2015 NDI 6WS ECPA

Affirmative

Case

1AC

Plan-Text
The United States federal government should require a warrant for all of its
electronic domestic surveillance.

1AC Cyber Adv

Backdoors create unique vulnerabilities intentionally
weakened encryption cause the majority of malicious attacks
Castillo 6/16 Andrea Castillo, program manager for the Technology Policy

Program at the Mercatus Center, Giving Government 'Backdoor' Access to

Encrypted Data Threatens Personal Privacy and National Security,
http://reason.com/archives/2015/06/16/crypto-wars-weaken-encryption-security
The War on Terror provides plenty of rhetorical ammunition to these anti-encryption officials,
who seem to believe that purposefully sabotaging our strongest defenses against
"cyberterrorists" is an effective way to promote national security. But they are
dangerously wrong, as recent revelations of decades-old security vulnerabilities
imposed by encryption restrictions make all too clear . Encryption allows people to securely send
data that can only be accessed by verified parties. Mathematical techniques convert the content of a message into a scrambled
jumble, called a ciphertext, which looks like nonsense in electronic transit until it is decoded by the intended recipient. Simple
ciphers have been used to secure communications since the days of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, when a particularly devoted scribe
took to fancying up the tomb of Khnumhotep II with cryptic funeral prose. Our own Thomas Jefferson regularly used ciphers in

State
military and research offices were the main 20th century beneficiaries of advanced
encryption techniques until the development of public-key cryptography in the
1970s, which afforded commercial and private users a means to protect their data
against unwanted infiltration. Now, what was once a mere means to share secrets has
become an indispensable component of personal and national data
security. An estimated 40 million cyberattacks occurred in 2014, imposing millions in
costs and weeks of frustration for organizations and individual users alike. Many of
these costly breaches could be prevented through encryption techniques
that regulate data access, authenticate users, and secure sensitive
information. A secret report from the U.S. National Intelligence Councilironically, leaked by Edward Snowden thanks to
the governments own poor authentication practiceseven made the case that encryption was the "best
defense" to protect private data. Yet intelligence agencies and their allies have
consistently set out to limit encryption technologies ( many of which they developed or relied upon
themselves previously). The seeds of the first Crypto Wars were sown during the Cold War ,
communications with James Madison, John Adams, and James Monroe to "keep matters merely personal to ourselves."

when the U.S. imposed strong export controls on encryption techniques to keep them away from the Ruskies. Only a small set of
relatively weak techniques approved by the Commerce and State Departments could be used in international business. But this

Compelling foreign users to settle for weakened

encryption standards ultimately made U.S. users more vulnerable by introducing
unnecessary fragility. A timely case in point is the recent revelations of security
vulnerabilities in thousands of Web browsers and mail serversvulnerabilities that
were directly introduced by the artificially weak encryption programs compelled by the
practice was dangerously self-defeating.

earlier export ban. In March, a massive vulnerability affecting the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS)
protocols ubiquitous to most users Internet experiences, called "FREAK," was discovered. Later in May, researchers discovered a

dual security bugs

exposed countless Internet users to potential "man-in-the middle-attacks,"
allowing malicious hackers (or tight-lipped intelligence agents) access to supposedly
secure data for decades. Export controls on encryption were easier to enforce before the advent of personal
similar TLS vulnerability, LOGJAM, which attacked a different kind of key exchange technique. These

computing, when only institutional (and usually government-connected) organizations operating huge supercomputers would be
effected by such bansalthough academics did not exactly hide their discontent at the inconvenience dealt to their research
projects. The rise of the home computer dramatically changed the calculus. The export ban on encryption imposed arbitrary
boundaries on a network that is borderless by definition. Enter the cypherpunks: a ragtag, homebrew crew of anti-authoritarian
hackers hell-bent on subverting spooks and protecting privacy on the Net. These luminaries developed the tools and rhetoric to
make bad laws irrelevant by making them unenforceable. For example, Phil Zimmermans Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) program, a
mainstay of modern email delivery, which Zimmerman posted to Usenet in 1991. After a three-year criminal investigation, the U.S.
Attorney's Office decided not to prosecute Zimmerman for sharing the encryption protocol. Throughout the '90s, federal officials

Edward Snowden's 2013

revelations, however, made it clear that the so-called "Crypto Wars" were actually
far from settled. Snowden revealed that the NSA worked with foreign spooks to compromise
encryption by controlling international standards for their own purposes and even
out-and-out colluded with technology firms through the "BULLRUN" program . Only after
continued to ease strict export restrictions, and the future of encryption seemed secure.

these outrageous methods were exposed to the world did the forces of surveillance bother attempting to legitimize these practices
through less illegal public meansalbeit with the rhetorical gall of concealing obvious spying ambitions in the more reasonable garb
of genuine law enforcement concerns.

Surveillance enables cyberterrorism by creating backdoors in

our critical infrastructure while allowing hackers to model our
technological capabilitiesits only a matter of time before our
vulnerabilities are exploited
Seneque, ICT professional with a particular focus on UNIX
Architecture & Design, 14
Gareth, holds a degree in Philosophy/Politics from the University of Sydney, Alex
Comninos, an independent researcher focusing on information and communications
technology and politics, a Doctoral Candidate at Justus-Liebig University in Giessen,
Germany at the Department of Geography, where he is conducting doctoral
research on the challenges and constraints of the use of user-generated geographic
information systems in Egypt, Libya, and North and Sudan in 2010 to 2011, "Cyber
security, civil society and vulnerability in an age of communications surveillance",
2014, Justus-Liebig University Giessen and Geist Consulting,
giswatch.org/en/communications-surveillance/cyber-security-civil-society-andvulnerability-age-communications-sur
The relevance of Snowdens disclosures to cyber security The scope and
reach of the NSAs surveillance is important. The NSAs surveillance
posture is

as has been repeated by General Keith Alexander, and is reflected in the NSA slide in Figure 1

to "collect it all" :32 from undersea cable taps, to Yahoo video chats, to inflight Wi-Fi, to virtual worlds and online multiplayer games like Second Life and World of Warcraft.

The NSA has at least three different programmes to get Yahoo and Google user data. This shows that they try to get
the same data from multiple mechanisms.33 With the GCHQ under the MUSCULAR programme it hacked into the
internal data links of Google and Yahoo34 for information that it could mostly have gotten through the PRISM

In addition to highlighting the NSAs massive institutional

overreach and global privacy invasion, Snowdens disclosures also
programme.

highlight the many points at which our data is insecure, and the vast
numbers of vulnerabilities to surveillance that exist throughout our
digital world. However, while the NSA is the largest threat in the
surveillance game, it is not the only threat. Governments all around the
world are using the internet to surveil their citizens. Considering the rate
of technological change, it is not unforeseeable that the methods, tools
and vulnerabilities used by the NSA will be the tools of states, cyber
criminals and low-skilled hackers of the future. Regardless of who the
perceived attacker or surveillance operative may be, and whether it is the
NSA or not, large-scale, mass surveillance is a growing cyber security
threat.

It has also been disclosed that

the NSA and GCHQ have actively worked to make

internet and technology users around the world less secure. The NSA has

placed backdoors in routers running vital internet infrastructures .35 The

GCHQ has impersonated social networking websites like LinkedIn in order to target system administrators of

The NSA has been working with the GCHQ to hack into
Google and Yahoo data centres.37 The NSA also works to undermine
internet service providers.36

encryption technologies , by covertly influencing the use of weak

algorithms and random number generators in encryption products and
standards.38 The NSA in its own words is working under the BULLRUN
programme to "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems,
IT systems, networks, and endpoint communications devices used by
targets" and to influence policies, standards and specifications for
commercial [encryption] technologies.39 The NSA is also believed to
hoard knowledge about vulnerabilities rather than sharing them with
developers, vendors and the general public ,40 as well as even
maintaining a catalogue of these vulnerabilities for use in surveillance
and cyber attacks .41 None of these activities serve to make the internet
more secure. In fact, they do the very opposite. As US Congresswoman
Zoe Lofgren commented: When any industry or organisation builds a
backdoor to assist with electronic surveillance into their product, they put
all of our data security at risk. If a backdoor is created for law
enforcement purposes, its only a matter of time before a hacker exploits
it , in fact we have already seen it happen."42

The risk of cyberterrorism is highexperts agree that

adversaries have the technical skills and political motivation to
carry out a dangerous cyberattack
Burg, Principal US & Global Cybersecurity Leader, 14
David, Michael Compton Principal, Cybersecurity Strategy & Operations, Peter
Harries Principal, Health Industries, John Hunt Principal, Public Sector, Mark Lobel
Principal, Technology, Entertainment, Media & Communications, Gary Loveland
Principal, Consumer and Industrial Products & Services, Joe Nocera Principal,
Financial Services, Dave Roath Partner, Risk Assurance, "US cybercrime: Rising
risks, reduced readiness Key findings from the 2014 US State of Cybercrime
Survey", June 2014, co-sponsored by The CERT Division of the Software Engineering
Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, CSO magazine, United States Secret Service,
www.pwc.com/us/en/increasing-it-effectiveness/publications/assets/2014-us-stateof-cybercrime.pdf
The risks and repercussions of cybercrime In this 12th survey of
cybercrime trends, more than 500 US executives, security experts, and
others from the public and private sectors offered a look into their
cybersecurity practices and state of risk and readiness to combat evolving
cyber threats and threat agents. One thing is very clear: The
cybersecurity programs of US organizations do not rival the persistence,
tactical skills, and technological prowess of their potential cyber

adversaries. Today, common criminals, organized crime rings, and nationstates leverage sophisticated techniques to launch attacks that are highly
targeted and very difficult to detect. Particularly worrisome are attacks by tremendously skilled
threat actors that attempt to steal highly sensitiveand often very valuableintellectual property, private
communications, and other strategic assets and information. It is a threat that is nothing short of formidable. In

the US Director of National Intelligence has ranked cybercrime as the

top national security threat, higher than that of terrorism, espionage, and
weapons of mass destruction.1 Underscoring the threat, the FBI last year notified 3,000 US
fact,

companiesranging from small banks, major defense contractors, and leading retailersthat they had been victims

The United States faces real [cybersecurity] threats from

criminals, terrorists, spies, and malicious cyber actors, said FBI Director
James B. Comey at a recent security conference.2 The playground is a very dangerous place right now.
Nation-state actors pose a particularly pernicious threat , according to
Sean Joyce, a PwC principal and former FBI deputy director who frequently testified
before the US House and Senate Intelligence committees. We are seeing increased activity
of cyber intrusions.

from nation-state actors, which could escalate due to unrest in Syria,

Iran, and Russia , he said. These groups may target financial services and
other critical infrastructure entities. In todays volatile cybercrime
environment, nation-states and other criminals continually and rapidly
update their tactics to maintain an advantage against advances in security
safeguards implemented by businesses and government agencies. Recently,
for instance, hackers engineered a new round of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that can generate
traffic rated at a staggering 400 gigabits per second, the most powerful DDoS assaults to date.

3 Internal links
1. Norm-BuildingCurtailing surveillance is key to effective
norms-buildingthat prevents cyber-warfare
Farrell 2015, Henry Farrell, PhD in Government from Georgetown University,
Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, April 2015,
Promoting Norms for Cyberspace, Council on Foreign Relations,
http://www.cfr.org/cybersecurity/promoting-norms-cyberspace/p36358?cid=nlcpress_release-press_note--link220150406&sp_mid=48385113&sp_rid=YWtpbWVyeUBoc3RvZGF5LnVzS0
U.S. policymakers argue that the United States and others need to build norms to
mitigate cybersecurity problems. Admiral Michael S. Rogers, head of the National Security Agency
(NSA) and Cyber Command, has argued that shared norms are a basic building block for cybersecurity. He has
called on actors in academia and civil society to help design them and to assist in their spread. It may seem

soft tools rather than hard military options,

are the best option available. First, the United
States is vulnerable to cyberattacks and this weakness is difficult to
address using conventional tools of military statecraft. Second, it is difficult
to ensure that complex information systems are fully defended, since they may
have subtle technical weaknesses. Third, classical deterrence is not easy in a
world where it is often challenging to identify sophisticated attackers, or
even to know when an attack has taken place. Lastly , treaties are hard to enforce because it
strange that Pentagon officials are arguing for
but there are four good reasons why norms

is so difficult to verify complianceparticularly in cyberspace, where weapons are

software, not missiles. Although norms are hazier than treaty rules, they may still have important consequences.
Norms against the use of nuclear weapons have taken hold since the 1950s, making their use nearly unthinkable in

Robust cybersecurity norms might, over time, rule out

some kinds of attacks as normatively inappropriate. They might encourage
other states to see norm breaches as attacks on their security, too,
spurring cooperation to prevent or stop attacks. Finally, norms can provide shared
understandings between states that allow them to work together where they
have shared interests and manage relations where their interests clash. Challenges to Norm Promotion It is
hard to spread norms, even in the best circumstances. Unfortunately, these are
far from the best circumstances for the United States. U.S. policymakers face three
ordinary circumstances.

major problems. First, it is easiest to promote norms when one can invoke common values to support them, yet the
world's cyber powers have differentand radically incompatiblevalues over how to protect cyberspace. The
clashing interests between democratic and authoritarian regimes on the value of an open Internet and definitions of

adopters of norms are

likely to be more receptive if they do not think the proponent of the norms
is acting in bad faith. To be sure, many states were happy to use the Snowden
revelations as a cover for opposition to any rules of behavior Washington
might offer. But for others, efforts at persuasion have been damaged by the
security make effective global treaties impossible. Second, the potential

exposed gap between U.S. rhetoric and actions . At the very least, other states must be
persuaded that following a norm is in their national interest. The disclosures, however, reinforced the view of many
states that the United States disproportionately benefits from an open, global, and secure Internet, and is only

In
light of the Snowden disclosures, the United States is poorly placed to
persuade other actors of its good faith or its commitment to shared
interests and values. The extent of the damage to the U.S. reputation was
revealed when the United States accused North Korea of hacking into
Sony's servers and announced its intention to retaliate against North Korea through low-level sanctions.
committed to these values to the extent that they further U.S. economic, political, and military objectives.

