[Infowarrior] - US ex-spook wants 'rogue states' banned from Internet

[Richard Forno]

(Issue w/the last sentence.  It's difficult to 100% block a country from the Net, but it's pretty easy to make it rather difficult for it to get much done online --- in my old job we had to deal with a few requests like that in the late '90s, none of which we ended up acting upon for a variety of reasons.  ---rick)

US ex-spook wants 'rogue states' banned from Internet

We invented it do what you are told
By Nick Farrell

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1741310/-spook-rogue-banned-internet

A FORMER US SPOOK wants all countries in the world to agree to do what America says or be banned from the Internet.

It is not clear how much the views of the former chief technology officer at the US National Security Agency Dr Prescott Winter reflect those of his mates who still work there.

But if Winter had his way, countries in Eastern Europe and Africa that harbour cyber criminals would be locked out of the global Internet until their governments do something to reduce the threats.

He was talking about cyber security threats, but it could equally mean "does things the US does not like", like that nation's obsession with propping up its music and film industries.

Winter, who left the NSA in February after a 27-year career, said governments and Internet providers around the world could go a step further and target the sources of many of the threats.

He said that global superpowers like China have been accused of sponsoring hackers to attack Western Internet companies including Google.

The fact the US and Israel have also been accused of attacking Iran's nuclear power station with a sophisticated bit of malware seems to have skipped his notice.

But Winter said that when countries are consistently introducing cyber threats the global community should band together to effectively shut them out of the Internet until their governments do something about it.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Winter said, "In some cases the governments are clearly condoning this behaviour, clearly benefiting from it in some ways, and there needs to be a message not just to the guys who are writing this code and shipping it around but to the government."

He added that countries levy sanctions on other countries over terrorist issues and other kinds of misbehaviour, so why not levy sanctions on countries for this kind of misbehaviour?

Winter said that everyone could understand a nuclear weapon is a threat. He said people aren't ready to understand that bad code is a threat but it's pretty clear that it could do massive amounts of harm.

Winter, who is now the CTO for security solutions provider Arcsight, admitted that blocking countries from the Internet would be an "enormously complex task". µ