Some Perspective on Cyber-terrorism

Cyber-terrorism gets a fair amount of press. Just the term - cyber-terrorism - is kind of scary. One concern I've had about all this press is that the government will use the fear to create even more surveillance programs that interfere with the liberty of innocent individuals. We've already taken substantial steps down that road with current anti-terrorism measures taken under the umbrella of Homeland Security.

Here's a piece that gives us some perspective on the issue:

As George R. Lucas Jr., a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, put it, conducting a truly mass-scale action using cyber means “simply outstrips the intellectual, organizational and personnel capacities of even the most well-funded and well-organized terrorist organization, as well as those of even the most sophisticated international criminal enterprises.” 

Lucas said the threat of cyber terrorism has been vastly overblown.“To be blunt, neither the 14-year-old hacker in your next-door neighbor’s upstairs bedroom, nor the two- or three-person al-Qaida cell holed up in some apartment in Hamburg are going to bring down the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams,” he said.

What about the well-documented case of Estonia, which alleges that the Russian government attacked it as a kind of threat against their wanting to leave the Russian sphere of influence and establish more ties with the West?

Even the 2007 cyber attacks on Estonia, the most-discussed incident of its kind, had little impact on the daily life of the average Estonian and certainly no long-term effect. Allegedly assisted by the Russian government, and hence well beyond the capacity of most terror organizations, the attacks merely disrupted public-facing government websites for a few days. Compare that with the impact of planes crashing into the center of the U.S. financial system, the London subway attacks or the thousands of homemade bomb attacks that happen around the world each year.

So should we just ignore the alleged threat of cyber-terrorism? No. But keep it in perspective. And don't let unfounded fears and irrational emotions cloud your judgment. It sure doesn't seem like there's a good reason to give up even more of our liberties to protect ourselves against the threat as it now stands.  As for the general issue of giving up our liberties to achieve increased "security," that's a subject for another time. But perhaps you can use this example to at least temper any tendency you might have in that direction.

Anyway, the article's worth reading, mainly because it gets into detail about how governments and terrorists currently use the internet and hacking skills, so you know what's really going on. You can find the rest of the article by clicking HERE.