Building on previous indictments of Chinese soldiers for hacking into U.S. firms, U.S. officials followed an approach
of "naming and shaming" cyberattackers while pursuing sanctions and possible criminal charges. These actions are
highly unlikely to result in successful prosecutions, but potentially serve a normative purpose by signaling to the

many did not buy

U.S. claims that Pyongyang was responsible. Members of the business and
technology communities also expressed polite skepticism over the evidence supplied by
world that some actions are unacceptable. Although a few states criticized North Korea,

the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

2. Trust- Requiring the government to get a warrant solves

while maintaining intelligence capabilities the government
has to engage companies to access information instead of
taking it
Ackerman 7/8 Spencer Ackerman, national security editor for the Guardian,

7/8/15, FBI chief wants 'backdoor access' to encrypted communications to fight

Isis, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/08/fbi-chief-backdoor-accessencryption-isis
The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned US senators that the threat from the Islamic State
merits a debate about limiting commercial encryption the linchpin of digital
security despite a growing chorus of technical experts who say that undermining
encryption would prove an enormous boon for hackers, cybercriminals, foreign spies

and terrorists. In a twin pair of appearances before the Senates judiciary and intelligence committees on Wednesday,
James Comey testified that Isiss use of end-to-end encryption, whereby the
messaging service being used to send information does not have access to the
decryption keys of those who receive it, helped the group place a devil on the
shoulders of potential recruits saying kill, kill, kill, kill. Comey said that while the FBI is thus far disrupting Isis
plots, I cannot see me stopping these indefinitely. He added: I am not trying to scare folks. Since October, following
Apples decision to bolster its mobile-device security, Comey has called for a
debate about inserting back doors or front doors, as he prefers to call them
into encryption software, warning that encryption threatens to lead us all to a
very, very dark place. But Comey and deputy attorney general Sally Quillian Yates testified that they do not
at the moment envision proposing legislation to mandate surreptitious or backdoor
access to law enforcement. Both said they did not wish the government to itself
hold user encryption keys and preferred to engage communications
providers for access, though technicians have stated that what Comey and Yates seek is fundamentally incompatible
with end-to-end encryption. Comey, who is not a software engineer, said his response to that was: Really? He framed
himself as an advocate of commercial encryption to protect personal data who
believed that the finest minds of Silicon Valley can invent new modes of
encryption that can work for US law enforcement and intelligence agencies
without inevitably introducing security flaws. While the FBI director did not specifically cite
which encrypted messaging apps Isis uses, the Guardian reported in December that its grand mufti used WhatsApp to communicate

I think we need to provide a

court-ordered process for obtaining that data, said Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat
and former intelligence committee chair who represents Silicon Valley. But Comeys campaign against
encryption has run into a wall of opposition from digital security experts and
engineers. Their response is that there is no technical way to insert a back door into security
systems for governments that does not leave the door ajar for anyone hackers,
criminals, foreign intelligence services to exploit and gain access to enormous
treasure troves of user data, including medical records, financial information and much more.
with his former mentor. WhatsApp adopted end-to-end encryption last year.

3. Plan solves backdoors-makes them get a warrant

James Ball and Spencer Ackerman 8/9/13 (James Ball is special projects
editor of the Guardian. Spencer Ackerman is national security editor for Guardian US. A
former senior writer for Wired, he won the 2012 National Magazine Award for Digital
Reporting NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens' emails and phone calls
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/nsa-loophole-warrantless-searches-emailcalls accessed 7/26/15 BP) )

The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast
databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens'
email and phone calls without a warrant , according to a top-secret
document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden. The previously
undisclosed rule change allows NSA operatives to hunt for individual Americans'
communications using their name or other identifying information. Senator Ron
Wyden told the Guardian that the law provides the NSA with a loophole
potentially allowing "warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of
law-abiding Americans". The authority, approved in 2011, appears to contrast
with repeated assurances from Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials to
both Congress and the American public that the privacy of US citizens is protected
from the NSA's dragnet surveillance programs. The intelligence data is being
gathered under Section 702 of the of the Fisa Amendments Act (FAA), which gives
the NSA authority to target without warrant the communications of foreign targets,

who must be non-US citizens and outside the US at the point of collection. The
communications of Americans in direct contact with foreign targets can
also be collected without a warrant, and the intelligence agencies
acknowledge that purely domestic communications can also be
inadvertently swept into its databases. That process is known as
"incidental collection" in surveillance parlance. But this is the first
evidence that the NSA has permission to search those databases for
specific US individuals' communications. A secret glossary document provided
to operatives in the NSA's Special Source Operations division which runs the Prism
program and large-scale cable intercepts through corporate partnerships with
technology companies details an update to the "minimization" procedures that
govern how the agency must handle the communications of US persons. That group
is defined as both American citizens and foreigners located in the US. "While the
FAA 702 minimization procedures approved on 3 October 2011 now allow for use of
certain United States person names and identifiers as query terms when reviewing
collected FAA 702 data," the glossary states, "analysts may NOT/NOT [not repeat
not] implement any USP [US persons] queries until an effective oversight process
has been developed by NSA and agreed to by DOJ/ODNI [Office of the Director of
National Intelligence]." The term "identifiers" is NSA jargon for information relating
to an individual, such as telephone number, email address, IP address and
username as well as their name. The document which is undated, though
metadata suggests this version was last updated in June 2012 does not say
whether the oversight process it mentions has been established or whether any
searches against US person names have taken place. Ron Wyden Senator Ron
Wyden. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the
Senate intelligence committee, has obliquely warned for months that the NSA's
retention of Americans' communications incidentally collected and its ability to
search through it has been far more extensive than intelligence officials
have stated publicly. Speaking this week, Wyden told the Guardian it amounts
to a "backdoor search" through Americans' communications data..

A cyber-attack would trigger military retaliation and escalate

to nuclear war
Robert Tilford 12, Graduate US Army Airborne School, Ft. Benning, Georgia,
Cyber attackers could shut down the electric grid for the entire east coast 2012,
http://www.examiner.com/article/cyber-attackers-could-easily-shut-down-theelectric-grid-for-the-entire-east-coa ***we dont agree with the ableist language
To make matters worse a cyber attack that can take out a civilian power grid, for example
could also cripple (destroy) the U.S. military . The senator notes that is that the same power
grids that supply cities and towns, stores and gas stations, cell towers and heart
monitors also power every military base in our country. Although bases would be
prepared to weather a short power outage with backup diesel generators, within
hours, not days, fuel supplies would run out, he said. Which means military c ommand and
c ontrol centers could go dark . Radar systems that detect air threats to our
country would shut Down completely. Communication between commanders and
their troops would also go silent. And many weapons systems would be left
without either fuel or electric power, said Senator Grassley. So in a few short

hours or days, the mightiest military in the world would be left scrambling to
maintain base functions, he said. We contacted the Pentagon and officials
confirmed the threat of a cyber attack is something very real . Top
national security officialsincluding the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Director of the National Security
Agency, the Secretary of Defense, and the CIA Director have said, preventing a cyber attack and
improving the nations electric grids is among the most urgent priorities of our country (source: Congressional
Record). So how serious is the Pentagon taking all this? Enough to start, or end a war over it, for sure. A cyber attack
today against the US could very well be seen as an Act of War and could be
met with a full scale US military response. That could include the use of
nuclear weapons, if authorized by the President.

Cyber-attacks could shut down the power grid for years

Daly, columnist @ The Daily Beast, 13

Michael, "U.S. Not Ready for Cyberwar Hostile Hackers Could Launch", Feb 21 2013,
www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/21/u-s-not-ready-for-cyber-war-hostilehackers-could-launch.html
If the nightmare scenario becomes suddenly real ... If hackers shut down much of the
electrical grid and the rest of the critical infrastructure goes with it ... If we are plunged into
chaos and suffer more physical destruction than 50 monster hurricanes and economic damage that dwarfs the

we will wonder why we failed to guard against what outgoing

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has termed a cyberPearl Harbor. An
aggressor nation or extremist group could use these kinds of cybertools to
gain control of critical switches, Panetta said in a speech in October. They could derail
passenger trains or, even more dangerous, derail passenger trains loaded with lethal
chemicals. They could contaminate the water supply in major cities or
shut down the power grid across large parts of the country . And Panetta
was hardly being an alarmist. He could have added that cybersecurity experts such
as Joe Weiss of Applied Control Solutions suggest a full-on cyberattack
Great Depression ... Then

would seek not simply to shut down systems, but wreck them , using
software to destroy hardware. Some believe we could then be sent into
chaos not just for days of even weeks, but for months . The mother of all
nightmare scenarios would see electric, oil, gas, water, chemical, and
transit, our entire essential infrastructure , knocked out as we sought to
replace equipment that can take more than a year to manufacture

and is in

many cases no longer made in the U.S. Lights would stay out. Gas stations would be unable to pump and would
have nothing to pump anyway. There would be no heat, no fuel, in many places no running water, no sewage
treatment, no garbage, no traffic lights, no air-traffic control, minimal communication, and of course, no Wi-Fi.
Neighborhoods around chemical plants could become Bhopals.

A long-term loss of electrical power would cause nuclear

reactor meltdownsguarantees extinction
Hodges 14

Dave, an established award winning psychology, statistics and research professor as

he teaches college and university classes at both the undergraduate and graduate
level, an established author as his articles are published on many major websites,
citing Judy Haar, a recognized expert in nuclear plant failure analyses, "Nuclear
Power Plants Will Become America's Extinction Level Event", April 18 2014,
www.thelibertybeacon.com/2014/04/18/nuclear-power-plants-will-become-americasextinction-level-event/
Fukushima is often spoken of by many, as a possible extinction level event
because of the radiation threat. Fukushima continues to wreak havoc upon the world and in the
United States as we are being bathed in deadly radiation from this event. Because of Fukushima, fish
are becoming inedible and the ocean currents as well as the prevailing
ocean winds are carrying deadly radiation. Undoubtedly, by this time, the
radioactivity has made its way into the transpiration cycle which means
that crops are being dowsed with deadly radiation. The radiation has
undoubtedly made its way into the water table in many areas and impacts
every aspect of the food supply. The health costs to human beings is
incalculable. However, this article is not about the devastation at Fukushima, instead, this article
focuses on the fact that North America could have a total of 124
Fukushima events if the necessary conditions were present. A Festering Problem
Long before Fukushima, American regulators knew that a power failure
lasting for days involving the power grid connected to a nuclear plant ,
regardless of the cause, would most likely lead to a dangerous radioactive leak in
at least several nuclear power plants. A complete loss of electrical power
poses a major problem for nuclear power plants because the reactor core
must be kept cool as well as the back-up cooling systems, all of which
require massive amounts of power to work. Heretofore, all the NERC drills
which test the readiness of a nuclear power plant are predicated on the
notion that a blackout will only last 24 hours or less. Amazingly, this is the sum total of
a NERC litmus test. Although we have the technology needed to harden and protect our grid from an EMP event,
whether natural or man-made, we have failed to do so. The cost for protecting the entire grid is placed at about the
cost for one B-1 Stealth Bomber. Yet, as a nation, we have done nothing. This is inexplicable and inexcusable. Our
collective inaction against protecting the grid prompted Congressman Franks to write a scathing letter to the top
officials of NERC. However, the good Congressman failed to mention the most important aspect of this problem.

The problem is entirely fixable and NERC and the US government are
leaving the American people and its infrastructure totally unprotected
from a total meltdown of nuclear power plants as a result of a prolonged
power failure. Critical Analyses According to Judy Haar, a recognized expert in
nuclear plant failure analyses, when a nuclear power plant loses access to
off-grid electricity, the event is referred to as a station blackout. Haar states
that all 104 US nuclear power plants are built to withstand electrical outages without experiencing any core
damage, through the activation of an automatic start up of emergency generators powered by diesel. Further,

when emergency power kicks in, an automatic shutdown of the nuclear

power plant commences. The dangerous control rods are dropped into the
core, while water is pumped by the diesel power generators into the
reactor to reduce the heat and thus, prevent a meltdown. Here is the
catch in this process, the spent fuel rods are encased in both a primary
and secondary containment structure which is designed to withstand a
core meltdown. However, should the pumps stop because either the
generators fail or diesel fuel is not available, the fuel rods are
subsequently uncovered and a Fukushima type of core meltdown
commences immediately. At this point, I took Judy Haars comments to a source of mine at the Palo

Verde Nuclear power plant. My source informed me that as per NERC policy, nuclear power plants are required to
have enough diesel fuel to run for a period of seven days. Some plants have thirty days of diesel. This is the good
news, but it is all downhill from here. The Unresolved Power Blackout Problem

A long-term loss of

outside electrical power will most certainly interrupt the circulation of

cooling water to the pools.

