Virtual Assassination
The ever-excellent Roderick Jones at Counterterrorism Blog (who also blogs at MetaSecurity) posits a future in which virtual assassination could be deployed as an effective a tool as that of the 19th century anarchists:
… a cyberspace assassination would seek to achieve the following aims: prevent the candidate from actually being in cyberspace ( the equivalent of virtual-murder), instill fear amongst their supporters that the same may happen to them and as a side-effect force the political campaigns to spend money on their cyber security or force the Secret Service to protect cyber-personas (the protection of cyber-identities is clearly something that all protective security agencies are going to need to consider). The tools to do this arguably already exist – hackers or botnets for hire could be diverted to these ends. This of course is fast-forwarding to a future more virtualized point where society is more reliant on cyber-spaces but similar tools could be applied today.
As with all things virtual, the scenario can be flipped. The use of precision cyber-attacks (or virtual assassinations) against America’s enemies should be considered today as a tactic to disrupt cyber-terrorists.
Read the article here.
We have already practiced the essence of this in the U.S. We call it Swift Boating… ;)
And many other dirty tricks besides, no doubt. Checking the origin of the term ‘swift boating’ again, Wikipedia also offered this up:
In the May 19, 2007 edition, The Economist wrote, in regard to Mrs Clinton’s presidential campaign, “It is impossible to imagine her being ‘swiftboated’ like Mr Kerry. The Clintons have always regarded politics as a continuation of war by other means, and Mrs Clinton is an even tougher fighter than her husband.”
The Economist article is subscription only but the whole thing is also available here.
I can’t imagine actually eradicating someone from the internet…then again, I’ve also been unpleasantly surprised by the limitations of the Wayback Machine. I was recently trying to find the cache for Organic Warfare, which is now defunct.
Overall, the nature of this “threat” raises my eyebrows and puts a smile on my face.
And Roderick’s as well, no doubt. I guess the point is that it’s a natural extension of the “if you’re not on the net, you’re nobody” scenario. Remove someone’s capacity to make an impact online and you effectively remove them too. It’s the other way around with martyrs, of course – they may be actually dead but they continue to ‘live’ online. ‘Assassination’ will remain a metaphor until such a time arrives when we are truly wired up to the metaverse (cue stock sci-fi footage of man-with-VR-helmet twitching his last before slumping into his black leather seat, all due to a digital death-cue from the infosphere, etc).