The significance of the Obama offensive-cyber-war directive

[Catherina]

Glenn Greenwald ?@ggreenwald 18m

.@Digby56 explains the significance of the Obama offensive-cyber-war directive we reported & published last week http://digbysblog.blogspot.com.br/2013/06/the-militarized-internet.html …

The militarized internet

by digby

If twitter is any gauge, a lot of people think this article in Wired about General Keith Alexander is just all kinds of kewl:

General Keith Alexander, a man few even in Washington would likely recognize. Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy. A four-star Army general, his authority extends across three domains: He is director of the world’s largest intelligence service, the National Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the US Cyber Command. As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over the Navy’s 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army.

Alexander runs the nation’s cyberwar efforts, an empire he has built over the past eight years by insisting that the US’s inherent vulnerability to digital attacks requires him to amass more and more authority over the data zipping around the globe. In his telling, the threat is so mind-bogglingly huge that the nation has little option but to eventually put the entire civilian Internet under his protection, requiring tweets and emails to pass through his filters, and putting the kill switch under the government’s forefinger. “What we see is an increasing level of activity on the networks,” he said at a recent security conference in Canada. “I am concerned that this is going to break a threshold where the private sector can no longer handle it and the government is going to have to step in.”

...

And he and his cyberwarriors have already launched their first attack. The cyberweapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid-2000s. The first known piece of malware designed to destroy physical equipment, Stuxnet was aimed at Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz. By surreptitiously taking control of an industrial control link known as a Scada (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system, the sophisticated worm was able to damage about a thousand centrifuges used to enrich nuclear material. The success of this sabotage came to light only in June 2010, when the malware spread to outside computers. It was spotted by independent security researchers, who identified telltale signs that the worm was the work of thousands of hours of professional development. Despite headlines around the globe, officials in Washington have never openly acknowledged that the US was behind the attack. It wasn’t until 2012 that anonymous sources within the Obama administration took credit for it in interviews with The New York Times.

...

I don't suppose the American public have any business knowing if their government is launching such attacks. Why would we? What could possibly go wrong?

Inside the government, the general is regarded with a mixture of respect and fear, not unlike J. Edgar Hoover, another security figure whose tenure spanned multiple presidencies. “We jokingly referred to him as Emperor Alexander—with good cause, because whatever Keith wants, Keith gets,” says one former senior CIA official who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. “We would sit back literally in awe of what he was able to get from Congress, from the White House, and at the expense of everybody else.”

...

When it comes to cyber issues, I'm afraid we are seeing a confluence of commerce and security that everyone should stop and think about for a minute. How are these people defining the "national interest" and on whose behalf are they planning to launch cyberwar? What are the consequences of doing such a thing and who decides that it must be done?

And what do we think about paying huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to contractors like this?

...

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com.br/2013/06/the-militarized-internet.html

Note:
Intel budget for 2010 was $80.1 Billion - http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/28/nation/la-na-intel-budget-20101029

Related threads:
70% of the $80+ billion intel budget goes 2 private contractors not bound by constitutional amendmts: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023010041

Edward Snowden and Washington's revolving-door culture /Who's running the drug war? - http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023008444

Edward Snowden and the Real Issues (by Christopher H. Pyle): http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023012293