Another one of my Palo Verde nuclear power plant sources informed me

that there is no long term solution to a power blackout and that all bets are off if the blackout is due to an EMP

the spent fuel pools carry depleted fuel for

the reactor. Normally, this spent fuel has had time to considerably decay
and therefore, reducing radioactivity and heat. However, the newer
discharged fuel still produces heat and needs cooling. Housed in high
density storage racks, contained in buildings that vent directly into the
atmosphere, radiation containment is not accounted for with regard to the
spent fuel racks. In other words, there is no capture mechanism. In this
scenario, accompanied by a lengthy electrical outage, and with the
emergency power waning due to either generator failure or a lack of
diesel needed to power the generators, the plant could lose the ability to
provide cooling. The water will subsequently heat up, boil away and
uncover the spent fuel rods which required being covered in at least 25
feet of water to remain benign from any deleterious effects. Ultimately,
this would lead to fires as well and the release of radioactivity into the
atmosphere. This would be the beginning of another Fukushima event
right here on American soil. Both my source and Haar shared exactly the
same scenario about how a meltdown would occur. Subsequently, I spoke with Roger
attack. A more detailed analysis reveals that

Landry who worked for Raytheon in various Department of Defense projects for 28 years, many of them in this
arena and Roger also confirmed this information and that the above information is well known in the industry. When
I examine Congressman Franks letter to NERC and I read between the lines, it is clear that Franks knows of this risk
as well, he just stops short of specifically mentioning it in his letter. Placing Odds On a Failure Is a Fools Errand An

for 39 of
the 104 nuclear reactors, the risk of core damage from a blackout was
greater than 1 in 100,000. At 45 other plants the risk is greater than 1 in 1 million, the threshold NRC
analysis of individual plant risks released in 2003 by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission shows that

is using to determine which severe accidents should be evaluated in its latest analysis. According to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, the Beaver Valley Power Station, Unit 1, in Pennsylvania has the greatest risk of

These odds dont sound

like much until you consider that we have 124 nuclear power generating
plants in the US and Canada and when we consider each individual facility,
the odds of failure climb. How many meltdowns would it take in this
country before our citizens would be condemned to the hellish nightmare,
or worse, being experienced by the Japanese? The Question Thats Not Being Asked None of the NERC,
or the Nuclear Regulatory tests of handling a prolonged blackout at a
nuclear power plant has answered two critical questions, What happens
when these nuclear power plants run out of diesel fuel needed to run the
generators, and What happens when some of these generators fail? In
experiencing a core meltdown, 6.5 in 100,000, according to the analysis.

the event of an EMP attack, can tanker trucks with diesel fuel get to all of the nuclear power plants in the US in time
to re-fuel them before they stop running? Will tanker trucks even be running themselves in the aftermath of an EMP
attack? And in the event of an EMP attack, it is not likely that any plant which runs low on fuel, or has a generator
malfunctions, will ever get any help to mitigate the crisis prior to a plethora of meltdowns occurring. Thus, every
nuclear power plant in the country has the potential to cause a Chernobyl or Fukushima type accident if our country

CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE 124 FUKUSHIMA EVENTS IN NORTH

AMERICA HAPPENING AT THE SAME TIME? THIS WOULD CONSTITUTE THE
is hit by an EMP attack.

ULTIMATE DEPOPULATION EVENT . And There Is More The ramifications raised

in the previous paragraphs are significant. What if the blackout lasts
longer than 24 hours? What if the reason for the blackout is an EMP burst caused by a high altitude

nuclear blast and transportation comes to a standstill?

In this instance, the cavalry is not

coming . Adding fuel to the fire lies in the fact that the power
transformers presently take at least one year to replace. Today, there is a
three year backlog on ordering because so many have been ordered by China. This makes one
wonder what the Chinese are preparing for with these multiple orders for both transformers and generators. In
short, our unpreparedness is a prescription for disaster . As a byproduct of my
investigation, I have discovered that most, if not all, of the nuclear power plants are on known earthquake fault
lines. All of Californias nuclear power plants are located on an earthquake fault line. Can anyone tell me why would
anyone in their right mind build a nuclear power plant on a fault line? To see the depth of this threat you can visit an

I have studied this issue for almost nine

months and this is the most elusive topic that I have ever investigated. The more facts I gather
about the threat of a mass nuclear meltdown in this country, the more
questions I realize that are going unanswered. With regard to the nuclear power industry
we have the proverbial tiger by the tail. Last August, Big Sis stated that it is not matter of if we
interactive, overlay map at this site. Conclusion

have a mass power grid take down, but it is a matter of when . I would
echo her concerns and apply the not if, but when admonition to the
possibility of a mass meltdown in this country . It is only a matter of time
until this scenario for disaster comes to fruition . Our collective negligence
and high level of extreme depraved indifference on the part of NERC is
criminal because this is indeed an Extinction Level Event . At the end of the day, can
anyone tell me why would any country be so negligent as to not provide its nuclear plants a fool proof method to
cool the secondary processes of its nuclear materials at all of its plants? Why would ANY nuclear power plant be
built on an earthquake fault line? Why are we even using nuclear energy under these circumstances? And why are
we allowing the Chinese to park right next door to so many nuclear power plants?

Hacking devastates the economy the average cost per attack

is over twelve million dollars
Ponemon 2014 Ponemon Institute, conducts independent research on privacy,
data protection and information security policy, October 2014, 2014 Global Report
on the Cost of Cyber Crime, https://ssl.www8.hp.com/ww/en/secure/pdf/4aa55207enw.pdf, p. 2-4
During the period we conducted interviews and analyzed the findings, mega cyber crimes took place. Most
notable was the Target cyber breach, which was reported to result in the theft of 40
million payment cards. More recently, Chinese hackers launched a cyber attack against
Canadas National Research Council as well as commercial entities in Pennsylvania,
including Westinghouse Electric Company, U.S. Steel and the United Steel Workers
Union. Russian hackers recently stole the largest collection of Internet credentials
ever: 1.2 billion user names and passwords, plus 500 million email
addresses. While the companies represented in this research did not have cyber attacks as devastating as these were,
they did experience incidents that were expensive to resolve and disruptive to their
operations. For purposes of this study, we refer to cyber attacks as criminal activity
conducted via the Internet. These attacks can include stealing an organizations
intellectual property, confiscating online bank accounts, creating and distributing
viruses on other computers, posting confidential business information on the
Internet and disrupting a countrys critical national infrastructure . Our goal is to quantify the
economic impact of cyber attacks and observe cost trends over time. We believe a better understanding of the cost of cyber crime
will assist organizations in determining the appropriate amount of investment and resources needed to prevent or mitigate the
consequences of an attack. In our experience, a traditional survey approach does not capture the necessary details required to
extrapolate cyber crime costs. Therefore, we conduct field-based research that involves interviewing senior-level personnel about
their organizations actual cyber crime incidents. Approximately 10 months of effort is required to recruit companies, build an
activity-based cost model to analyze the data, collect source information and complete the analysis. For consistency purposes, our
benchmark sample consists of only larger-sized organizations (i.e., more than 1,000 enterprise seats1 ).

The study

examines the total costs organizations incur when responding to cyber crime
incidents. These include the costs to detect, recover, investigate and manage the
incident response. Also covered are the costs that result in after-the-fact activities and efforts to contain additional costs
from business disruption and the loss of customers. These costs do not include the plethora of
expenditures and investments made to sustain an organizations security
posture or compliance with standards, policies and regulations . Global at a glance This
years annual study was conducted in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Japan, France and for the first time,
the Russian Federation, with a total benchmark sample of 257 organizations. Country-specific results are presented in seven
separate reports. Figure 1 presents the estimated average cost of cyber crime for seven country samples involving 257 separate
companies, with comparison to last years country averages. Cost figures are converted into U.S. dollars for comparative purposes.

there is significant variation in total cyber crime costs among participating

companies in the benchmark samples. The US sample reports the highest total
average cost at $12.7 million and the Russian sample reports the lowest total average cost at $3.3 million. It
2 As shown,

is also interesting to note that all six countries experienced a net increase in the cost of cyber crime cost over the past year
ranging from 2.7 percent for Japan to 22.7 percent for the United Kingdom. The percentage net change between FY 2014 and FY
2013 (excluding Russia) is 10.4 percent. Summary of global findings Following are the most salient findings for a sample of 257
organizations requiring 2,081 separate interviews to gather cyber crime cost results. In several places in this report, we compare the

Cyber crimes continue to be on the rise

for organizations. We found that the mean annualized cost for 257 benchmarked organizations is $7.6 million per year,
present findings to last years average of benchmark studies.

with a range from $0.5 million to $61 million per company each year. Last years mean cost for 235 benchmarked organizations was

We observe a 10.4 percent net change from last year (excluding the Russian sample).
Cyber crime cost varies by organizational size . Results reveal a positive relationship between
organizational size (as measured by enterprise seats) and annualized cost.3 However, based on enterprise seats,
we determined that small organizations incur a significantly higher per capita cost
than larger organizations ($1,601 versus $437). All industries fall victim to cybercrime,
but to different degrees. The average annualized cost of cyber crime appears to vary by
industry segment, where organizations in energy & utilities and financial services
experience substantially higher cyber crime costs than organizations in media, life
sciences and healthcare. The most costly cyber crimes are those caused by malicious insiders, denial of services and
$7.2 million.

web-based attacks. These account for more than 55 percent of all cyber crime costs per organization on an annual basis. Mitigation
of such attacks requires enabling technologies such as SIEM, intrusion prevention systems, applications security testing solutions
and enterprise GRC solutions. Cyber attacks can get costly if not resolved quickly . Results show a
positive relationship between the time to contain an attack and organizational cost. Please note that resolution does not necessarily

some attacks remain dormant and

undetected (i.e., modern day attacks). The average time to contain a cyber attack
was 31 days, with an average cost to participating organizations of $639,462 during
this 31-day period. This represents a 23 percent increase from last years estimated
average cost of $509,665, which was based upon a 27-day remediation period . Results
show that malicious insider attacks can take more than 58 days on average to contain. Business disruption
represent the highest external cost, followed by the costs associated with
information loss.4 On an annualized basis, business disruption accounts for 38 percent of
total external costs, which include costs associated with business process failures
and lost employee productivity. Detection is the most costly internal activity
followed by recovery . On an annualized basis, detection and recovery costs combined
account for 53 percent of the total internal activity cost with cash outlays and direct
labor representing the majority of these costs. Activities relating to IT security in the network layer receive
mean that the attack has been completely stopped. For example,

the highest budget allocation. In contrast, the host layer receives the lowest funding level.

Econ decline causes nuclear war

Hutchinson 14 (Martin, Business and Economics Editor at United Press
International, MBA from Harvard Business School, former international merchant
banker, 1-3-14, The chilling echoes of 1914, a century on Wall Street Journal)
http://online.wsj.com/articles/william-galston-secular-stagnation-may-be-for-real1409095263,

The years before 1914 saw the formation of trade blocs separated by high tariff
barriers. Back then, the world was dominated by several roughly equivalent powers, albeit with different strengths
and weaknesses. Today, the world is similarly multi-polar. The United States is in a position of clear leadership, but
China is coming up fast. Europe is weaker than it was, but is still a force to be reckoned with. Japan, Russia, Brazil,
India are also too powerful to ignore. A hundred years ago, big international infrastructure projects such as the
Berlin-Baghdad Railway, and before it the Suez Canal, were built to protect favored trading. Todays equivalent may
be the bilateral mining partnerships forged between, for instance, China and mineral-rich African states. Today, the
World Trade Organization offers some defence against tariffs. But protectionism could be become entrenched if
prolonged economic stagnation leads countries to pursue their own narrow interests. Germany, Austria, Russia and
France lost between 20 and 35 percent of national output between 1913 and 1918, according to Angus Maddisons
data used in Stephen Broadberrys The Economics of World War One: A Comparative Analysis. British GDP
declined in 1914 and 1915, but grew 15 percent over the four years, as did the U.S. economy. The 37 million

if history were to repeat itself,

global conflict could be both more universal and more destructive. Nuclear weapons
proliferate. Warped diplomatic anger could lead to the deployment of chemical
and biological devices. Electromagnetic pulses could wipe out our fragile
electronic networks. Like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand that sparked World War One, the catalyst for
military and civilian casualties may tell a more accurate story but
the

cataclysm might be something quite surprising. A global run on bank and other investment assets or an outbreak of
hyperinflation, maybe? These threats get more serious the more policymakers pump up equity, bond, property and

If global wealth evaporates, or is proven to be an illusion, todays largely

global entente could be smashed with precipitous speed.

banking bubbles.
cordial

1AC Internet Adv

International outrage at NSA surveillance threatens internet
globalizationsupport is growing for a Balkanization of the
internet
Fontaine, President @ Center for a New American Security, 14
"Bringing Liberty Online Reenergizing the Internet Freedom Agenda in a PostSnowden Era", Sept 2014, Center for a New American Security,
www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publicationspdf/CNAS_BringingLibertyOnline_Fontaine.pdf
The Snowden Fallout and the Internet Freedom Agenda
The dramatic revelations about NSA spying that began to emerge in June 2013 provoked
a storm of international reaction .17 Political leaders expressed outrage at
American surveillance practices and threatened a raft of retaliatory
measures. President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil cancelled a planned state visit to the United States and the
Brazilian government later organized an international meeting (NetMundial) to discuss
the future of Internet governance.18 German Chancellor Angela Merkel was deeply affronted by

the alleged monitoring of her personal cellphone. Chinese and other officials charged America with blatant
hypocrisy. The fallout affected the private sector as well; where previously the focus of many observers had been on

the gaze shifted

to the role American corporations play wittingly or not in enabling U.S.
surveillance. Countries that had been the target of American reproaches
rebuked the U.S. government for what they saw as hypocrisy.
The United Nations and other international venues became platforms for
international criticism of the United States. Germany and Brazil together
sponsored a resolution adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in late 2013 backing a right
to privacy in the digital age.19 In June 2014, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights
issued a report that endorsed digital privacy as a human right and criticized mass surveillance as
a dangerous habit rather than an exceptional measure. 20 Some
European officials began to question the existing Internet governance
model itself. In a statement, the European Commission said, Recent revelations of largethe aid given by U.S. companies to foreign governments engaged in Internet repression,

scale surveillance have called into question the stewardship of the US

when it comes to Internet Governance. So given the US-centric model of
Internet Governance currently in place, it is necessary to broker a smooth
transition to a more global model.21
Nongovernmental groups that might otherwise be partners with the U.S.
government in promoting Internet freedom reacted sharply as well.
Reporters Without Borders, for instance, listed the NSA as an Enemy of the Internet in its 2014
report on entities engaged in online repression. Drawing no distinction between surveillance aimed at protecting
national security and surveillance intended to suppress free expression and political dissent, the organization

declared the NSA no better than [its] Chinese, Russian, Iranian or

Bahraini counterparts.22 Mass surveillance methods used by democracies
like the United States, it added, are all the more intolerable as they are already being
used by authoritarian countries such as Iran, China, Turkmenistan, Saudi
Arabia and Bahrain to justify their own violations of freedom of
information.23 Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, said, Mass surveillance
is the most immediate threat to the open Internet and the most insidious because we

The Electronic Frontier Foundation asserted that mass

surveillance is inherently a disproportionate measure that violates human
rights,25 and officials with Human Rights Watch observed that the surveillance scandal would render it more
cant see it.24

difficult for the U.S. government to press for better corporate practices and for companies to resist overly broad
surveillance mandates.

