*Well, he's telling the truth here, and then he's gonna go back to Switzerland and find the joint just swarming with defense contractors and war profiteers. Hey, if ruining civilization is good for Exxon-Mobil, it's gonna be great for the computer industry.
International cyberwar would be "worse than a tsunami" and should be averted by a global cybersecurity peace treaty, according to the head of the International Telecommunications Union. (((Yeah, I wanna see an anonymous botnet sign an "international" peace treaty. Wouldn't that be awesome?)))
Hamadoun Touré, who has been secretary-general of the UN agency since 1999 and is up for reelection in a few weeks' time, has targeted cybersecurity issues in his electoral pledges. Speaking at a London roundtable on Thursday, he said he had proposed such a treaty this year, but it had met "a lot of resistance" from industrialised nations.
"My dream, I said in Davos this year, is that I would like to have a cyber peace treaty," Touré said. "Some people think it's a sin. People who think they are secure don't want anyone else to talk about it. I say there is no [online] superpower." (((I'd love to see Davos sign a treaty. Why do global heavies like this guy even SHOW UP at "Davos?" Davos isn't any kind of legitimated global organization; Davos is a picnic for rich people invented by a Swiss college professor.)))
"We need to avoid a cyberwar starting. After the cases of Estonia and Georgia, you need to realise how fragile the world is becoming. A cyberwar will be worse than a tsunami — we have to avoid it," he added. (((If we could profit by tsunamis, we'd have a tsunami every week.)))
In 2007, Estonia suffered a series of denial-of-service attacks, which followed its relocation of a statue deemed sensitive to the Russians. Although there were suggestions that the Russian government itself was behind the attacks, which shut down banking systems and also targeted government systems, others believe they were the work of an online flashmob of disgruntled individuals. Georgia's web infrastructure was knocked out in 2008, coinciding with a physical invasion by Russian forces. ((("The New Hundred Years' War," or, "Before and After Westphalia." "We threw a war on terror and terror became our business model." I could go on. And I will. Because I'll probably have to.)))
The United States set up the US Cyber Command organisation in 2009, in a bid to boost the country's offensive capabilities so it can destroy other countries' electronic infrastructure. The risks associated with cyberattacks are steadily increasing, as countries' energy and utility infrastructures become increasingly hooked up to the internet. (((I should worry about a clear-and-present danger like this, but I was too busy throwing a megaton of planet-wrecking coal on the barbecue.)))
Refusing to name specific countries but hinting that "industrialised countries think they are more protected", Touré pointed out that cyberspace was borderless and criminals can use any territory to perpetrate crimes.
"We're in a new world order today," the Malian head of the UN agency added. "When I see Google and China fight — not China and the US, but a company and a country — it's a new world order. Something new is happening around us: what do we do about it?" (((How about replacing the "United Nations" with the Davos Forum? Not that anyone would notice the difference.)))
Touré conceded that the idea of a cyber peace treaty is an ideal, but said: "I believe that if you want excellence, you aim for perfection." (((Or, you could just go back and read a William Gibson novel from the early 1980s, and you could realize, "Hey wow, in this far-out twenty-first cyberspace world, there are, like, no nations left. Just zaibatsus, cops, and robbers.")))
The ITU head said he would settle for a "common code of conduct against cybercrime" in which each country would commit to making sure its citizens can get connected to the internet, rather than deny them access. The code would also call on countries to protect citizens against criminals and include a pledge to not harbour terrorists or criminals in their territory. It would also require nations to commit to not attacking another country first. (((Y'know, they could do that tomorrow and then just carry out a proxy cyberwar by employing plausibly deniable non-state entities, like everybody already does. So, maybe it's a good idea. I mean, a global treaty would look really civilized.)))
One reason international cooperation on cybersecurity and cybercrime issues is "very tricky" is that "security has to do with content, and in content issues there are many ethical issues", according to Touré. (((Like – should I even belong to a mafia, a terrorist group, or an intelligence agency in the first place? Would that be "ethical?" Hey wait – are those COMPUTERS?! Yahoo! Gimme!)))
"Even the definition of a crime can be different between countries or religions," he said. "Pornography in one country is a crime; in another it's freedom of behaviour."
(((Yeah, these ethical issues can be quite the paralytic conundrum. For instance, imagine you're a devout Pakistani Shi'ite. And you're out on a street-march in support of Palestine. And then a devout Pakistani Sunni ignites his own flesh and kills and wounds about 200 of your co-religionists, while you're both busy being all pro-Palestinian. Ethically speaking, would it occur to you to surmise: "Y'know, maybe this devout Moslem thing just isn't working out for us! Maybe we shoulda been anti-Palestinian, and even pro-Israeli, all along! After all, those Israelis may be pretty ferocious, but unlike the devoutly explosive guys next door here, at least they don't blow THEMSELVES up! Maybe the ethical behavior of other religions, and even of secular states, is ethically superior to our own behavior, given that monstrous crimes of murder-suicide are being committed among us almost every day. I mean, even pornographic women in bikinis are less ethically repulsive than our situation." Would you ever reason in this manner? Heck no, man. Can't ethically go there. Wouldn't ethically dream of it. Way too ethically complicated.)))
