The Corbett Report | July 18, 2009
James Corbett
Government sources immediately began blaming North Korea for the recent cyberterror attacks on South Korea and the U.S., despite having no evidence to back up those claims. Now, an examination of the evidence by independent computer experts show that the attack seems to have been coordinated from the UK. The hysterical media coverage in the attack's wake, however, echoing the government line that it was likely the work of North Korea, served to cement in the minds of many that this was an act of cyberwarfare.
The idea that this surprisingly unsophisticated attack could have come from a well-organized, hostile state or terrorist group comes as a blessing in disguise to those groups, agencies and advisors who have been calling for greater and greater federal snooping powers in the name of stopping a "cyber 9/11" from happening.
The "cyber 9/11" meme stretches back almost to 9/11 itself. Back in 2003, Mike McConnell, the ex-director of the National Security Agency (NSA), was fearmongering over the possibility of a cyber attack "equivalent to the attack on the World Trade Center" if a new institution were not created to oversee cyber security. Since then, report after report has continued to use the horror of 9/11 as a way of raising public hysteria over "cyber terrorism," a subject more often associated with juvenile hackers and lone misfits than radical terrorist organizations.
The real reason behind the invocation of 9/11 in the context of "cyber terror" was revealed last year by Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig. He told a technology conference that former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke admits there is a cyber equivalent of the constitution-destroying Patriot Act ready to be rubber stamped into law; all it requires is a "cyber 9/11" to make such legislation politically viable. In effect, the cyber security establishment—the advisors, agents and experts in the newly-minted multi-billion dollar cyber security industry—are waiting for a spectacular cyber terrorist attack to go ahead with plans for 'identity management' schemes like fingerprinting for internet access which would put an end to the free Internet as we have known it.
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