Now, its chief researcher said, the vision and

credibility of the U.S. and its allies on Internet freedom is in tatters. 26

The reactions to the Snowden disclosures threatened to go beyond verbal
denunciations, diplomatic protests and critical press. The most serious
commercial fallout came in the rising support for data localization
requirements. Russia in July 2014 approved legislation that requires data
operators to store the personal data of its citizens within the countrys borders.27
Indonesia, Brazil and Vietnam have also called for their citizens data held by
companies such as Facebook to be stored domestically.28 Data localization has been
debated in the European Parliament and elsewhere on the continent as
well.29 Apart from the chilling effect on innovation and the loss of business to America companies, Internet
freedom itself could become a casualty of such mandates . If a users data
must be held within the borders of a repressive country, its government
will have new opportunities to censor, monitor and disrupt online
information flows.
Such moves, combined with increasing questions about the
multistakeholder approach to Internet governance (and possible support for a
government driven approach), together give rise to concerns about the
potential Balkanization of the Internet , in which a constellation of
national-level systems could take the place of the current global online
infrastructure. As former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker warned, The Snowden
disclosures are being used to renationalize the Internet and roll back
changes that have weakened government control of information. 30

Internet balkanization fuels nationalism and international

frictioncauses global wars
Schwartz, 2014 Peter, co-founder of the Global Business Network, WARNING: The Internet Might End in
December http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter_schwartz/end-of-internet_b_5856168.html

THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT If they succeed, it very well may lead to the end of
the world as we know it. There will be no Internet. There will be many nets: ChinaNet,
Euronet, maybe Deutsche Net and France net and Brazil Net and Russia
Net. It will resemble the world before the Internet with many private
networks and a constant challenge of interconnection.

I remember carrying around

The
Internet was created to take the friction out of digital communications,
whether those borders were university boundaries or national borders. The digital borders will
begin to rise and with it the cost of doing everything will begin to grow .
all the devices I needed to use to connect to the early Internet because of a variety of technical standards.

The

nations of the world will once again begin to diverge. Economies of

scale will disappear.

A HIGH FRICTION FUTURE

As we disconnect, nationalism is

likely to grow. We will be in a high friction world with the opportunities

for conflict growing fast. It is a recipe for poverty and war. Just as SmootHawley was a staggeringly self-destructive act that made the Great
Depression much worse, so the fragmentation of the Internet driven by
the desire for national control will accelerate the end of the second era of
globalization.

ECPA is the only way the US can regain trust as a responsible

steward of the internet and avoid splinternet
Gary Shapiro, 14, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association,
Why U.S. cloud companies and the economy are under threat,
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/220332-why-us-cloud-companiesand-the-economy-are-under-threat
In the wake of the National Security Agency (NSA) leaks, Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission
said, If

European cloud customers cannot trust the U.S. government, then

maybe they won't trust U.S. cloud providers either. If I am right, there are
multibillion-euro consequences for American companies . Unfortunately, she is right
and American companies are now enduring the backlash in the form of
data localization. In fact, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) met last week with
Silicon Valley tech companies to discuss the problem. Wydens meeting was much-needed, as the peripheral

NSA spying continues to affect scores of U.S. companies. For

example, the Brazilian government announced it would abandon Microsoft
Outlook in favor of a local email system hosted on Brazilian servers. ServInt, a
damage of

Virginia-based company that provides website hosting services, has seen a 30-percent decline in foreign sign-ups.
And a Canadian software company recently reported a clients demand that its data not be routed through the U.S.

The steady stream of leaks about the NSAs data collection capabilities
has damaged the reputation of the$150 billion U.S. cloud computing
industry. According to the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), the industry could
lose as much as 20 percent of its revenue to foreign companies that
capitalize on the fear that personal information will be caught in a U.S.
dragnet if their data is stored on U.S. servers . In China, companies such as
Neusoft and ChinaSoft are seeing increased sales of their products and
improving share prices. Norwegian email service Runbox reported a 34-percent annual increase in
customers. Wuala, a Swiss cloud provider, says it has more than doubled its
growth as Switzerland touts the benefits of the countrys political
neutrality and privacy laws for its data storage companies. Further
complicating matters is the possible extraterritorial application of U.S. law
to citizens of foreign countries. In July, a New York judge ruled that U.S. search warrants can reach
the digital information of foreign persons stored overseas. If upheld, this ruling will magnify the distrust of U.S.

This poses
potential danger to American tech companies that want to provide secure
cloud storage to both domestic and foreign clients. Hopefully, the U.S. government will
change its position and stop the madness of hurting U.S. tech firms competitiveness. U.S. tech
companies ability to compete depends on meeting the security and
privacy concerns of their customers. Thats why a coalition of companies
like Microsoft, Yahoo and Google is calling for reasonable reforms of American
intelligence programs to promote greater transparency (and, in turn,
cloud providers because data anywhere could be accessible to American law enforcement.

greater trust) around the globe. Our nations tech leaders support efforts such as Sen.
Patrick Leahys (D-Vt.) USA FREEDOM Act and bipartisan efforts to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy
Act of 1986, which would ban bulk collection of Americans phone records and
Internet data and eliminate arbitrary rules dictating when law
enforcement agencies can access stored communications. Legislation
bringing narrowly-tailored rules and greater transparency to government
intelligence activities and the scope of law enforcements reach will
assure American and foreign consumers their information is safe with U.S.
companies. This will begin to repair the damage done to our tech industry .
As the E.U.s Kroes remarked about living in what she called an age of total information, Potential doesnt count for
much in an atmosphere of distrust. European cloud users and American cloud providers and policy makers need to

the U.S. cloud industry has huge potential. To

activate that potential, the public sector must provide the private sector
and its clients with the certainty they need to thrive.
think carefully about that. Indeed,

Scenario 1Censorship
China is using the Snowden leaks as momentum to push for
internet sovereigntya policy that would allow repressive
regimes to sensor digital contentthe US must rally a coalition
of pro-internet-freedom countries to prevent fragmentation
Chang, Research Associate @ the Center for a New American
Security, 14
Amy, "How the 'Internet with Chinese Characteristics' Is Rupturing the Web", Dec 15
2014, The World Post, www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-chang-/china-internetsovereignty_b_6325192.html
China is openly undermining the United States' vision of a free and open
Internet . Motivated by maintaining the fragile balance between information control, social and political
stability, and continued modernization and economic growth for an online population of over 600 million, the
Chinese government is attempting to alter how nations understand their role in Internet governance

through

a concept called "Internet sovereignty." Internet sovereignty refers to the

idea that a country has the right to control Internet activity within its own
borders, and it is what China refers to as a natural extension of a nation-state's authority to handle its own
domestic and foreign affairs. For the United States and other Western nations,
however, Internet governance is delegated to an inclusive and distributed set of
stakeholders including government, civil society, the private sector, academia, and national and international
organizations (also known as the multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance ). Lu
Wei, the head of the State Internet Information Office and the director of a powerful cybersecurity strategy group
comprised of China's top leaders, is the administrative ringleader of the Chinese Internet. With a long background
working in China's propaganda apparatus, Lu has been behind China's recent campaigns promoting its conception
of Internet sovereignty abroad, including a trip to Washington D.C. and Silicon Valley in the first week of December.
In his Dec. 2 speech at the U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum, for example, he attempted to blur the distinction
between U.S. and Chinese models of Internet governance. He equated the U.S.-backed multi-stakeholder and
Chinese-backed "multilateral" (state-centric) approaches to Internet governance, saying, "Without 'multilateral'
there would be no 'multi-stakeholders.'" Lu's influence is backed by years of active Chinese promotion of Internet
sovereignty in domestic propaganda efforts, government White Papers, Internet conferences, bilateral and

administrative
control of the Internet fits neatly in China's broader cybersecurity
strategy: to maintain the Chinese Communist Party rule over China.
multilateral meetings, and United Nations meetings. As I argue in my recent report,

Securing Internet activity would allow China to assert control over

information dissemination, to sensor sensitive websites and social media,
and to stem other potential sources of unrest that could challenge CCP
legitimacy. China's list of prohibited content online includes any information that: endangers state security,
damages state honor and interests, spreads rumors, and disrupts social order and stability. These draconian
regulations are further reinforced by Chinese literature on cybersecurity strategy. Chinese cyber scholars, for
example, have noted instances where loss of control over the Internet toppled regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.
Nothing frightens the ruling CCP more than the prospect of an uncontrolled Internet having a similar outcome in
China. China has engaged the international community on this front, wishing to signal to other countries that it is a

Understanding that international

norms and law have yet to codify Internet governance and cyber activity,
China has invested significant effort to set the course for international
responsible and cooperative actor on technology issues.

norms in Internet governance. China's push for Internet sovereignty

gained momentum abroad after Edward Snowden released information
about U.S. National Security Agency surveillance programs. Capitalizing
on the anti-U.S. sentiment in other authoritarian countries like Russia,
Iran, and Saudi Arabia, China wooed developing countries with growing
online populations to consider the benefits of control of the Internet.

China

has also employed an engagement strategy of candor and trust to promote its message, though it often backfires.
This November, China hosted its first World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, the theme of which was "An
Interconnected World Shared and Governed by All." The conference hosted a number of business executives and
government officials from China and abroad to, according to President Xi Jinping's welcome letter, "contribute
creative ideas, pool wisdom and build consensus, to ensure that the Internet will bring even greater benefit to
mankind." By name, the conference's theme aligns with Western conceptions of Internet governance, but China's
underlying motivation for holding the conference was quite different. On the last night before the end of the
conference, organizers distributed a draft Wuzhen Declaration that was to be released at the closing ceremony
several hours later the next morning, giving attendees few hours to object to the content or submit revisions. The
declaration provided nine recommendations for Internet governance, including one to "respect Internet sovereignty
of all countries. We should respect each country's rights to the development, use and governance of the Internet,
refrain from abusing resources and technological strengths to violate other countries' Internet sovereignty." As soon
as news broke of China's intentions with the declaration, the conference organizers omitted any mention of it during
the closing ceremony. Yet, Internet sovereignty is only one aspect of China's cybersecurity strategy, and its
realization may impede or contradict with other priorities, such as economic growth or expanding Internet access to
citizens. In light of these competing objectives, it will be difficult for China to sustain this model of "Internet with
Chinese characteristics." EXPAND OR CONTROL? Expanding Internet access will increase the number of citizens
whose Internet activity China will have to monitor or control, potentially straining the central government's
resources. Further, limiting information access and could negatively impact Chinese domestic company aspirations
enter to international markets or limit information that would assist economic growth. Lastly, a tightly regulated
Internet has deterred some companies -- such as Google, which left China in 2010 over Internet censorship

Regardless of whether China's blunt

approach to promoting its vision is effective or not, China will continue to
regulations -- from conducting business in China.

pursue this counter narrative and will continue to attempt to convince the
international community to conform to the concept of Internet
sovereignty. Despite this undertaking , both domestic and international
audiences have noted China's limitations and obstacles, and the
countervailing voices promoting Internet freedom are equally potent.

Internet censorship risk disease pandemics

McKenna-Wired-8/13
http://www.wired.com/2013/08/ap_mers/

culture magazine-21.09 open vs. closed politics FOLLOW WIRED Twitter Facebook
RSS
Censorship Doesnt Just Stifle Speech It Can Spread Disease
The wall of silence around what came to be known as SARS (severe acute
respiratory syndrome) cracked only by chance . An anonymous man in a chat room,
describing himself as a teacher in Guangdong Province, made the acquaintance of a teacher in
California. On February 9, 2003, he asked her if she had heard of the illness ravaging his city. She forwarded
his message to an epidemiologist she knew, and on February 10 he posted it to ProMED, a listserv that disease
experts use as an informal surveillance system.

what was to come.

That email was the worlds only warning for

By mid-March there were already 150 cases of the new disease in seven countries.

SARS wound up sickening more than 8,000 people and killing almost 800 in just nine months.

