Recently Andrew Parker predicted that within 5 years we will have a specialized branch of the military dedicated to defending cyber space (just as we have the army for land, the navy for the seas and the air force for the sky). Given the recent attacks on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal  and the past attacks on companies such as Google, the timeline for such a separate branch may have to be sooner.

While I am in favor of strengthening our defensive and even offensive capabilities in cyber space I am concerned about doing so without proper oversight. We are already allowing way too much government snooping on our communications without transparency or accountability. I am also concerned that these and similar incidents will be used as arguments for the need to prevent endusers from controlling their devices.

Tim Berners-Lee just re-iterated at a conference the importance of enduser root access to devices. This is a belief that I share and one of the reasons why I have been unhappy about Apple’s increasing controls and the carriers recent success in making it illegal to unlock phones. From there it is only a small step to make the rooting of devices illegal and cyber defense would provide a convenient excuse.