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cyberterrorism responses............................................................................................1 impact defense: general..............................................................................................2 impAct defense: military systems................................................................................6 impact defense: nuclear weapons...............................................................................7 impact defense: soft targets........................................................................................8 impact defense: planes.............................................................................................11 impact defense: cia infiltration..................................................................................12 source bias: their cards are hype...............................................................................13 1nc shell.................................................................................................................... 15 government reps shape perception..........................................................................18 cyberterror reps key to policy outcomes...................................................................19 reps first: method......................................................................................................20 us reps modelled.......................................................................................................21 reps of cyberterror destroy ontological difference [davis mol impact].......................22 reps of cyberterror -> bad wot..................................................................................23 reps of cyberterror -> securitization..........................................................................25 haraway scenario: cyberterror fear kills the cyborg...................................................28 technophobia bad.....................................................................................................29 cyberterror reps -> technocracy: [a/t cedes the political/habermas]....................30 word cyber-terrorism sucks: policy failure..............................................................32 alternative solves: desecuritization...........................................................................34 at fear of terror good!!..............................................................................................35 a/t securitization good:..............................................................................................37 a/t securitization good...............................................................................................39 term virus: internal link: symbolically........................................................................41 virus rhetoric -> capitalism.......................................................................................42
REAL HACKIGN HAVOC IMPOSSIBLE SIMULATIONS PROVE Green 2 The Washington Monthly. Washington: Nov 2002. Vol. 34, Iss. 11; pg. 8, 6 pgs JOSHUA GREEN is an editor of the Washington Monthly But perhaps the best indicator of what is realistic came last July when the US. Naval War College contracted with a research group to simulate a massive attack on the nation's information infrastructure. Government hackers and security analysts gathered in Newport, R.I., for a war game dubbed "Digital Pearl Harbor.' The result? The hackers failed to crash the Internet, though they did cause serious sporadic damage. But, according to a CNet.com, report, officials concluded that terrorists hoping to stage such an attack "would require a syndicate with significant resources, including $200 million, country-- level intelligence and five years of preparation time." NO CYBERTERROR EMPIRICALLY Green 2 The Washington Monthly. Washington: Nov 2002. Vol. 34, Iss. 11; pg. 8, 6 pgs JOSHUA GREEN is an editor of the Washington Monthly Despite all the media alarm about terrorists poised on the verge of cyberattack, intelligence suggests that they're doing no more than emailing and surfing for potential targets. When LTS. troops recovered al Qaeda laptops in Afghanistan, officials were surprised to find its members more technologically adept than previously believed. They discovered structural and engineering software, electronic models of a dam, and information on computerized water systems, nuclear power plants, and US. and European stadiums. But nothing suggested they were planning cyberattacks, only that they were using the Internet to communicate and coordinate physical attacks. "There doesn't seem to be any evidence that the people we know as terrorists like to do cyberterrorism," says Libicki. Indeed, in a July report to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee detailing the threats detected to critical infrastructure, the General Accounting Office noted "to date none of the traditional terrorist groups such as al Qaeda have used the Internet to launch a known assault on the US.'s infrastructure." It is much easier, and almost certainly much deadlier, to strike the old-fashioned way. Government computers have been targeted by politically minded hackers, but these attacks are hardly life threatening. They're typified by last October's penetration of a Defense Department Web site dedicated to "Operation Enduring Freedom" and, somewhat incongruously, a Web server operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. The organization responsible was called the "al Qaeda Alliance Online" and was comprised of groups with names like GForce Pakistan and the Pakistani Hackerz Club-names that connote a certain adolescent worship of hip-hop that's a clue to the participants' relative lack of menace; none turned out to have actual terrorist ties. In both cases, the attackers replaced the government sites' home pages with photos and antiAmerican text-but that's all they did. Robbed of this context, as is usually the case with reports of politically motivated cyberattacks, such manifestations are often presumed to be much more serious terrorist threats than is warranted. "When somebody defaces a Web site, it's roughly equivalent to spray painting something rude on the outside of a building," says James Lewis, director of technology policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's really just electronic graffiti."
