Cybersecurity in October 2010, Wikileaks, an International

¶ … Cybersecurity

In October 2010, Wikileaks, an international organization that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media ("leaks") by anonymous sources, released "the Iraq War Logs," almost 400,000 documents which allowed major media outlets to map every death that took place in Iraq or Iran during the recent conflict. In November 2010, Wikileaks, released U.S. State Department diplomatic cables, creating an international scandal. The recent media coverage of these events and allegations against Wikileaks alleged director, Julian Assange, have brought forth important questions about cybersecurity on both a national and an individual level. Can legislative action adequately protect American individuals from the dangers of the changing nature of media? Should the government be charged with protecting individuals' cybersecurity? On one hand, the role of the government is to protect its citizens against threat and the threat of cyber-attack looms large against its citizen; on the other hand, this new danger reflects the changing world in which we live, with its increasing emphasis on the individual, and this reflects a growing obligation on the individual to protect him or herself.

According to a 2005 report in the CQ Researcher, nearly 10 million consumers are affected annually by lost or stolen data, costing the U.S. economy $53 billion (Katel). This warrants government action. Some would argue that it is the government's responsibility to protect its citizens, including their private property. Parallel to punishing a thief grabbing someone's purse and using her credit cards, laws against cybertheft can serve as a deterrent, discouraging other potential thieves from taking the same action.

Only the government, with its ability to organize and regulate multiple industries simultaneously, has the scope to protect us. This type of attack, spanning international boundaries, also deserves international intervention, the responsibility of the federal government. Protecting the American consumer warrants new legislation and coordinated action.

Though attacks on the national or international infrastructure seem terrifying, much more likely to affect an individual are attacks on their personal information or a company they patronize. "Eighty four percent of data breaches involved credit card information, and about one third involved personal information" (Marshall 173). This type of breach can feel personally invasive and embarrassing and can involve a tremendous amount of time and energy in returning one's personal credit to normal.

With the government's help in enforcement and creating appropriate oversight bodies, it is ultimately the individual's responsibility to protect him or herself. Putting all the responsibility in the hands' of the government or governments is shortsighted. Consumers could take better steps to protect themselves against hackers and simply do not. All the government regulation in the world will not help if people continue to act in unsafe ways. While a lawless society would also be inadvisable, this is substantively different from the gravity of a national attack. National resources should be devoted to regulating industry, not punishing cybercriminals.

Secondly, the U.S. government does not have adequate resources to protect its citizens. As cited in the CQ Researcher, the White House's own "Cyberspace Policy Review" concluded that, "The federal government is not organized to address this growing problem effectively now or in the future. Responsibilities for cybersecurity are distributed across a wide array of federal departments and agencies, many with overlapping authorities, and none with sufficient decision authority to direct actions that deal with often conflicting issues in a consistent way" (Marshall 173). The government's own size and scope, the very thing that one might argue lends it its responsibility to act, prevents it from effective action in such a large, diffuse problem. Large, unwieldy powers are not the quickest to learn how to deal with new technologies and new realities. A number of world powers, including the United States, are not even equipped to protect their own governments. "Also in January, investigators revealed that hackers in Europe and China had gained access to computers at more than 2,400 companies and government agencies in 196 countries -- mainly Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Turkey and the United States" (Marshall 171).

Finally, the type of world that we see developing is one without the kind of national boundaries that would allow for national consumer protection. Increasingly, the world that consumers participate in is global. National taxes are evaded by moving a company across national boundaries. This has even coined a new term, cybercitizen, to describe the numerous new inhabits of cyberspace, a country not constrained by the borders or boundaries of traditional nationhood. Just like traditional citizens, the term cybercitizen comes with responsibilities, not only rights, and one of those responsibilities must be to security.

Reflecting this new reality, these cyberattacks also occur without regard to political boundaries, or perhaps with strategic crossing of these boundaries. "In addition, national borders mean little or nothing when it comes to cyberattacks, and, unlike a military attack, determining the source of an attack can be difficult, making a response problematic" (Marshall 172). Both the threat itself and the weaknesses it exploit are diffuse, spread out, not concentrated in one place. The security threat from the Internet has to do with the very nature of the Internet, a global system of interconnecting computers. No one person or government owns the Internet, and no one person or government can regulate it. The recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt begin to show how the Internet can change how citizens act in government and freedom and democracy. Most recently, non-Egyptian citizens became part of the revolution through Twitter, Facebook, and numerous web sites, as well as in-person action. The international community came to the support of the Egyptian people -- and in doing so, began to deface the calcified notion of what it means to be a citizen of only one country, having only one identity. The exchange of ideas perpetuated by the Internet means new members for an international democracy.