the coming cyberwar...

haftofthespear has a brief post that mentions that general Petraeus mentioned the war of ideals agaisnt the "terrorists" in cyberspace. i'll just borrow the quote:

"Finally, in recognition of the fact that this war is not only being fought on the ground in Iraq but also in cyberspace, it also notes the need to contest the enemy’s growing use of that important medium to spread extremism."

so what should we do to stem the tide of anti-american propaganda on the intertubez? absolutely nothing.

i mean, this is some really basic social engineering. idiots in the states click on phising websites all the time, enough that bank of america makes me go through an extra layer of clicking for a completely fictitious sense of security. why shouldn't the terrorists be susceptible to the same things? they obviously aren't all brilliant evil geniuses, and they're coming from parts of the world that are relatively new to the internet.

and a forum in which anonymity is integral to success (an online terrorist network, if such a thing exists) would be excedingly easy to infiltrate; just have a couple agents or whatever read some of the numerous studies on establishing identity on anonymous online forums (those are fun studies by the way, though i don't have a link to one).

if anything, the US should be working to foster and expand online terrorists networks with the goal of infiltrating them, not suppressing them.

oh and for god sakes, log everything! hell have France log everything, so if we do find something, no one can accuse us of fabricating stuff. our international credit isnt exactly high right now...

i mean, this is basic stuff. its outrageous if we aren't doing this already. my advice to the policy/war makers; stay out of the tech you'll just muck it up. stick with basic policework, it will be much more effective anyway.

hell we should even tell the terrorists we're doing this, so they can all turn on each other.


and at no risk! if an agent is found out, who cares? he's sitting in his home outside NYC or DC or whereever!

i'd much rather my tax money go to something like this than Petraeus trying to figure out how to censor international content without pissing off everyone in the whole world


as for them attacking us, we need to secure our virtual assests anyway.