Luckily, the

disease was quelled in China and Canada (where travelers from Hong Kong touched off an
outbreak in Toronto) before it had a chance to evolve into a more efficiently
spreading strain . Many experts believe that given time to mutate in
humans, SARS might have become a deadly pandemic. EVEN IN THE
INTERNET AGE ONE RESTRICTIVE GOVERNMENT CAN PUT THE WORLD
AT RISK. With more warning, SARS might not even have gained a foothold
outside of China. In Canada the virus quickly infected 251 people, killing 43. By contrast, the US had time

to write new quarantine regulations, which made a difference: America had just 27 SARS cases, with no deaths and
no hospital spread. To health authorities who lived through SARS, MERS feels unnervingly familiar. The two
organisms are cousins: Both are coronaviruses, named for their crown-shaped profile visible with an electron
microscope. For this disease too, the first notice was a posting to ProMEDthis time by a doctor working in Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia, describing a patient who had died several months before. That September 2012 communiqu, which
cost the doctor his job, helped physicians in London realize that a Qatari man they were treating was part of the
same outbreak. From there, MERS unspooled. People also fell ill in the United Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Italy,
and Tunisia. But Saudi Arabia, home to the vast majority of confirmed cases, remained far from forthcoming about
what it knew. Announcements from the Ministry of Health supplied little useful detail and discussed illnesses and
deaths that happened some indeterminate time in the pastpossibly days, possibly even weeks. So far the number
of MERS cases is just a fraction of the toll from SARS, but health officials fear that the real count could be higher.
Especially worrisome is the death rate among the afflicted: While SARS has been estimated to kill roughly 10
percent of its victims, MERS so far has killed 56 percent. No One Thought It Would Happen Again Certainly
censorship about the spread of disease is nothing new. The largest well-documented pandemic, the great flu of
1918, is called the Spanish Influenza in old accounts not because it started in Spain (it may have begun in Kansas)
but because Spain, as a neutral nation during World War I, had no wartime curbs on news reports of deaths. To this
day, no one is sure how many people died in the 1918 flu; the best guess hovers around 50 million worldwide.
Regardless, since the virus took 11 months to circle the planet, some of those millions might have lived had the
later-infected countries been warned to prepare. After SARS, no one thought that it would happen again. In 2005
the 194 nations that vote in WHOs governing body promised not to conceal outbreaks. And beyond that promise,
public-health researchers have believed that Internet chatterpatterns of online discussion about diseasewould
undercut any attempts at secrecy. But theyve been disappointed to see that their web-scraping tools have picked
up remarkably little from the Middle East: While Saudi residents certainly use the Internet, what they can access is
stifled, and what they are willing to say appears muted.

Nearly 100 years after the great flu,

it turns out that old-fashioned censorship can still stymie the world in its
ability to prepare for a pandemic.

So what now? The behind-door seething may be having an

effect. A WHO team was finally allowed into Saudi Arabia in June, and the Saudi government has announced limits
on the number of visas it will issue for this years hajj. Meanwhile, governments and transnational health agencies
have already taken the steps that they can, warning hospitals and readying labs. With luck, the disease will stay
contained: In July, WHO declined to elevate MERS to a public health emergency of international concern. But the
organization warned it might change its mind laterand if it does, we should fear the worst, because our medical
resources are few. At present there is no rapid-detection method, no vaccine, and no cure. While we wait to see the
full extent of MERS, the one thing the world can do is to relearn the lesson of SARS: Just as diseases will always
cross borders, governments will always try to evade blame. That problem cant be solved with better devices or
through a more sophisticated public-health dragnet. The solution lies in something public health has failed to
accomplish despite centuries of trying: persuading governments that transparency needs to trump concerns about

their own reputations.

Information can outrun our deadly new diseases, but only if

its allowed to spread.

Chinese epidemics causes state collapse and nuclear war

Huang, assistant professor I nternational R elations at Seton Hall University,
2003 (http://www.cbaci.org/pubs/special_reports/number_7.pdf)
Given Chinas status as a major player in international relations, the
resulting spillover can have serious implications for health , stability,
prosperity, and security at the regional and global levels. To begin with, the
health challenges in China could influence the course of epidemics
elsewhere in the world, including the United States . The impact can be felt in various
ways. For example, China has currently one-fifth of the worlds population and one-seventh of the worlds disease

Against the background of a globalized

economy, diseases originating in China can be spread and transported
globally through trade, travel, and population movements. Not coincidentally, New
burden, measured in years of healthy life lost.227

York City, which has one of the largest Chinese immigrant groups in the United States, also has the highest rate of
tuberculosis in this nation. According to the Department of Health, the percentage of new tuberculosis cases among
foreign-born New Yorkers rose from 18 percent in 1992 to 64 percent in 2001.228 Since February 2003, a form of
atypical pneumonia called SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) has spread at the speed of a jet to Southeast
Asia, Europe, and North America, prompting WHO to declare the ailment a worldwide health threat. According to
WHO, as of 29 March 29 2003, a cumulative total of 1550 cases and 54 deaths have been reported from 13
countries. Most scientists believe that the new disease first emerged in Guangdong of Southern China, where the

As
immigrants from China and other developing countries are perceived as
creating further demands on the public health system and other public
services, the issue of minorities and immigration could become a sensitive
domestic political issue. The 2002 presidential election in France highlights the danger of such an
issue being exploited by political extremists to challenge a countrys political system. While the potential
dangers in this scenario should not be exaggerated, the U.S. commitment
to antiterrorist wars could create an anti-immigrant public mood, which
might be exploited by the politically ambitious to fan xenophobia and
racism and influence election outcomes. Moreover, the increased burden of
disease diminishes the governments capacity to address broader political
and social demands. Inability to meet these demands can then produce
massive population movements, which not only facilitate the spread of
diseases, but also lead to heightened regional-wide tensions and
cumulative SARS cases from 16 November 2002 to 31 March 2003 stand at 1153 cases and 40 deaths.

destabilization . Already, the collapse of the health system in North Korea

has added to its socioeconomic crisis, resulting in a flow of 100,000-200,000
people into China.229 As more and more North Koreans chose to seek asylum in foreign diplomatic
compounds, Chinas relations with its East Asian neighbors, especially South
Korea and Japan, became strained.230 The North Korean case by no means
represents the worst scenario. History is full of examples showing that
the weakening of state bodies, if caught in a crisis, can easily spark
coups, revolts, and other political and ethnic struggles to secure control
over resources .231 If this leads to the ultimate collapse of state capacity in
China, todays recipient of refugees could be tomorrows exporter. At the
stake are the lives and welfare of the largest population on earth . In addition,

the nation borders 14 other countries. This has tremendous implications

for regional and global stability and security . As the author of the apocalyptic novel Yellow
Peril warned in 1992: Imagine someday chaos in China leads to shrinking production, and the land can no longer
support so many people, the desire to survive will undoubtedly drive Chinese to cross the national border and head
for other countries. In the past, hundreds and thousands of Vietnamese traveled far away across the sea,

What kind of chain reaction will be produced if millions

of, tens of millions of, or hundred of millions of Chinese move to other
countries? What is the end result? We cannot predict this by now, but this is surely going to be
devastating.232 Equally important, an unsustainable economy or state collapse
spawned by poor health will deal a serious blow to the global economy .
shocking the whole world.

Among the developing countries, China has been the largest recipient of foreign investment, averaging about $40
billion per year during the late 1990s. As foreign companies are shifting manufacturing to China, the country is
becoming a workshop for the world. As demonstrated in the 1998 Asian financial crisis,

Chinas robust

economy can be the anchor of global economic stability . China also has
the potential to replace Japan as the engine of economic growth in Asia. The
rising market demand in China has been the main factor behind the recent increase of exports in Taiwan, South
Korea, and Singapore. Only one quarter of the size of Japanese economy, China is now the market to $40 billion
worth of Asian export goods, which is half of the size of the Japanese market.233 A world economy that is so
dependent on China as an industrial lifeline can become increasingly vulnerable to a major supply disruption caused
by war, terrorism, social unrest, or a natural disaster.234 Last but not least,

social and political

instability caused by poor health can combine with the authoritarian

characteristics of the Chinese regime to make it war-prone .235 It is not
farfetched to imagine that authoritarian leaders in China might undertake
aggressive action abroad to divert the publics attention from domestic
political turmoil. Alternatively, the single- party dictatorship can be strengthened as the leaders embrace
hyper-nationalism to rally the masses and restore political order. The end result will be a fascist
state that by definition praises military virtues and embarks upon military
expansion. While this probability remains quite low, the third way of the corporate state, or the market
economy with Chinese characteristics, seems to make the latter outcome more likely.236 In the words of David
Shambaugh, China may become more confrontational externally, even as it becomes more fragmented

The state of the Chinese state is of clear national interest to the

United States. Arguably, U.S.-China relations are the most important and
most complex bilateral relationship in the world. China is the fourth largest trading
internally.237

partner of the United States, while the United States is the second largest in trading, the largest exporting market,
and the biggest investor for China. With economic interdependence that high, any major upheaval in China is likely

a failed state tends to

become a haven for the new enemies of global order because it gives
extremist groups freedom of operation, with dangerous consequences a
world away. State failure in China would also mean the loosening of its
to have profound negative repercussions on the U.S. economy. Furthermore,

grip on nuclear weapons, increasing the threat of unauthorized access to

nuclear materials or nuclear weapons by some terrorist groups or
terrorist states . As far as nuclear nonproliferation is concerned, Chinas
dubious export behavior only makes the latter outcome more likely . In

addition, China is listed by the U.S. government as one of the countries of greatest concern regarding biological
weapons (BW) proliferation. 238 This led former U.S. President Bill Clinton to conclude: The weakness of great
nations can pose as big a challenge to America as their strengths.239 While the rise of China as a belligerent
superpower is not in the interest of the international community, the collapse of China into a messy state or
failed state can be equally dangerous, given the sheer size and the strategic importance of this country.240 In

growing health problems in China will not only harm the economic,
social, political, and military structure in China, but will also undermine
short,

economic and security interests of the international community, including

the United States.

Scenario 2Cloud Computing

Domestic surveillance erodes American competitiveness in the
cloud-computing industryother countries are using the
specter of NSA surveillance as a selling point, costing
American companies billions
Kehl, Policy Analyst at New Americas Open Technology
Institute, 14
Daielle, Kevin Bankston, Policy Directorat OTI, Robyn Greene, Policy Counsel at OTI,
Robert Morgus, Research Associate at OTI, "Surveillance Costs: The NSA's Impact on
the Economy, Internet Freedom & Cybersecurity", July 2014, New America's Open
Technology Institute Policy Paper,
https://www.newamerica.org/downloads/Surveilance_Costs_Final.pdf
Costs to the U.S. Cloud Computing Industry and Related Business Trust in
American businesses has taken a significant hit since the initial reports on the
PRISM program suggested that the NSA was directly tapping into the servers of
nine U.S. companies to obtain customer data for national security
investigations.28 The Washington Posts original story on the program provoked an uproar in the media and
prompted the CEOs of several major companies to deny knowledge of or participation in the program.29 The exact
nature of the requests made through the PRISM program was later clarified,30 but the public attention on

relationship between American companies and the NSA

still

the

created a

significant trust gap , especially in industries where users entrust

companies to store sensitive personal and commercial data. Last years national
security leaks have also had a commercial and financial impact on American technology
companies that have provided these records, noted Representative Bob Goodlatte, a prominent Republican
leader and Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in May 2014. They have experienced
backlash from both American and foreign consumers and have had their
competitive standing in the global marketplace damaged.31 Given
heightened concerns about the NSAs ability to access data stored by U.S.
companies, it is no surprise that American companies offering cloud
computing and webhosting services are among those experiencing the
most acute economic fallout from NSA surveillance . Within just a few weeks of the first
disclosures, reports began to emerge that American cloud computing companies like Dropbox and Amazon Web
Services were starting to lose business to overseas competitors.32 The CEO of Artmotion, one of Switzerlands
largest offshore hosting providers, reported in July 2013 that his company had seen a 45 percent jump in revenue
since the first leaks,33 an early sign that the countrys perceived neutrality and strong data and privacy
protections34 could potentially be turned into a serious competitive advantage.35

Foreign companies

are clearly poised to benefit from growing fears about the security
ramifications of keeping data in the United States. In a survey of 300
British and Canadian businesses released by PEER 1 in January 2014,36 25
percent of respondents indicated that they were moving data outside of

the U.S. as a result of the NSA revelations. An overwhelming number of

the companies surveyed indicated that security and data privacy were
their top concerns, with 81 percent stating that they want to know
exactly where their data is being hosted. Seventy percent were even
willing to sacrifice performance in order to ensure that their data was
protected.37 It appears that little consideration was given over the past decade to the potential economic
repercussions if the NSAs secret programs were revealed.38 This failure was acutely demonstrated by the Obama
Administrations initial focus on reassuring the public that its programs primarily affect non-Americans, even though
non-Americans are also heavy users of American companies products. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg put a fine
point on the issue, saying that the government blew it in its response to the scandal. He noted sarcastically: The
government response was, Oh dont worry, were not spying on any Americans. Oh, wonderful: thats really helpful
to companies [like Facebook] trying to serve people around the world, and thats really going to inspire confidence

certain parts of the

American technology industry are particularly vulnerable to international
backlash since growth is heavily dependent on foreign markets. For
example, the U.S. cloud computing industry has grown from an estimated
$46 billion in 2008 to $150 billion in 2014, with nearly 50 percent of
worldwide cloud-computing revenues coming from the U.S.40 R Street
Institutes January 2014 policy study concluded that in the next few years,
new products and services that rely on cloud computing will become
increasingly pervasive. Cloud computing is also the root of development
in American internet companies.39 As Zuckerbergs comments reflect,

for the emerging generation of Web-based applications home security,

outpatient care, mobile payment, distance learning, efficient energy use
and driverless cars, writes R Streets Steven Titch in the study. And it is
a research area where the United States is an undisputed leader .41 This
trajectory may be dramatically altered, however, as a consequence of the
NSAs surveillance programs. Economic forecasts after the Snowden leaks
have predicted significant, ongoing losses for the cloud-computing
industry in the next few years . An August 2013 study by the Information
Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) estimated that revelations about
the NSAs PRISM program could cost the American cloud computing industry $22
to $35 billion over the next three years.42 On the low end, the ITIF projection suggests that
U.S. cloud computing providers would lose 10 percent of the foreign market share to European or Asian
competitors, totaling in about $21.5 billion in losses; on the high-end, the $35 billion figure represents about 20
percent of the companies foreign market share.

