The Open World Hackbacks And Global Justice

The Open World, Hackbacks and Global Justice

This book explores the current impasse that global regulators face in the digital sphere. Computer technology has advanced human civilization tenfold, but the freedom to interact with others in cyberspace has made individuals, discrete communities, organizations and governments more vulnerable to abuse. In consequence, political decision-makers are seriously considering granting limited legal immunity to victims who decide to ‘hack- back.’ Many victims frustrated by the slow pace of law enforcement in cyberspace have chosen to ‘take the law into their own hands,’ retaliating against those who have stolen valuable data and damaged network operations. Political deliberations about limited immunity for hackbacks usually ignore global justice and moral justifications for ‘active defense’ policies. Typically, cyber security policies balance deterrence against two different understandings of morality and the ‘good life’ : fairness or welfare. This book proposes a third moral rationale for cyber security policies : capability theory, developed principally by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Properly formulated, a capability-based defense of retaliatory hackbacks can minimize attribution and cyber-escalation risks, deter bad behavior by casual computer users, disingenuous security experts, big tech companies, criminals and rogue governments, and satisfy calls for more retributive and distributive justice in the ‘open world’. This book will appeal to legal theorists, political philosophers, social activists, investors, international relations scholars and businesspeople in the tech community.

Counterintelligence in a Cyber World

This book provides an outline of the major challenges and methodologies for applying classic counterintelligence theory into the cybersecurity domain. This book also covers operational security approaches to cyber, alongside detailed descriptions of contemporary cybersecurity threats, in the context of psychological and criminal profiling of cybercriminals. Following an analysis of the plethora of counterespionage techniques that can be mapped to the cyber realm, the mechanics of undertaking technical surveillance are reviewed. A range of approaches to web and forum surveillance are outlined as a virtual addition to traditional video and audio surveillance captured regarding targets. This includes a description of the advances in Artificial Intelligence, predictive analysis, support for the disciplines of digital forensics, behavioural analysis and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). The rise of disinformation and misinformation and the veracity of widespread false flag claims are discussed at length, within the broader context of legal and ethical issues in cyber counterintelligence. This book is designed for professionals working in the intelligence, law enforcement or cybersecurity domains to further explore and examine the contemporary intersection of these disciplines. Students studying cybersecurity, justice, law, intelligence, criminology or related fields may also find the book useful as a reference volume, while instructors could utilise the whole volume or individual chapters as a secondary textbook or required reading.

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