[iwar] [fc:U.S..On.Verge.Of.'Electronic.Martial.Law'.-.Researcher]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-15 17:35:17
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U.S. On Verge Of 'Electronic Martial Law' - Researcher 
By Kevin Featherly, Newsbytes, 10/15/2001
<a href="http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171130.html">http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171130.html>

With anti-terrorism legislation nearing passage that expands the power
of wiretaps to all forms of telecommunications, the U.S. appears to be
just steps away from electronic martial law. 
That, at least, is the view of Heidi Brush of the University of Illinois
At Champaign-Urbana, who presented a paper on "electronic jihad"
Saturday in Minneapolis, during Internet Research 2.0, the second annual
conference of the Association of Internet Researchers. 
"Just as civil liberties are taken and given away in the name of
national security, and as fighter jets fly over major metropolitan
areas, one begins to wonder," Brush said. "In a time of permanent war,
can cyberspace also become subject to martial law? 
"Once the Internet is defined as a potential battleground, or as a haven
for suspected terrorists, will the U.S. insist on a loss of privacy
online in the name of national security?" Brush asked. "Does Operation
Noble Eagle enable the inauguration of an era of electronic martial
law?" 
Fielding questions from the audience after her presentation, Brush
answered her own question. "I think so," she said. "I definitely think
there's more of a security focus. ... The Internet has always had
elements of the military, but now I think it's become quite express." 
Brush, a doctoral candidate at UICU's Institute of Communications
Research, said that with the widespread success of the Internet, the
world has reached a stage in which "war knows no boundaries." Stable
nations now face the prospect of no longer dealing with enemy nations,
but mere enemy "cells." These, Brush said, can "take up residence,
achieve opaque agendas, mutate and move on as nomads, traveling without
leaving a trace." 
The current fight by the U.S. against terrorists in Afghanistan points
directly to the problem, Brush said. While the administration refers to
the Al Queda network as "the base," in fact the network exists in many
nations and depends on no traditional hierarchy of command. In other
words, like the Internet itself, it has no base. 
"Their trails weave through mountain caves and tunnels, and through ...
virtual financial data in an ever-morphing market," Brush said. She
pointed out that accused terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and Al
Queda gained brief notoriety prior to the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S.
Last spring, word emerged that Al Queda might be relying on a
quasi-encryption technology called "steganography," which is more akin
to hiding "Easter eggs" on a Web page than genuine encryption. It was at
that point, Brush said, that she proposed an Internet Research 2.0 panel
on the subject. 
But the notion of a cyber-conflict is not new, Brush said. 
In 1993, writers John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt published "Cyberwar Is
Coming!" for the RAND policy think tank. In the article, sometimes cited
as a key reference point for the U.S. response to cyber-terrorism, the
authors described what they called "Net war." They compared it to a
chess game in which one opponent sees the whole board, while the other
see only his own pieces. The blinded opponent will always lose, the
authors said, even if given additional and more powerful pieces in the
first place. 
"Net war refers to information-related conflict at a grand level between
nations or societies," that article states. "It means trying to disrupt
or damage what a target population knows or thinks it knows about itself
and the world around it. ... It may involve diplomacy, propaganda and
psychological campaigns, political and cultural subversion, deception of
or interference with local media, infiltration of computer networks and
databases, and efforts to promote dissident or opposition movements
across computer networks." 
One of the most successful "Net war" struggles has been essentially
nonviolent, Brush said. It involves the Zapatista movement in the
Chiapas section of Mexico, a grassroots effort to secure work and to
educate the region's indigenous people, while establishing more
participatory democracy in the region. 
"Radical political organizations such as the Zapatistas have already
effectively demonstrated what small, non-hierarchical webs and cells can
accomplish with only a laptop and an Internet connection," she said. "Of
course, the Zapatistas wage a non-violent guerilla insurrection in the
spirit of electronic civil disobedience." 
With the ascent of bin Laden and other violent, well-networked terrorist
cells, the prospects of Net war become decidedly violent, Brush said. 
This was anticipated, too, in 1998, when the Center for Strategic and
International Studies released a report entitled "Cybercrime,
Cyberterrorism, Cyber-warfare: Alerting An Electronic Waterloo," Brush
noted. 
"The report is peppered with hyperbole, littered with sensationalism and
frequently invokes the names Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein as
possible Net war enemies, or at least models for potential
cyber-terrorist groups," she said. 
However, that paper also declares: "America's most wanted trans-national
terrorist, Osama bin Laden, uses laptops with satellite uplinks and
heavily encrypted messages to (communicate) across national borders with
his global underground network." 
There are those, of course, who encourage such things. For instance, the
Critical Art Ensemble, an anarchist group, has proved influential,
particularly over the Zapatista movement, Brush said. In its work, "The
Electronic Disturbance," the Critical Art Ensemble paints a picture of
cyber-resistance that looks a lot like the descriptions of bin Laden's
alleged network. In that work, the ensemble says, "Technology is the
foundation for the nomadic elite's ability to maintain absence, acquire
speed, and consolidate power in global systems." 
Added Brush: "The (Critical Art Ensemble) argues that capitol and power
now flow through cyberspace, therefore resistance must become electronic
resistance." 
Brush's presentation gave no suggestions for countering Net war. It was,
however, peppered with light criticisms of the Bush administration's
approach to the task of fighting on the electronic stage. The online
jihad already has already resulted in an "intensification of the
security state," rather than a strategic or conceptual reorganization of
communications security, she said. And she said Bush's remarks that the
terrorists are "in hiding" and that the U.S. will "smoke them out" were
"rustic," because they imply that the enemy has a fixed location when it
is at best a moving target. 
"The holes that Bush will smoke out are not the exoticized desert caves
that Bush will pummel in 24-hour air assaults," she said. "Instead, the
holes that Bush will smoke out may be such breaches of security as free
encryption devices, or private telephone calls." 
Brush's paper, "Electronic Jihad: Middle East Cyberwar and the Politics
of Encryption," which is as yet unpublished, does not reach any
conclusions about what should be done about the bin Ladens of the world.
But there were strong indications in Brush's conclusion that she thinks
the U.S. would be wrong to go too far in eliminating online civil
liberties in its efforts to rid the world of terrorism. 
"Against the unfixed and even viral movements of Al Queda, the U.S. and
its numerous three-letter agencies seek to locate an enemy without
coordinates, and to fix in its targets messages that cannot be seen,"
she said. "The messages could be anywhere - on your Web site and in my
inbox. Is there nowhere left to hide?" 
The full text of Arquilla and Rondfelt's Rand white paper, "Cyberwar Is
Coming!" can be read online at
<a href="http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR880/MR880.ch2.pdf">http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR880/MR880.ch2.pdf> . 
More information on the Association of Internet Researchers can be found
at http://aoir.org/

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