Because the cloud computing industry is

undergoing rapid growth right now a 2012 Gartner study predicted

global spending on cloud computing would increase by 100 percent from
2012 to 2016, compared to a 3 percent overall growth rate in the tech
industry as a whole43 vendors in this sector are particularly vulnerable
to shifts in the market . Failing to recruit new customers or losing a
competitive advantage due to exploitation by rival companies in other
countries can quickly lead to a dwindling market share. The ITIF study
further notes that the percentage lost to foreign competitors could go
higher if foreign governments enact protectionist trade barriers that
effectively cut out U.S. providers, citing early calls from German data
protection authorities to suspend the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor program (which will
be discussed at length in the next section).44 As the R Street Policy Study highlights, Ironically, the NSA
turned the competitive edge U.S. companies have in cloud computing into

a liability, especially in Europe.45 In a follow up to the ITIF study, Forrester Research analyst
James Staten argued that the think tanks estimates were low, suggesting
that the actual figure could be as high as $180 billion over three years .46
Staten highlighted two additional impacts not considered in the ITIF study .
The first is that U.S. customers not just foreign companies would also avoid US cloud
providers , especially for international and overseas business. The ITIF study
predicted that American companies would retain their domestic market share, but Staten argued that the economic

You dont have to be a French

company, for example, to be worried about the US government snooping
in the data about your French clients, he wrote.47 Moreover, the analysis highlighted a
second and far more costly impact: that foreign cloud providers , too, would
blowback from the revelations would be felt at home, too.

lose as much as 20 percent of overseas and domestic business because of

similar spying programs conducted by other governments . Indeed, the NSA
disclosures have prompted a fundamental re-examination of the role of intelligence services in conducting
coordinated cross-border surveillance, according to a November 2013 report by Privacy International on the Five
Eyes intelligence partnership between the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New

as the surveillance landscape around the world

becomes more clear, it could have a serious negative impact on all hosting
and outsourcing services, resulting in a 25 percent decline in the overall IT
services market, or about $180 billion in losses .49 Recent reports suggest
that things are, in fact, moving in the direction that analysts like Castro
and Staten suggested.50 A survey of 1,000 [Information and Communications Technology
(ICT)] decision-makers from France, Germany, Hong Kong, the UK, and the
USA in February and March 2014 found that the disclosures have had a direct
Zealand.48 Staten predicts that

impact on how companies around the world think about ICT and cloud
computing in particular .51 According to the data from NTT Communications, 88 percent of
decision-makers are changing their purchasing behavior when it comes to
the cloud, with the vast majority indicating that the location of the data is
very important. The results do not bode well for recruitment of new
customers, either62 percent of those currently not storing data in the
cloud indicated that the revelations have since prevented them from
moving their ICT systems there. And finally, 82 percent suggested that
they agree with proposals made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in February
2014 to have separate data networks for Europe, which will be discussed in further detail in
Part III of this report. Providing direct evidence of this trend, Servint, a Virginiabased webhosting company, reported in June 2014 that international
clients have declined by as much as half, dropping from approximately 60
percent of its business to 30 percent since the leaks began.52 With faith in
U.S. companies on the decline, foreign companies are stepping in to take
advantage of shifting public perceptions . As Georg Mascolo and Ben Scott predicted in a
joint paper published by the Wilson Center and the New America Foundation in October 2013, Major commercial
actors on both continents are preparing offensive and defensive strategies to battle in the market for a competitive

For example, Runbox, a small Norwegian

company that offers secure email service, reported a 34 percent jump in
customers since June 2013.54 Runbox markets itself as a safer email and webhosting provider for
advantage drawn from Snowdens revelations.53

both individual and commercial customers, promising that it will never disclose any user data unauthorized, track

Since the NSA revelations, the company has

touted its privacy-centric design and the fact that its servers are located
your usage, or display any advertisements.55

in Norway as a competitive advantage. Being firmly located in Norway, the Runbox email
service is governed by strict privacy regulations and is a safe alternative to American email services as well as
cloud-based services that move data across borders and jurisdictions, company representatives wrote on its blog
in early 2014.56 F-Secure, a Finnish cloud storage company, similarly emphasizes the fact that its roots [are] in
Finland, where privacy is a fiercely guarded value.57

Presenting products and services as

NSA-proof or safer alternatives to American-made goods is an

increasingly viable strategy for foreign companies hoping to chip away at
U.S. tech competiveness .58

The current business climate in the technology sector will do

lasting damage to American economic competitivenessonly
meaningful government reform can change the economic
trajectory
Kehl, Policy Analyst at New Americas Open Technology
Institute, 14
Daielle, Kevin Bankston, Policy Directorat OTI, Robyn Greene, Policy Counsel at OTI,
Robert Morgus, Research Associate at OTI, "Surveillance Costs: The NSA's Impact on
the Economy, Internet Freedom & Cybersecurity", July 2014, New America's Open
Technology Institute Policy Paper,
https://www.newamerica.org/downloads/Surveilance_Costs_Final.pdf
Costs to Overseas Tech Sales
The economic impact of NSA spying does not end with the American cloud
computing industry. According to The New York Times, Even as Washington grapples
with

the diplomatic and political fallout of Mr.

Snowdens leaks, the more urgent issue,

companies and analysts say, is economic .59 In the past year, a number of
American companies have reported declining sales in overseas markets
like China
disclosures),

(where, it must be noted, suspicion of the American government was already high before the NSA

loss of customers including foreign governments, and increased

competition from non-U.S. services marketing themselves as secure

alternatives to popular American products.
There is already significant evidence linking NSA surveillance to direct
harm to U.S. economic interests . In November 2013, Cisco became one of the first
companies to publicly discuss the impact of the NSA on its business, reporting that orders from
China fell 18 percent and that its worldwide revenue would decline 8 to 10
percent in the fourth quarter, in part because of continued sales weakness in China.60 New
orders in the developing world fell 12 percent in the third quarter, with the
Brazilian market dropping roughly 25 percent of its Cisco sales .61 Although
John Chambers, Ciscos CEO, was hesitant to blame all losses on the NSA,
he acknowledged that it was likely a factor in declining Chinese sales62 and later admitted that he had
never seen as fast a decline in an emerging market as the drop in China in late 2013.63 These numbers were also
released before documents in May 2014 revealed that the NSAs Tailored Access Operations unit had intercepted
network gearincluding Cisco routersbeing shipped to target organizations in order to covertly install implant
firmware on them before they were delivered.64 In response, Chambers wrote in a letter to the Obama
Administration that if these allegations are true,

these actions will undermine confidence

in our industry and in the ability of technology companies to deliver

products globally. 65
Much like Cisco, Qualcomm, IBM, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard all
reported in late 2013 that sales were down in China as a result of the
NSA revelations .66 Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi has
predicted that after the NSA revelations, US technology companies face
the most revenue risk in China by a wide margin, followed by Brazil and other emerging
markets.67 Industry observers have also questioned whether companies like
Applewhich hopes to bring in significant revenue from iPhone sales in
Chinawill feel the impact overseas.68 Even AT&T reportedly faced intense
scrutiny regarding its proposed acquisition of Vodafone, a European wireless carrier, after journalists
revealed the extent of AT&Ts collaboration with the NSA.69
American companies are also losing out on business opportunities and
contracts with large companies and foreign governments as a result of
NSA spying . According to an article in The New York Times, American businesses are being
left off some requests for proposals from foreign customers that
previously would have included them.70 This refers to German companies, for
example, that are increasingly uncomfortable giving their business to American
firms. Meanwhile, the German government plans to change its procurement
rules to prevent American companies that cooperate with the NSA or
other intelligence organizations from being awarded federal IT contracts.71
The government has already announced it intends to end its contract with
Verizon, which provides Internet service to a number of government departments.72 There are
indications that Verizon is legally required to provide certain things to the
NSA, and thats one of the reasons the cooperation with Verizon wont
continue, a spokesman for the German Interior Ministry told the
Associated Press in June.73
The NSA disclosures have similarly been blamed for Brazils December
2013 decision to award a $4.5 billion contract to Saab over Boeing , an
American company that had previously been the frontrunner in a deal to
replace Brazils fleet of fighter jets.74 Welber Barral, a former Brazilian trade secretary,
suggested to Bloomberg News that Boeing would have won the contract a year earlier,75 while a source in
the Brazilian government told Reuters that the NSA problem ruined it for
the Americans .76 As we will discuss in greater depth in the next section, Germany and Brazil are also
considering data localization proposals that could harm U.S. business interests and prevent American companies
from entering into new markets because of high compliance costs.
Cost to Public Trust in American Companies
The pressure is increasing on American companies to respond to the revelations in order to mitigate potential backlash and prevent foreign companies from poaching their business.
According to the R Street Institute study, It appears the NSAs aggressive surveillance has created an overall fear among U.S. companies that there is guilt by association from which
they need to proactively distance themselves.79 Some companies have tried to regain trust by publicly stating that they are not part of PRISM or other NSA programs, issuing
disclaimers along the lines of those published by Amazon and Salesforce in June 2013.80 Others that have been directly linked to the NSA programs have publicly criticized the American
government and called for greater transparency in order to rebuild user confidence and counteract potential economic harms.81 To that end, nine major American companiesAOL,
Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoojoined together in the Reform Government Surveillance campaign in January 2014, where they launched a
website and wrote an open letter to government leaders laying out principles for surveillance reform, including an end to bulk collection and opposition to data localization
requirements.82 Since the launch, the coalition has urged reform on Capitol Hill through outreach and letters to Congress, supported the February 2014 The Day We Fight Back activist
campaign, and hired a lobbyist to bolster their efforts to curb the NSAs reach.83 This unlikely, public partnership of some of Internets biggest rivals speaks to the seriousness of the
threats to their collective business interests.84 Indeed, according to an April 2014 Harris poll commissioned by a data security company, nearly half of the 2,000 respondents (47
percent) have changed their online behavior since the NSA leaks, paying closer attention not only to the sites they visit but also to what they say and do on the Internet.85 In particular,
26 percent indicated that they are now doing less online shopping and banking since learning the extent of government surveillance programs. Clearly, there are significant financial
incentives for companies to distance themselves from the programs, and as a result, they are expending capitalactual and politicalto do so.
Other companies have taken it a step further, developing new products or taking additional precautions to assure customers that their data is safe from the NSA. Many tech companies
feel they have no choice but to try to develop NSA resistant products because customers from China to Germany threaten to boycott American hardware and cloud services they view as
compromised, wrote USA Today in February 2014.86 Companies like Yahoo and Google have devoted increased resources to hardening their systems against NSA surveillance in order
to assure users that their data is adequately protected.87 Yahoo implemented automatic encryption on its email service in January 2014, and in March 2014 began encrypting all traffic
that moved between its data centers, as well as queries on its homepage and its messaging service.88 Googles Vice President for Security Engineering, Eric Grosse, referred to efforts to
protect users data from government surveillance as an arms race, when discussing the companys move last fall to encrypt all information travelling between its data centers.89 In
June 2014, Google unveiled a source code extension for the Chrome browser called End-to-End which is designed to make email encryption easy, and announced a new section of its
transparency report called Safer Email which details the percentage of email that is encrypted in transit and identifies the providers who support encryption.90 These changes are part

of a new focus on encouraging users and companies to harden their systems against NSA surveillance, and the strategy appears to be working. Almost immediately, Comcast announced
its plans to work with Google to encrypt all email traffic exchanged with Gmail after the cable company was described as one of the worst offenders in the new report.91
Meanwhile, Microsoft has been publicizing its policy that allows customers to store their data in Microsoft data centers in specific countries.92 John E. Frank, deputy general counsel at
Microsoft, told The New York Times, Were hearing from customers, especially global enterprise customers, that they care more than ever about where their content is stored and how it
is used and secured.93 IBM is reportedly spending over a billion dollars to build overseas data centers in an effort to reassure foreign customers that their data is protected from U.S.
surveillance.94 In reference to foreign customers asking about whether their data is protected from government snooping, an IBM executive said, My response is protect your data
against any third party whether its the NSA, other governments, hackers, terrorists, whatever, adding that it is time to start talking about encryption and VPNs and all the ways you
can protect yourself.95
Finally, faced with an impossible choice between maintaining user trust and complying with government requests, a handful of American companies that provide secure email services
have had to shut down their operations altogether. Lavabit, a secure email service provider that experienced a 1,900 percent increase in account registrations after the Snowden
revelations, shuttered its business after it became clear that user data could not be protected from government surveillance. When the NSA could not read Lavibits communications
directly by breaking its encryption, the agency obtained orders compelling the company to hand over information related to its encryption keys, which would have given the NSA the
ability to decrypt the communications of all 400,000 of Lavabits customers.96 Silent Circle, a secure communications provider that saw a 400 percent revenue increase following the
Snowden revelations, followed Lavabits lead and shut down its secure mail service, explaining that the decision was made because we see the writing on the wall.97

It is abundantly clear that the NSA surveillance programs are currently

having a serious, negative impact on the U.S. economy and threatening
the future competitiveness of American technology companies . Not only
are U.S. companies losing overseas sales and getting dropped from
contracts with foreign companies and governmentsthey are also
watching their competitive advantage in fast-growing industries like cloud
computing and webhosting disappear, opening the door for foreign
companies who claim to offer more secure alternative products to poach
their business. Industry efforts to increase transparency and
accountability as well as concrete steps to promote better security by
adopting encryption and other best practices are positive signs, but U.S.
companies cannot solve this problem alone.

