Another buzzword at the conference is Active Defense. Introduced by Francis deSouza in his keynote on day 1, it is based on the idea that wars are not only won by defending, but also by attacking and eliminating threats. The concept is off course controversial and the legal, technical and ethical challenges have been raised by a number of latter speakers.
This morning, Josh Corman raised the idea of resurrecting Letters of Marque as a means of regulating active defense. I am not convinced that this approach will solve the legal and ethical challenges.
Letters of Marque, were granted by European monarchs to sanction specific pirates and allow them to carry out their piracy (usually as long as it was not in their backyard). Effectively, it was state sanctioned criminals; and the idea to enable Letters of Marque for cyber attacks will open a Pandora's box.
No comments:
Post a Comment