Technology & Litigation

Another post that doesn't quite fit neatly into Indiana Internet litigation or privacy law, but that intrigues me.  BusinessWeek, passing along a Tim Greene article from NetworkWorld (found here: www.networkworld.com/nwlookup.jsp), is reporting that the U.S. military has issued an essay in which it urges its expertise in defense be put to use in protecting civilian networked infrastructure, such as power grids, financial institutions, etc.  The essay from Foreign Affairs sets out the concept that our military networks are probed and scanned by outside sources millions of time a day by enemies looking for weakness and access.  The Pentagon fears that the civilian cyberstructure could also be at risk from cyber-terrorism and that the U.S. military can help by using its tools to protect those necessary networks.  

This concept imposes a sense of fear and foreboding in your friendly neighborhood technology legal counsel.  On one hand, I can recognize the importance of protecting those networks.  If Bruce Willis and Justin Long taught us nothing, it is that a "fire sale" can cripple this country (and big props to Kevin Smith for his part in that flick).  Other than our Amish citizens, we, as a people, rely so heavily on our networks that we need to protect them.  However, the idea of the government and military putting their hands into the inner workings of those civilian networks also scares the heck out of me.  There are too many "technology deciding it knows what's best for us" movies for me to not worry about increased presence of government and military in our cyberworld.  

I guess, the reality is that I have no answer to this issue, but I thought it was interesting.  Like many of the questions we see arising in the cyberlaw realm, the answer to military intrusion in your civilian networks is "how much are you willing to give up in order to be safe?"