Today, NATO confirmed that it’s not just the French who are ridiculous and out of touch when it comes to the Internet by issuing a report about cyberterrorism stating that a bunch of bored teenagers and a website that publishes secret documents are terrorists.
All this got started, of course, because of Wikileaks. For obvious reasons, state governments are not really fans of websites getting access to and releasing sensitive materials, as it can cause problems on the international stage by…well, mostly by revealing governmental screwups and gossip. For all the hoorah about Wikileaks, what it’s done mostly is embarrass people.
Then, of course, there’s Anonymous, who mostly throw hissy fits on the Internet that inconvenience people, but also, at least to NATO, fired a shot across the bow by attacking HBGary Federal, a security company that said was so going to take out Anonymous, just you watch, and got its ass handed to it. The question is whether these bored teenagers are violating Article 5, namely the rule that says if you attack one NATO nation, you attack them all. Does that apply to cyberattacks?
There is a reasonable discussion here, about transparency versus the need of certain elements of a government to act in concert. What NATO is worried about, on some level, is the names and addresses of their spies being put on the Internet.
Unfortunately, we rocket right past into that conversation and into the ridiculous by having the author of this report say that “We’re going to, like, totally infiltrate Anonymous and shut them down” and essentially saying that we should consider the nuclear option for DDoS attacks. It’s like your grandpa threatening to find the guy who wrote “fag” on his YouTube video and beat him up.
Oh, it also includes this gem: “Transparency cannot exist without control.” T-shirt in three…two…one…