"Cyber Seas" Regulation Is Unnecessary

There is an interesting plea to the next President of the United States of America posted online at CSOonline.com as of April 10 entitled, "Freedom of the Cyber Seas" by Aaron Turner & Michael Assante. The authors argue that the next President should make it a matter of his or her core policy that the Internet (the "Cyber Seas" as the article dubs it) will be kept free from organized criminals and pirate-like behavior through a national policy to lay down rules and laws for acceptable behavior on the "high Cyber Seas."

While I like the idea in theory, I do not think it will work in practice, at this point in history, in this America, in this global economic environment. Why? Well, for one thing, the authors use the example of the pirates of Tripoli being reigned in by Thomas Jefferson 200 years ago through his laying down the law that the US would not bow to paying bounties to pirates from Tripoli. The authors argue that this same, solid stance on foreign policy can be applied in certain similar ways to the US stance on Internet policy. That sounds great, but the fact remains that the RIAA, MPAA, and a whole host of special interest groups basically run Washington in this America, at this time in our history.

Another problem that I see in this argument is that the Internet pays no respect to physical location. In order to lay down similar policy as Thomas Jefferson, we will have to continue on in our love for CCTV cameras, the Patriot Act, and similar actions by our own government against our own citizenry, and that's simply a bad governmental policy to hold to begin with for so many reasons.

Lastly, how will this kind of harsh stance against economic cyber-pirates be enforced? Even your standard FBI agent, Special Forces military agent, CIA operative, or beat cop will likely not have the many years of experience required to be good at catching cyber-criminals. In the case of the pirates of Tripoli, we sent our Navy and Marines to Tripoli to fight a small war with the pirates. Besides, organized crime and rinky-dink personal information thieves are not and will never be recognized as a country, state, or state actor that can be cordoned off and attacked.

Internet crimes are just that: crimes. They are not government policy (except possibly in the case of China or N. Korea conducting their own supposed "cyber wargames" against US interests), they are not organized action by a state actor, and they are not being given immunity by governments to act as they do. Right now, at least, Internet crime is designed to make unscrupulous individuals money, or give them street cred, or whatever. It is not designed to undermine the operations of a country - at least not yet. If we do get to that phase, then once again we already have plenty of laws already on the books to deal with terrorists being harbored by countries like Afghanistan. Therefore, I do not think there is much merit to this parallel of the "Cyber Seas" to pirates of the "Seven Seas" from 200 years ago.