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CYBERTERROR IMPACTS ARE A PRODUCT OF A VICIOUS HYPE CIRCLE Conway 8 School of Law and Government Dublin City University Media, Fear and the Hyperreal: The Construction of Cyberterrorism as the Ultimate Threat to Critical Infrastructures Once Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida had been fingered as the perpetrators of the 11 September 2001 attacks, a steady stream of newspaper articles began to appear suggesting that the latter were now engaged in planing a major cyberterrorist attack. So although there was no evidence available by which to measure al-Qaidas IT literacy, more and more people came to believe and fear that it was substantial. This resulted in the creation of a hyper-mediated vicious circle: the media dramatized the intelligence estimates, and the politicians in turn picked up media quotes, which they then relayed back in other media fora, and so on. Within a very short time, unsubstantiated fears had transformed into forecasts (Bendrath 2003: 63). CYBERTERROR FEARS COME FROM BUREAUCRATIC INFIGHTING FOR MONIES ITS ALL LEAKS STOHL 7 Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara Crime Law Soc Change DOI 10.1007/s10611-007-9061-9 Cyber terrorism: a clear and present danger, the sum of all fears, breaking point or patriot games? The cycles and concerns mirror the types of competition between administrations and their opposition that took place in the 1950s and 1960s with respect to nuclear weapons and the arms race. Both incumbents and challengers sought to demonstrate potential weaknesses and emerging threats and the need therefore to remain vigilant and invest in preventive measures and improved systems. What we find therefore are systematic leaks tied to the budgetary cycles of various states and systematic leaks tied to the election cycle. Governments also engage in the creation of systematic studies and blue ribbon panels, none of which are likely to report that they can guarantee that no threat exists and that it wont grow larger in the future for fear of looking weak or contributing to a state of unpreparedness (see Barnett [4]). In the cyber terrorism realm, Richard J. Clarke emerged from bureaucratic obscurity and became a media favorite when he resigned from and authored his critique of the Bush administrations handling of the terrorism threat. Clarke, who had long been acknowledged within Washington as a capable bureaucratic infighter, had for many years regularly referenced the threat of an electronic Pearl Harbor at budget time and kept the issue boiling during much of the rest of the year.7
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is no sure way of distinguishing cyberterrorism from its representations (on TV, in security literatures, as hypertext on the web). Substance and appearance are fused into one, and the reality of
the highlighted social event can be treated as both profound and super.cial. Such a degree of reality is what Baudrillard has called simulation, or the discovery of the social and its events as simulacra.13 Our exploration of the cyberterror simulacrum starts where generally the simulation begins: the media. A recent TV show on the threat of cyberterrorism to the United States as the new millennium approaches mobilizes the theme of common anxiety in an age of uncertainty. It does so to convince audiences of the reality of its sensationalistic message: the next Armageddon is upon us unless we start to organize all our necessary forces to defeat the new forms of information-based terrorism. This program, Danger on the Internet Highway: Cyberterror on the Fox News Network (narrated by John Scott, Fall 1999),14 starts by stating some basic platitudes about the imminent possibility of cyberwar: the cyber frontier is the next venue for war; cyberwarfare is taking the Internet to its most lethal level; the American supremacy in the domain of information technology is also Americas Achilles heel. These are clearly some gratuitous warnings that do not aim at explaining anything about cyberwarfare or cyberterrorism. Their point is to
manufacture fear and do so in the ashiest of fashions. In this short program (it does not last more
than 15 minutes, including one commercial break), the attention of the American public must be grabbed at all cost. And what can grab the American public better than the revelation of an impending doom coming from one of todays most familiar and user-friendly household objects: the computer. Danger on the Internet Highway thus needs to make the point (convey the fear, that is) sharply and ef.ciently: we must now look at our PC as a bomb waiting to explode. Lest you had a doubt about the veracity of this doomsday prophecy, John Scott, the main narrator, comes back to assure you, the viewer, that what you are about to witness is not science .ction! To further demonstrate the reality and urgency of the situation, the programs producers turn to John Arquilla, a US Navy Postgraduate Fellow and one of the most prominent scholars on cyber attacks and counter-cyberterrorism, whom they use as their main reference and authority on the topic.
