Obama orders US to draw up overseas target list for cyber-attacks by Glenn Greenwald.
From the post:
Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals.
The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued in October last year but never published, states that what it calls Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) “can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging”.
It says the government will “identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power”.
The directive also contemplates the possible use of cyber actions inside the US, though it specifies that no such domestic operations can be conducted without the prior order of the president, except in cases of emergency.
I can’t post the document here so you will have to go there to read it.
Some things to keep in mind while you read directive.
First, these are the guys who have extensive military contracts with vendors who are routinely hacked by script kiddies. And then try to blame China because their contractors fail to take basic computer security seriously.
It’s like leaving your Porsche running while you go in for a hair cut. Who could have possibly prevented the car theft? Think real hard, you have ten (10) seconds.
Second, it looks like abuse of classification to me. Here’s the test: Give the URL to 10 people in your office and ask them to all summarize the same paragraph from the document. Not more than 20 word summary.
Check the results. This document would be safe alongside the SSN printed on the LifeLock trailer. I won’t say it means nothing at all but certainly nothing worth protecting.
Third, if a case can be made for classifying this document, is it on the basis of abuse of language?
That is it is so poorly drafted that if others mimic its style, the semantic content of government documents will be reduced generally?