Its not blowing over, said Microsoft General

Counsel Brad Smith at a recent conference. In June of 2014, it is clear it is getting worse, not better.98

Without meaningful government reform and better oversight, concerns

about the breadth of NSA surveillance could lead to permanent shifts in
the global technology market and do lasting damage to the U.S. economy.

Competitiveness is vital to hegemony and conflict suppression

Hubbard, Open Society Foundations program assistant, 2010

(Jesse, Hegemonic Stability Theory: An Empirical Analysis, 5-28,

http://isrj.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/hegemonic-stability-theory/)
Regression analysis of this data shows that Pearsons r-value is -.836. In the
case of American hegemony, economic strength is a better predictor of violent conflict
than even overall national power, which had an r-value of -.819. The data is also well within the realm of statistical
significance, with a p-value of .0014. While the data for British hegemony was not as striking, the same overall pattern holds true in
both cases. During both periods of hegemony, hegemonic strength was negatively related with violent conflict, and yet use of force
by the hegemon was positively correlated with violent conflict in both cases. Finally, in both cases, economic power was more
closely associated with conflict levels than military power. Statistical analysis created a more complicated picture of the hegemons
role in fostering stability than initially anticipated. VI. Conclusions and Implications for Theory and Policy To elucidate some answers
regarding the complexities my analysis unearthed, I turned first to the existing theoretical literature on hegemonic stability theory.
The existing literature provides some potential frameworks for understanding these results. Since economic strength proved to be of
such crucial importance, reexamining the literature that focuses on hegemonic stability theorys economic implications was the
logical first step. As explained above, the literature on hegemonic stability theory can be broadly divided into two camps that
which focuses on the international economic system, and that which focuses on armed conflict and instability. This research falls
squarely into the second camp, but insights from the first camp are still of relevance. Even Kindlebergers early work on this

economic instability between the First and

Second World Wars could be attributed to the lack of an economic
hegemon (Kindleberger 1973). But economic instability obviously has spillover effects into the international political arena.
question is of relevance. Kindleberger posited that the

Keynes, writing after WWI, warned in his seminal tract The Economic Consequences of the Peace that Germanys economic
humiliation could have a radicalizing effect on the nations political culture (Keynes 1919). Given later events, his warning seems
prescient. In the years since the Second World War, however, the European continent has not relapsed into armed conflict. What was
different after the second global conflagration? Crucially, the United States was in a far more powerful position than Britain was after
WWI. As the tables above show, Britains economic strength after the First World War was about 13% of the total in strength in the
international system. In contrast, the United States possessed about 53% of relative economic power in the international system in
the years immediately following WWII. The U.S. helped rebuild Europes economic strength with billions of dollars in investment
through the Marshall Plan, assistance that was never available to the defeated powers after the First World War (Kindleberger 1973).

The interwar years were also marked by a series of debilitating trade wars that likely worsened the Great Depression (Ibid.). In
contrast, when Britain was more powerful, it was able to facilitate greater free trade, and after World War II, the United States played
a leading role in creating institutions like the GATT that had an essential role in facilitating global trade (Organski 1958). The
possibility that economic stability is an important factor in the overall security environment should not be discounted, especially

Another theory that could provide insight into the

patterns observed in this research is that of preponderance of power. Gilpin
theorized that when a state has the preponderance of power in the
international system, rivals are more likely to resolve their disagreements
without resorting to armed conflict (Gilpin 1983). The logic behind this claim is simple it makes
given the results of my statistical analysis.

more sense to challenge a weaker hegemon than a stronger one. This simple yet powerful theory can help explain the puzzlingly
strong positive correlation between military conflicts engaged in by the hegemon and conflict overall. It is not necessarily that
military involvement by the hegemon instigates further conflict in the international system. Rather, this military involvement could
be a function of the hegemons weaker position, which is the true cause of the higher levels of conflict in the international system .

Additionally, it is important to note that military power is, in the long run,
dependent on economic strength. Thus, it is possible that as hegemons lose relative
economic power, other nations are tempted to challenge them even if their shortterm military capabilities are still strong. This would help explain some of the variation found between the economic
and military data. The results of this analysis are of clear importance beyond the realm of theory. As the debate rages over the role
of the United States in the world, hegemonic stability theory has some useful insights to bring to the table. What this research
makes clear is that a strong hegemon can exert a positive influence on stability in the international system. However, this should not
give policymakers a justification to engage in conflict or escalate military budgets purely for the sake of international stability.

If

anything, this research points to the central importance of economic

influence in fostering international stability. To misconstrue these findings to
justify anything else would be a grave error indeed. Hegemons may play a
stabilizing role in the international system, but this role is complicated. It is economic
strength, not military dominance that is the true test of hegemony. A weak state with a strong
military is a paper tiger it may appear fearsome, but it is vulnerable to even a short
blast of wind.

Great power war

Zhang et al., Carnegie Endowment researcher, 2011
(Yuhan, Americas decline: A harbinger of conflict and rivalry, 1-22,
http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/01/22/americas-decline-a-harbinger-of-conflictand-rivalry/, ldg)
This does not necessarily mean that the US is in systemic decline, but it encompasses a trend that appears to be negative and
perhaps alarming. Although the US still possesses incomparable military prowess and its economy remains the worlds largest, the

the global
distribution of power is shifting, and the inevitable result will be a world
that is less peaceful, liberal and prosperous, burdened by a dearth of
effective conflict regulation. Over the past two decades, no other state has
had the ability to seriously challenge the US military. Under these
circumstances, motivated by both opportunity and fear, many actors have
bandwagoned with US hegemony and accepted a subordinate role. Canada, most
once seemingly indomitable chasm that separated America from anyone else is narrowing. Thus,

of Western Europe, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and the Philippines have all joined the US, creating a status quo

However, as the hegemony that drew these

powers together withers, so will the pulling power behind the US alliance.
The result will be an international order where power is more diffuse, American
interests and influence can be more readily challenged, and conflicts or wars may be harder to
avoid. As history attests, power decline and redistribution result in
military confrontation. For example, in the late 19th century Americas emergence as a regional power saw it
that has tended to mute great power conflicts.

launch its first overseas war of conquest towards Spain. By the turn of the 20th century, accompanying the increase in US power
and waning of British power, the American Navy had begun to challenge the notion that Britain rules the waves. Such a notion
would eventually see the US attain the status of sole guardians of the Western Hemispheres security to become the order-creating
Leviathan shaping the international system with democracy and rule of law. Defining this US-centred system are three key
characteristics: enforcement of property rights, constraints on the actions of powerful individuals and groups and some degree of
equal opportunities for broad segments of society.

As a result of such political stability, free

markets, liberal trade and flexible financial mechanisms have appeared.

And, with this, many countries have sought opportunities to enter this
system, proliferating stable and cooperative relations. However, what will happen to
these advances as Americas influence declines? Given that Americas authority, although sullied at times, has benefited people
across much of Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, as well as parts of Africa and, quite extensively, Asia, the

Public imagination and

academia have anticipated that a post-hegemonic world would return to
the problems of the 1930s: regional blocs, trade conflicts and strategic
rivalry. Furthermore, multilateral institutions such as the IMF, the World
Bank or the WTO might give way to regional organisations. For example,
Europe and East Asia would each step forward to fill the vacuum left by
Washingtons withering leadership to pursue their own visions of regional political and economic orders. Free markets
would become more politicised and, well, less free and major powers
would compete for supremacy. Additionally, such power plays have
historically possessed a zero-sum element. In the late 1960s and 1970s, US economic power
answer to this question could affect global society in a profoundly detrimental way.

declined relative to the rise of the Japanese and Western European economies, with the US dollar also becoming less attractive. And,

A world without
American hegemony is one where great power wars re-emerge , the liberal international
system is supplanted by an authoritarian one, and trade protectionism
devolves into restrictive, anti-globalisation barriers. This, at least, is one possibility we can
as American power eroded, so did international regimes (such as the Bretton Woods System in 1973).

forecast in a future that will inevitably be devoid of unrivalled US primacy.

2AC Cybersecurity Adv

EXTInternal Link

AT: No Retal
Escalates to nuclear war
Fritz, Bond University IR masters, 2009

(Jason, Hacking Nuclear Command and Control, July,

http://www.icnnd.org/latest/research/Jason_Fritz_Hacking_NC2.pdf, ldg)
This paper will analyse the threat of cyber terrorism in regard to nuclear weapons. Specifically, this research will use open source
knowledge to identify the structure of nuclear command and control centres, how those structures might be compromised through
computer network operations, and how doing so would fit within established cyber terrorists capabilities, strategies, and tactics.

If

access to command and control centres is obtained, terrorists could fake or actually cause one

nuclear-armed state to attack another, thus provoking a nuclear response

from another nuclear power. This may be an easier alternative for terrorist groups than building or acquiring a nuclear
weapon or dirty bomb themselves. This would also act as a force equaliser, and provide terrorists with the asymmetric benefits of
high speed, removal of geographical distance, and a relatively low cost. Continuing difficulties in developing computer tracking
technologies which could trace the identity of intruders, and difficulties in establishing an internationally agreed upon legal
framework to guide responses to computer network operations, point towards an inherent weakness in using computer networks to
manage nuclear weaponry. This is particularly relevant to reducing the hair trigger posture of existing nuclear arsenals . All

Computers which
operate on a closed network may also be compromised by various hacker methods, such as
computers which are connected to the internet are susceptible to infiltration and remote control.

privilege escalation, roaming notebooks, wireless access points, embedded exploits in software and hardware, and
maintenance entry points. For example, e-mail spoofing targeted at individuals who have access to a closed network,
could lead to the installation of a virus on an open network. This virus could then be carelessly transported on removable
data storage between the open and closed network. Information found on the internet may also reveal how to access these
closed networks directly. Efforts by militaries to place increasing reliance on computer
networks, including experimental technology such as autonomous systems, and their desire
to have multiple launch options, such as nuclear triad capability, enables multiple entry

points for terrorists. For example, if a terrestrial command centre is impenetrable, perhaps isolating one nuclear
armed submarine would prove an easier task. There is evidence to suggest multiple attempts
have been made by hackers to compromise the extremely low radio frequency once used by the US Navy to send
nuclear launch approval to submerged submarines. Additionally, the alleged Soviet system known as Perimetr was designed to
automatically launch nuclear weapons if it was unable to establish communications with Soviet leadership. This was intended as a
retaliatory response in the event that nuclear weapons had decapitated Soviet leadership; however it did not account for the
possibility of cyber terrorists blocking communications through computer network operations in an attempt to engage the system.
Should a warhead be launched, damage could be further enhanced through additional computer network operations. By using
proxies, multi-layered attacks could be engineered. Terrorists could remotely commandeer computers in China and use them to
launch a US nuclear attack against Russia. Thus Russia would believe it was under attack from the US and the US would believe
China was responsible. Further, emergency response communications could be disrupted, transportation could be shut down, and
disinformation, such as misdirection, could be planted, thereby hindering the disaster relief effort and maximizing destruction.

Disruptions in communication and the use of disinformation could also be used to

provoke uninformed responses. For example, a nuclear strike between India and Pakistan could be
coordinated with Distributed Denial of Service attacks against key networks, so they would have further difficulty in identifying what
happened and be forced to respond quickly. Terrorists could also knock out communications between these states so they cannot

Alternatively, amidst the confusion of a traditional large-scale terrorist attack, claims of

responsibility and declarations of war could be falsified in an attempt to instigate a hasty
discuss the situation.

military response. These false claims could be posted directly on Presidential, military, and government websites. Emails could also be sent to the media and foreign governments using the IP addresses and e-mail accounts of government officials .

A sophisticated and all encompassing combination of traditional terrorism and cyber terrorism could

be enough to launch nuclear weapons on its own, without the need for
compromising command and control centres directly.

Impact Extension
Its on par with nuclear war existential threat
DSB 12
Defense Science Board, a Federal Advisory Committee established to provide
independent advice to the Secretary of Defense, TASK FORCE REPORT:
Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat, October 10, 2012.
http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ResilientMilitarySystems.CyberThreat.pdf
The benefits to an attacker using cyber exploits are potentially spectacular .
Should the United States find itself in a full-scale conflict with a peer adversary, attacks would be expected to
include denial of service, data corruption, supply chain corruption, traitorous
insiders, kinetic and related non-kinetic attacks at all altitudes from underwater to space.
U.S. guns, missiles, and bombs may not fire, or may be directed against
our own troops. Resupply, including food, water, ammunition, and fuel may not arrive
when or where needed . Military Commanders may rapidly lose trust in the
information and ability to control U.S. systems and forces. Once lost, that
trust is very difficult to regain.
The impact of a destructive cyber attack on the civilian population would
be even greater with no electricity, money, communications, TV, radio, or
fuel (electrically pumped). In a short time, food and medicine distribution systems would
be ineffective; transportation would fail or become so chaotic as to be useless. Law enforcement,
medical staff, and emergency personnel capabilities could be expected to
be barely functional in the short term and dysfunctional over sustained periods. If the attacks effects
were reversible, damage could be limited to an impact equivalent to a power outage lasting a few days. If an
attacks effects cause physical damage to control systems, pumps, engines, generators,
controllers, etc., the unavailability of parts and manufacturing capacity could
mean months to years are required to rebuild and reestablish basic
infrastructure operation.
The DoD should expect cyber attacks to be part of all conflicts in the future, and should not expect competitors to
play by our version of the rules, but instead apply their rules (e.g. using surrogates for exploitation and offense
operations, sharing IP with local industries for economic gain, etc.).

Based upon the societal dependence on these systems, and the interdependence of
the various services and capabilities, the Task Force believes that the integrated impact
of a cyber attack has the potential of existential consequence. While the
manifestation of a nuclear and cyber attack are very different, in the end,
the existential impact

to the United States

is the same.