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GDS Antonucci Cyberterrorism k REPS OF CYBERTERROR DESTROY ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE [DAVIS MOL IMPACT]
FEARS OF CYBERTERRORISM JUSTIFY FASCISM ITS A RUSE USED TO ENGINEER INDIVIDUAL CONSENT AND OBLITERATE ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE alt 5 ZG 16.2005.3 Visiting professor, department, art history and visual studies, Duke Assistant Professor, Architecture, Graduate School of architecture, planning and preservation at Columbia university Viral Load. The Fantastic Rhetorical Power of the Computer Virus in the Post-9/11 Political Landscape Ossterreichische Zeitschrift fur Geschictswissenschafte Caseyalt.com/works/alt_vl.pdf Master of Fine Arts, UCLa In many ways, the war on cyberterrorism has become the most seductive component of the Presidents larger War on Terror in that it actively enlists all patriotic Americans to serve in the effort. The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace splits its problem of threat and vulnerability into five different levels: (1) the Home User/Small Business, (2) Large Enterprises, (3) Critical Sectors/Infrastructures, (4) National Issues and Vulnerabilities, and (5) Global.36 Within such a hierarchy, the increasing awareness about cybersecurity among home and small business users is of vital importance, considering that home users and small business owners of cyber systems often start with the greatest knowledge gap about cybersecurity.37 In fact, the issue of home user cybersecurity is of such importance to the defense of the Nation that its responsibility must not be limited only to adults. With this in mind, the Department of Homeland Security has pledged to partner with the Department of Education and state and local governments to elevate the exposure of cybersecurity issues in primary and secondary schools.38 As Sarah D. Scalet warned in the title of her October 11, 2001, edition of her biweekly column on computer security, cyberterrorism is Everyones War.39 Thus, cybersecurity has become the War on Terrors equivalent to the Cold War proscription that every American family constructs a nuclear fallout shelter in its backyard. Thanks to cybersecurity, the War on Terror has become a war that we can all actively engage in from the comfort of our own homes. From an expanded perspective, the Bush administrations seemingly unjustifiable war on computer viruses and cyberterrorism is completely consistent with its larger crusade against all things ontologically challenging, including cloning, stem cell research, abortion, and same-sex marriage. Even more so than President Nixons War on Cancer of over thirty years ago, these more recent battles prey on Americans numerous fears of the unfamiliar, the uncontrollable, and the uncertain. They are all intangible moral struggles, which inspire jingoistic rhetoric without any possibility for accountability, particularly in the case of computer viruses since there currently is no reliable procedure by which to measure relative success or failure. Not that ability to ascertain progress matters. As long as new computer viruses occasionally get released on the Internet (as they inevitably will) and regardless of whether they originate from a terrorist source (as they most likely will not), the Administration will point to them as evidence of the continued need for the larger War on Terror. Whenever there is a lull in online attacks, the Administration can tout the effectiveness of their current security solutions. Either way, the political result is the same. No other outcome is possible, as they have sealed the issue within a completely closed, infinitely replicating, binary loop one that is completely identical to the kind of inescapable logical trap a virus would use to bring down a computer system.
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may be the common underlying factor upon which all security sectors are destined to converge. The link to military security is fairly straightforward with digital technologies forming the
backbone of the Revolution in Military Affairs (Cavelty 2008; Gray 1997), the securitization of Internet access in countries such as China, Singapore and Myanmar is legitimized through references to nationalcultural as well as regime security (Deibert 2002), and the intricate connections between the commercial interests in seamless digital transactions, concerns for privacy protection, and governmental calls for surveillance and data-mining throw up crucial battles between multiple actors speaking on behalf of political, private, societal and corporate security (Saco 1999).
