The last couple of months I started reading and working on issues of international law and international human rights law on cyber-space. These issues are coined in the news and in official reports as 'cyber security' but I do not think that this catchy phrase conveys all the relevant questions.
In any case, the other day I went through the US Administrative Strategy on Mitigating the Theft of U.S. Trade Secrets (Feb 2013, available here). There are 4 reports attached to the Strategy, including the 2011 Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive Report. The first page of this Report is this:
As I went on reading there was something bothering me about this picture. It was somehow familiar to me which did not make much sense because I had not read this report in the past. After a couple of minutes it hit me. All I did was to look for cold war posters on the Internet. These are some examples of US propaganda posters during the Cold War:
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| via this link |
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| via this link |
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| via this link |
Have I made my point clear? Do you notice the choice of the colours? It is usually red for the communists and silver/grey for the US. The symbols of power and what it is allegedly at stake - back to the day nuclear power and knowledge; today energy, telecommunications, genomics, information. The Chinese banknote featuring Mao! - the enemy must always have a face, be personified whereas we - us (US), the 'good guys', are represented by a picture appealing to the People - the Wall St. ironically enough. I could not tell what the US Counterintelligence Office had in mind when they designed this picture, but this picture surely looks like a Cold War propaganda poster. Quite impressive. And it was then that I noticed the Report's title Foreign spies stealing our secrets, which is a very cold war thing to say as well. Also the use of the word spies was quite passé until now, don't you think? Well, not anymore. Never underestimate a bunch of bureaucrats in the US Counterintelligence Office; they make policy and they shape our future.
