Topic: The U.S. Election Hacks, Cybersecurity, and International Law (Read 250 times)

We are talking about cyber warfare here, if I am not mistaken.
Although US gov does a huge amount of propaganda, that is the least of the worries when you talk about cyber warfare, since you can always choose not to believe something.

The problem with any type of warfare is that civilians often do not have a choice in it. They just have to worry to survive it.
US govnt, as well as other superpower's governments, regularly gets involved in hacking, destroying, spying of civilians as well as other governments, including it's allies.

There is no comprehensive list about these things, they are top secret until some government employee leaks them.
They include cyber warfare that is illegal by International law, as well as national law inside that country.

They are all criminals. A superpower can not exist if they don't break the law to stay at the top.
It is a jungle, not a superhero movie. The fact that people believe that there are heroes in this story is the work of that propaganda, the rest is just blatant warfare and human rights abuse.

I can't give you a name of those who don't, but I can give you a name of those who do:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_Internet_propaganda

The United States has two known propoganda campaigns, both which I think are justified:

1:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Strategic_Counterterrorism_Communications

In this campaign, they specifically trolled ISIS recruiters.

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice

This project, I was a lot more skeptical of. Reading the details, anyone could utilize that setup for nefarious reasons. To be honest, I think we overpaid a tiny bit for it. Then again, looking at the price of a new forum, this is nothing.

>USCC commander David Petraeus, in his congressional testimony, stated that Operation Earnest Voice would "reach [a country's] regional audiences through traditional media, as well as via Web sites and regional public-affairs blogging," as an effort to "counter extremist ideology and propaganda".

I was alright with this purpose of the operation, counter extremist ideology and false information.

>However, his successor, James Mattis, altered the program to have "regional blogging" fall under general USCC public-affairs activity. On how they would operate on these blogs, Petraeus explained: "We bring out the moderate voices. We amplify those. And in more detail, we detect and we flag if there is adversary, hostile, corrosive content in some open-source Web forum, [and] we engage with the Web administrators to show that this violates Web site provider policies.

This is where they took something that could have been used for good and now just turned it into a political breading ground.




You see, this is where you're wrong. You have the right to choose your faction. Looking at what each faction does, you can clearly see a picture of villainy and heroics.


The League of Nations was exactly the same near this time in the 20th century. A country kills a person in a foreign land and "tsk, tsk, shame on you". It's the same shit as then.

The only difference now in the 21st century is the soldiers are behind the keyboards.

Name me a superpower that isn't...

Every big country does this, don't think that US doesn't. They freaking invented it.
There are no good and bad guys here, those are just factions.

International law goes both ways. Only time when International law is useful is if you are exempt from it while others aren't.
Don't worry, International law never meant sh*t. It is just an excuse for veto powers to do what they want.

Country A goes in legal warfare with country B. Veto power steps in, makes a deal with one side, declares the war on other without being attacked first.
Veto power in UN is charged with illegal warfare for attacking a country without the need to defend itself, veto power vetoes any action to be taken against it in order to punish it for it's crime.

Welcome to 21st century...

There are a few thing that come to mind regarding this:

1 - The only defence against manipulation is your own education and critical thinking. The best start is to avoid reading things as they are written and start thinking what is the intention of the person who writes them.

2 - There is a shock effect in communication. The first time it impacts you, the second time ... it doesn´t.

3 - Knowing that they are trying to manipulate you through the media should make you much less prone to be manipulated. e.g. if you know I am going to punch you, you won´t close your eyes.

https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3607&context=facpub


It's obvious Russia is engaging in cyber warfare. What do we do? Engage in more warfare online? Turing forums into battlegrounds?

>The Obama administration wanted international law and cybernorms to support internet freedom. However, Freedom House concluded in 2016 that internet freedom had declined for six consecutive years.