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powerful precisely because they involve a double move out of the political realm: from the
politicized to the securitized, and from the political to the technified, and it takes an inter-disciplinary effort to asses the implications of the move, and possibly to counter it. Thus while this paper has spoken primarily to an IR audience, our wider ambition is to create a space for inter-disciplinary discussions across the fields of Computer Science, Political Science, Information Law, Philosophy, Communication, Anthropology, Visual Culture and Science Studies. As the analysis has sought to bring out, cyber security stands at the intersection of multiple disciplines and it is important that both analysis and academic communication is brought to bear upon it. The technical underpinnings of cyber security require for instance that IR scholars acquire some familiarity with the main technical methods and dilemmas and vice versa that computer scientists become more cognizant of the politicized field in which they design and how their decisions might impact the (discursively constituted) trade-offs between security, access, trust, and privacy.
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GDS Antonucci Cyberterrorism k HARAWAY SCENARIO: CYBERTERROR FEAR KILLS THE CYBORG
CYBERTERROR APOCALYPSE DESTROYS THE POLITICAL POSSIBILITIES OF THE BODIES PLAYING WITH NEW TECHNOLOGY AND IDENTITY FEAR CULTURE SHUTS DOWN NEW UTOPIAS Debrix 1 Strategies, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2001 Cyberterror and Media-Induced Fears: The Production of Emergency Culture Associate professor, department of international relations, Florida International University
Ironically, the apocalyptic scenario presented by this simulation of cyberterrorism may protect us from cyberwarfare. I suggest that these types of visual displays prevent the worlds .rst cyberwar from ever taking place, but not at all by getting the public and the government prepared to face such anticipated threats. Indeed, the simulation of cyberterrorism makes sure that the next Pearl Harbor16 will not take place by propagating a fear, virtual as it may be, that cannot be matched by reality, should such a threat ever materialize. Being conditioned to such a degree of generalized panic, any real cyberterrorist attack that does not follow the simulated scenario and produce the anticipated amount of casualties will fall short of being worthy of peoples attention and worry.17 To use one of Jean Baudrillards favorite lines, the next Pearl Harbor will not take place because it has already happened several times over. The most traumatic scenarios have already been visualized (and the program on Fox News does a good job at making the threat a visual/virtual reality), and any potential hackers attack is then likely to miss the mark. This is not to suggest that the public is desensitized by such apocalyptic shows. On the contrary, over-sensitization is what is going on here. Over-sensitization turns panic into a normal condition of being in an age of complete uncertainty, and requires that increasingly heightened and novel sources of fear be found, be they virtual or actual. This is exactly what happened in Ballards short story. Having anticipated so much the advent of World War III (a nuclear holocaust) during the Cold War, even before it could actually take place in reality, the public became totally immune to its occurrence and failed to notice it. World War III no longer made any difference in peoples lives, as a new cathectic source of common anxiety, the Presidents health, had been made available. As an outcome of the medias work, todays fears will become tomorrows non-events, even when those fears are the product of current simulations about realities that have yet to come. Apocalyptic simulations and media-produced images of fear make cyberterrorism a virtual reality of the present and an unreal threat of the future. This is the peoples buffer though. Ironically, this TV-induced fear of cyberterrorism is perhaps the best deterrent against the traumatic reality of such an event. For people, cyberterrorism matters now because it is todays common anxiety. Short of exactly replicating the simulated script and, preferably, surpassing it, cyberterrorism will not be a valid real threat tomorrow as the sense of generalized panic will have moved on. Thus, perversely perhaps, panic shows and apocalyptic scenarios of this kind are our best insurance policy against the cyber dangers of the future. But what gets lost, in the meantime, is precisely this: the meantime. The present moment and those who care to live (in) it are swallowed up by discourses of fear, destructive prophecies, and endless states of emergency. As reality gives way to virtuality in order to better prepare for an uneventful future, life in the present tense is erased. Bodies