Cyberwar Schmyberwar
Are you sick of all the current bombard of Cyberwar press releases yet? Hardly a day goes past where we don’t see the word pop up in IT News, and this morning it’s managed to weasel press inches in the nations number one gossip rag, Sydney Morning Herald.
In a Cyberwar, you’re on your own! it proclaims. A senior bureaucrat has warned it says. Have you ever read such a complete load of old cobblers? I have no idea who’s pushing this particular wheel barrow, but it’s an alarmist agenda and these guys have to stop smoking whatever they are on.
There isn’t any Cyberwar, lets just get that on the table to start. Never has been one. Nobody ever died defending a PC from a virus. No land has ever been taken by any Cyber-anything or Cyber-anybody. Sure, there are viruses out there that are very annoying. Sure, Stuxnet is amazing piece of technology that attacks SCADA systems in the real world.
But since when is that a war? War is a bloody spectacle where people die. When they use the word “war” in this context it’s like when they say it’s a “war” on poverty, or “war” on drugs, or “war” on terror, or “war” on crime. You get the idea. In other words, not a war at all. Jjust people getting angry about land rights for gay whales and trying to get some press inches for their cause.
What we’re really talking about here is called crime. When Nigerian’s defraud you of money it’s a crime. When spammers hijack your PC to send their spam it’s a crime. When the competition lifts documents from your fileserver it’s a crime. What it is not - is a war.
If we were cynical we might ask ourselves whose behind this particular campaign. Who would want to pretend that crime is a war? We might ask ourselves why governments think helping “protect” means snooping our emails, watching us with CCTV cameras and controlling what we allowed to read on the internet. And is anyone so naive as to think that if there
Just to be clear then. There is no war and probably never could be. It’s simply an abuse of the word war.
What there is, is a play by western governments to justify greater levels of spying on civilian populations. What there is, is an attack on liberty and freedom of people. Fear can be a weapon if you let it be.
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