Issue #1 : Musings on the CyberArmy ethos |
Article Rating: Excellent
(# of votes: 1) |
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| Author:
| Machina
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| Submitted: |
12-Sep-2004 11:48:29 |
| Imported From: |
zZine (original author: Machina)
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| Questioning how the CyberArmy's ethos fits into wider internet policing, do we need to develop laws to govern the internet? The CyberArmy was created on the philosophy that the best placed people to regulate the internet are the users themselves.
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Frequent examples have been raised in the past: hackers who run IRC, whitehats who close network holes without causing damage, etc., yet governments and monopolistic organizations are said to threaten the very vitality of the internet. Everything from Chinese net-censorship to US email reading and privacy abuses have been cited as proof that the governemnt is abusing its power when it comes to the Internet. However, I don't need to tell you this, because you are most likely a member of CyberArmy or interested in our work.
The world is simply not set up to deal with running the internet. National governments are poorly equipped to deal with an international network. To cite an overused but true example, Eastern European virus writers can infect systems in the Americas without any real chance of being stopped. The few recent successes in catching virus writers have been far more to do with luck and egos than effective police work. A boast on an obscure forum has often allowed the writer to be tracked down. Companies have been set up to infiltrate and track virus writer organizations. These are who the FBI and its cousins must turn to.
Who better to monitor the world's forums and chat rooms than web activists like those found at CyberArmy? We can always cover far more of the internet as a body than any given private organization.
However, the CyberArmy seems to lack a solid set of rules and laws. What exactly are we against? what is acceptable and unacceptable? These may seem like silly questions, and the response is usually “All things that are harming the internet!” "Isn't it obvious that spam is a curse or malicious viruses a plague?" I couldn't agree more, but I still feel we need to define these problems more explicitly.
An example: Counterstriking
Counterstriking involves retaliating to stop a threat to your server or network from an external source. If a server is infected with a worm and is bombarding your network with attempts to pass on the worm can you legitimately stop it? There are tools becoming widely available to do just that. Viruses are taking up an ever increasing share of the Internet's bandwidth as they try to pass themselves on. This is slowing down and even knocking out entire networks. So it seems reasonable to try and stop this attack. However, to what extent may you retaliate? Can you remove the virus process? Can you stop the server's connection? The owner of the server is most likely ignorant of what the server is doing. There is a strong possibility of a lawsuit if you cause any ‘collateral damage'. What if you cause far more damage in the process of stopping the virus? Is this a risk we are willing to take?
You cannot police via anarchy. Each netizen cannot try and enforce his or her own version of what is acceptable on the rest of the nets population. Imagine a police force, or perhaps better a citizen's arrest, based on what the person happened to think was best. What's more it is simply a poor way to organize people. If you want to set a standard across the Internet and get people to obey it, it must be a coherent standard. One you can actually follow.
So why not work within the written law? We could always base our rules on those of a given nation state. However, it is those very laws that have allowed spam to become such a menace. Loopholes allow a simple ‘unsubscribe' link to justify bombarding your email. So what are the CyberArmy's guidelines, i.e. our rules and laws?
Perhaps equally importantly, how do those laws fit in within the wider spectrum of internet policing? We must take a reality check if we are to achieve anything serious. We are but one part of running the internet. There must both be a place for users and also a place for governments. We cannot physically punish, and hence cannot physically deter, any internet abuser. Only a government can do that. When does our ethos actually impede good internet governance? When do we do more damage than good? The CyberArmy used to be known for the work it did taking down child porn websites. If you remove a website, you be driving that network further underground and more difficult to stop entirely. Recent mass arrests of child porn rings have been done by constant monitoring by authorities to discover the entire network before an arrest. A whitehat activist could disrupt the entire operation.
Of course you could say none of this is the responsibility of the CyberArmy. We are here to promote and help people work for a better internet not to govern it. But, if it is the netizens themselves who are to define what is acceptable, then who better than CyberArmy. As netizens it is our responsibility to define the Internet we want to see. Otherwise it will be dictated to us and I doubt we will like what we are told. All of this is probably blatantly obvious but I have yet to see a coherent guideline for our vision of the internet. Discussion is genuinely needed or the CyberArmy ideals are to remain just that; only ‘ideals'.
This article was originally published by CyberArmy.net in the CyberArmy Library.
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