and technologies in the present can no longer freely interplay. Instead, when bodies turn to the media today, it is always with the ever-present (hence, always potentially future) notion that danger is around the corner, that their PC may explode at any moment. The cyberlife of individuals online is immanently at risk. Fear society breeds paranoid mentalities and defensive postures on the part of its members. Nowhere is this phenomenon more visible than in the latest cyberterrorism counter-strategy literatures. Cultural critic Peter Lamborn Wilson once made a distinction between real war and hyperreal war (which for him denotes information warfare as well). Real war is compulsory and hierarchic, he wrote. By contrast, hyperreal war is imagistic and psychologically interiorized.18 Lamborn Wilson continues: In [real war] the body is sacri.ced; in [hyperreal war], the body has disappeared.19 What Lamborn Wilson expresses here is a sentiment akin to my concern for the erasure of present time (and the human body in present time) in hyperreal depictions of the next cyberterrorist apocalypse. Unlike luddites, naturalists, New Agists, some orthodox Marxists, or others who have sought to reject technologization for what it does to the human body, Lamborn Wilson (and I to a lesser extent) suggest that the problem is not with information technologies. The problem lies rather in the way those technologies, and the uncertainty their novelty often provokes, are used by the media to provide images of uncontrollable power and unfathomable destruction. To be blunt, the problem is not with the technologies but with the media that manufacture a simulated universe replete with information traumas and dramas. To quote Lamborn Wilson again, the excessive mediation of the social, which is carried out through the machinery of the media, increases the intensity of our alienation from the body by .xating the ow of attention on information rather than direct experience.20
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GDS Antonucci Cyberterrorism k CYBERTERROR REPS -> TECHNOCRACY: [A/T CEDES THE POLITICAL/HABERMAS]
FEAR OF CYBERTERRORISM JUSTIFIES HANDING CONTROL OVER TO THE TECHNICAL ELITE Hansen and Nissenbaum December 9 International Studies Quarterly, v. 53, #4,
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THIS INDETERMINACY CAUSES POLICY FAILURE Cavelty 7 Journal of Information Technology & Politics, Vol. 4(1) 2007 Available online at http://jitp.haworthpress.com 2007 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved. doi:10.1300/J516v04n01_03 Myriam Dunn Cavelty, PhD, is Head of the New Risks Research Unit, Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich, Switzerland; Coordinator of the Crisis and Risk Network (CRN), a Swiss-Swedish Internet and workshop initiative for international dialog on national-level security risks and vulnerabilities; and Lecturer at the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Dr. Dunn Cavelty holds a degree in political science, modern history, and international law from the University of Zurich. Cyber-Terror Looming Threat or Phantom Menace?The Framing of the US Cyber-Threat Debate The distinct image of the cyber-terrorist also appears during these years. First mentioned in a public hearing in 1998, cyber-terror quickly became one of the catchphrases of the debate. Poor definitions and careless use of terminology by many government officials is a major obstacle for meaningful discussion of the cyber-terror issue. A statement of President Bill Clinton, who was very influential in shaping the perception of the issue, can serve as an example of this semantic ambiguity. In his foreign policy farewell lecture at the University of Nebraska at Kearney in December 2000, he identified the need to pay attention to new security challenges like cyber-terrorism, and said: Myriam Dunn Cavelty 25 One of the biggest threats to the future is going to be cyberterrorismpeople fooling with your computer networks, trying to shut down your phones, erase bank records, mess up airline schedules, do things to interrupt the fabric of life. (Bowman, 2000, para. 7) Both the PDD 62 and 63 and the National Plan follow the PCCIPs reasoning and cement the winning and dominant threat frame. After that date, all the threat frames that areemployed in public hearings and other documents resemble the PCCIPs threat frame. In the report, it is stressed that dependence on the information and communications infrastructure have created new cybervulnerabilities (PCCIP, 1997, p. 5) and that potential adversaries include a very broad range of actorsfrom recreational hackers to terrorists to national teams of information warfare specialists (ibid., p. 15). This very broad and indeterminate framing of the threat subject is one of the hallmarks of the cyberthreat frame.
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