggering haul of records
could amount to one of the biggest feats of espionage in decades.
Right
now, the White House and Congress are trying to ascertain what was
stolen and how to protect people whose identifies have been compromised,
not to mention their “foreign contacts” that are listed on the security
clearance forms that could now be on the hard drives of the hackers.
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But
very soon a much different question will be asked in Washington: If the
White House finds out who stole the information, what will President
Barack Obama do about it?
Even though large-scale cyberattacks have been used for
more than a decade, they have only become extremely effective national-security weapons in the past few years.
In
December, the White House accused North Korea of stealing and
destroying a large amount of records from Sony Pictures Entertainment.
President Barack Obama called it “cyber vandalism,” angering some of his
critics who wanted the U.S. government to retaliate.
But cyberattacks by nation-states are a relatively new phenomenon, in which there isn’t a road map of deterrents and responses.
Defense
Secretary Ash Carter and National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael
Rogers have said in recent weeks that U.S. policy makers need to decide
how they are going to respond to cyberattacks as countries become more
brazen in their attempts.
“What
we’ve seen in the last six to nine months in general...trends are going
in the wrong direction,” Adm. Rogers said in January. “Doing more of
the same and expecting different results, my military experience tells
me, is not a particularly effective strategy.”
Mr.
Carter told Congress in February that “we need to improve our abilities
to respond. And those responses can be in cyberspace or in other ways,
but certainly they should include the option to respond in cyberspace.”
But
is there a difference between stealing security clearance records and
stealing nuclear-launch codes? What about a computer attack that shuts
down an electrical grid or freezes all financial transactions?
The
Pentagon in 2011 determined that computer sabotage coming from another
country could constitute an act of cyberwar, which could trigger a U.S.
government or military response.
So
far, the White House hasn’t revealed that anything was sabotaged as
part of the recent breach, only that data “was compromised” and likely
stolen.
The
implications could change, however, if some of the records are used to
blackmail government officials, whose mental-health records, credit
reports, and other files were exposed in the breach. And the debate
could intensify even more if anything happened to any of the “foreign
contacts” listed on page 59 of the background investigation files.
The
North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance that includes
the U.S., has tried to define what constitutes an act of cyberwarfare
but views remain split. Many believe a cyber act of war must demonstrate
a “use of force.”
A
“use of force” is somewhat easier to recognize in the traditional
military sense, but it is much harder when the weapons are computers and
malware.
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