AT: Deterrence
Cyber-attacks hollow out US deterrence capabilities,
encourages aggression and risks nuclear first use
Colby 13

Elbridge, is a principal analyst at CNA, where he focuses on strategic issues and

advises a number of U.S. Government entities. He previously served with the
Department of Defense on the New START treaty negotiation and ratification effort
and as an expert advisor with the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission,
Cyberwar and the Nuclear Option, June 26, 2013.
http://strategicstudyindia.blogspot.com/2013/06/cyberwar-and-nuclear-option.html
Thus a major cyber attacks effect on our conventional forces could mean that, without our
nuclear forces in the equilibrium, the U nited S tates might well find itself with no serious
riposte to a massive cyber assault, leaving us exposed to coercion or
worse.

Thus, while the Task Force wisely advocated for having more discriminate cyber and other non-nuclear

options to provide steps on the escalatory ladder, it rightly argued that at the top of that ladder resides the U.S.
nuclear deterrentthe ultimate reminder that, even if a major cyber attack could emasculate our conventional
forces, our resilient nuclear forces would still pose a devastating threat that would make such an assault patently
foolhardy. (The Task Force also rightly advocated ensuring the absolute effectiveness of our nuclear forces even
under highly sophisticated cyber assault.) Now these kinds of scenarios might seem fantastically remoteand

worst cases can happen , and what else are our most powerful
More likely, however, is the danger that
adversaries would derive coercive leverage if both we and they know that

thankfully they are highly unlikely. But

military forces for, if not for warding off the worst cases?

they have the upper hand on the escalatory ladder. Advantages at the top
of the escalatory ladder can cast a dark shadow. For instance, during the 1950s, the United
States used its huge advantages at the level of nuclear warfare to try to coerce Maoist China, with at least some
success. So, if China or Russia knows that we would never consider using nuclear weapons in response to even a
massive cyber attack, then that gives them a strong incentive to try to exploit that advantageeven implicitlyby
using cyber as a way to deter and even coerce the United States and our allies. Low-level versions of this problem
are apparent today. But what if the United States and China squared off over one of the territorial maritime disputes
in the Western Pacific or South China Sea? Or if the United States and Russia faced off over instability in a NATO
Baltic state?

The U nited S tates does not want to find itself in a situation in which

it has no good options to respond to escalating cyber attacks . Perhaps even

worse , it would not want to find itself in a situation in which it felt itself
forced into actually considering nuclear options when it had loudly declared that it would
not.

AT: No Capability
Cyberwarfare threat is realsmaller states/non-state entities
spilloverserious intrusions are occurringcyber>traditional
weps
Brecht, former Information Technician in the military, 15
Daniel, holds a graduate Certificate in Information Assurance and a Master of
Science in Information Technology, "Cyber Warfare and Cyber Weapons, a Real and
Growing Threat", Jan 15 2015, Infosec Institute,
resources.infosecinstitute.com/cyber-warfare-cyber-weapons-real-growing-threat/

Is a Cyber World War a Concern? A 2013 report by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper explained that

the possibility of a major cyber attack to US critical infrastructures

causing a long-term and widespread disruption of services by major
players like Russia and China is remote. However, smaller scale attacks by
smaller states or non-state entities seem to be a concern . According to the report,
less advanced but highly motivated actors could access some poorly protected US networks that control core
functions, such as power generation, during the next two years, although their ability to leverage that access to

there is a risk that

unsophisticated attacks would have significant outcomes due to
unexpected system configurations and mistakes, or that vulnerability at
one node might spill over and contaminate other parts of a networked
system. This may not come as a surprise to anyone, but any telecommunications
infrastructure attack could cause enough harm to generate fear. Every
government or corporation entire infrastructure, let alone the public at
large, may be at stake. Can digital attacks really have tangible effects? Absolutely. An oil pipeline in
cause high-impact, systemic disruptions will probably be limited. At the same time,

Turkey was cyber attacked and exploded in 2008. The pipeline was super-pressurized and alarms were shut off. By
hacking security cameras, attackers (allegedly Russian) were able to hide the blast from the control room that,
unaware, was unable to respond promptly. Another attack to a German steel company demonstrated how, by simply
infiltrating the information systems running the plant, hackers could cause major damage. Although not a single
Internet successful attack has been recognized as directed by a foreign terror organization against the United

there have been instances of intrusions intended to inflict

significant harm on the American government or state agency, as well as US businesses.
Last November, there was an intrusion into the networks of the
Department of the State that led to the unclassified email system
shutdown. Carol Morello, the diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post who covered the affair, noted
the activity was related to hacking of White House computers reported a
month prior, and to security breaches that occurred at both the U.S. Postal
Service and the National Weather Service. Those incidents pointed to
Russian hackers as prime suspects; the perpetrators were believed to be
working directly for the Russian government. Sony Pictures Entertainment
(SPE) is another recent case; its networks were infected in a November
2014 incident. According to the FBI, the occurrence resembled past cyber
efforts by North Korea. What makes a cyber warfare attack appealing?
Mainly the fact that it can come at little or no cost for the perpetrator. An
attacker with great technical capabilities can create disruption by using a
single computer wherever he or she is located. While the use of conventional weapons requires expensive
manufacturing and physical travel to target locations, cyber attacks can be conducted from
anywhere. Traditional weapons have a cost that might be prohibitive for many and are
hard to transport (or deliver) in secrecy. In other cases, attacks might require the
sacrifice of the offenders. Cyber attacks are quick, can be equally
destructive and can definitely be inexpensive to execute. According to
States homeland,

Amy Chang, research associate at the Center for a New American Security,
Cyber warfare is a great alternative to conventional weapons. [] It is
cheaper for and far more accessible to these small nation-states. It allows
these countries to pull off attacks without as much risk of getting caught
and without the repercussions when they are.

Terrorists are preparing for cyber attacks now

Brennan 12 (Lt Colonel John US Army, United States Counter Terrorism Cyber

Law and Policy, Enabling or Disabling? 15 March 2012, Civilian Research Project;
U.S. Army War College)
As Al-Qaida and its affiliates and adherents have evolved into much more
technically savvy terrorist organizations, their ability to threaten to U. S.
National Security has likewise increased. The divergence between American
national strategies, laws, and policies that govern counterterrorism (CT) operations
within cyberspace has hampered the efforts of U. S. CT professionals to keep
pace with the transformation of transnational terrorist organizations into more
cyber-enabled threats.
Counterterrorism is defined as, Actions taken directly against terrorist networks and indirectly to influence and

Due to terrorists heavy

reliance on cyberspace, it is an operational environment which CT
professionals must simultaneously dominate, and effectively deny to these
shadowy groups in order to defeat them. CT cyber strategies, law, and policies provide the framework
render global and regional environments inhospitable to terrorist networks.2

through which CT cyber professionals execute their assigned operations.

Of considerable concern is the fact that

current U. S. CT cyber policies are not

necessarily

sourced in domestic or international law , and they inhibit American CT

professionals from efficiently implementing the very strategies which they
are charged to execute. These restrictive and hierarchical CT cyber
policies clearly hinder the ability of strategic and operational-level military commanders
who are deployed in support of Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) to manipulate
cyberspace to their greatest advantage.
completely

In 2010 General David Petraeus, then Commander of United States Central Command (USCENTCOM) accurately described the
degree to which al-Qaida was operating with impunity in cyberspace to finance, command, and recruit its forces.3 The tactical and
operational commanders subordinate to General Petraeus in Iraq and Afghanistan often lamented that they were permitted to drop
two-thousand pound bombs on terrorists homes, but were forced to request from USCENTCOM Headquarters, or even the Secretary
of Defense, the approval to attack or manipulate terrorists computer networks.4 This dichotomous situation flies in the face of logic
and is caused by a trifurcated divergence between: what is expected of military CT professionals in order kill or capture terrorists;
what is permissible under current CT cyber law; and the current policies that actually govern offensive CT operations in cyberspace.
This work will analyze the current threat posed by international terrorist organizations from within cyberspace, as well as the
inconsistencies between current national security, CT and cyber strategies, and the laws, and policies that permit CT professionals
to disrupt and degrade international terrorist organizations through the use of the internet. The results of this analysis reveal that
current cyber-related counterterrorism policies constrain military CT professionals, and that before CT cyber strategies can be
effectively implemented, they must be in holistic alignment with cyber policies and existing statutes. Furthermore, this work proffers
several recommendations concerning adjustments to current CT cyber policies that are intended to better enable more efficient CT
operations, and ultimately prevent future attacks on America and its interests.
The Nature of the Cyber-terror Threat

There is conclusive and irrefutable evidence that terrorist organizations

such as al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) not only recruit, propagandize, coordinate attacks, and
finance their activities, but these terror organizations are actively seeking
the means to initiate casualty-producing kinetic events using the
worldwide web as well.5 Groups such as the Muslim Hackers Club have
developed their own software and tutorials in order to sabotage not only U. S.
computer networks, but to also seek to cause the physical destruction of key American
infrastructure.6 ADM Michael Mullen, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff described
cyber terrorism as one of two existential threat s to U. S. national security, the

other being the Russian nuclear threat.7 Additionally, the intelligence community (IC) writ large considers cyber
attacks as the most prominent, long-term threat to the country.8 Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III
similarly suggests that terrorists are seeking to effectively weaponize cyberspace in order to achieve kinetic effects
against key U. S. infrastructure.9

Speed matters in stopping potentially calamitous events, and it is of seminal importance as

al-Qaida and its ilk continue to develop more efficient and effective methods
of attack.10 Current trends indicate that terrorist organizations such as Lashkar e-Tayyibah
(LeT) and al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) are investing heavily in the education of select
members in the fields of computer and electrical engineering.11 Ayman al
Zawahiri counseled deceased AQI leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi that half of the battle for
Islam should be waged on the internet and he constantly stressed to Zarqawi
the importance of digital information operations .12
In order to pay for their operations, terrorist groups have begun to resort
to various forms of computer-assisted robbery and identity theft .
Cybercrime has become so important to financing their operations, that it
now surpasses drug trafficking as a source of income to fund their operations.13 During their
investigation into the 2002 Bali bombing by Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian police discovered that the attack was
financed through computer credit card fraud.14

More disturbing than terror financing, is the implementation of a worldwide recruiting

drive, launched by al-Qaida in order to co-opt computer and electrical
engineers who already possess advanced degrees from elite universities. Before their
demise, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leaders Anwar al Awlaki and Inspire Magazine editor-in-chief
Samir Kahn were posting high-tech want ads in their jihadi circular on the internet in order to
elicit acts of terror by homegrown western Muslims . The two also posted numerous
want-ads to recruit individuals who possessed high-tech degrees.15 As we shall learn, the lack of an
effective U. S. CT Cyber policy prevented the timely interdiction and/or
manipulation of the data on this website--action that could have been
used to not only thwart AQAPs cyber efforts, but could have been used to
create physical vulnerabilities within the organization as well.
The plots that could be hatched by heavily recruited techno-savvy terrorists are especially horrifying. Imagine
if you will,

the mayhem that could be unleashed by a terrorist, who using the

internet, pilots multiple unmanned aircraft armed with explosive,

chemical, or biological payloads . A hint of this frightening scenario came to pass when FBI foiled
a plot by Rezwan Ferdaus, a young Bangladeshi-American physicist, who was arrested while in
the process of developing the means to fly remote-controlled aircraft
packed with explosives into the U. S. Capitol and the Pentagon.(Valencia, Milton J. and
Ballou, Brian R. 2011, A1) Another terrifying possibility consists of dozens, if not hundreds of
improvised explosive devices igniting simultaneously through the instantaneity
of the internet. The process of perfecting this method of terrorist attack was proven to be well on
its way to fruition, as was evident after the capture of numerous Al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI)
improvised explosive device (IED) cell members. These individuals were detained while in the possession
of hundreds of digital tone multi-frequency (DTMF) boards that were purported to be used to simultaneously initiate
multiple IEDs to destroy U. S. and Iraqi security forces.16

these potential threats may seem far-fetched to some, but so did the
concept of crashing jet airliners into the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon prior to September 11th, 2001. These and other cyber-enabled terror plots are
unfortunately far from fiction , as their perpetrators were caught in the acts of
planning or executing them. The cyber terror threats which emanate from the various international
Today

terrorist organizations around the globe are of a seminal concern to U. S. national decision-makers. Though
significant, the task of countering these terrorists threats within cyberspace is anything but insurmountable,
provided that those who are charged with exposing and attacking these networks are given the latitude to act

effectively. The concerns of national leaders and their desires to exploit terrorist organizations in cyberspace are
clearly evident in the content of numerous past, and current national security strategy documents.

AT: No Blackout
Attacks collapse the gridcritical infrastructure is vulnerable
Savenjie 14
Davide and Ethan Howland, senior editors at Industry Dive, "Could terrorists really
black out the power grid?", Utility Dive, March 24 2014,
www.utilitydive.com/news/could-terrorists-really-black-out-the-power-grid/241192/
The possibility of a terrorist attack knocking out the power grid makes for
a good headline, but could it really happen? The U.S. Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) says yes. If terrorists are ever able to
knock out nine of the nation's 55,000 substations, the U.S. power grid
could suffer coast-to-coast blackouts lasting 18 months or more, according
to leaked excerpts from a FERC report. There are 30 substations in the U.S. that play a critical
role in the nation's grid operations, the report said. If any nine of them were taken offline, there could be
widespread blackouts for weeks or far longer. Just because a crippling grid attack is possible, doesn't mean it's

terrorist attacks on the power grid don't just make for good
headlines they're already happening. Is the grid vulnerable to terrorist attacks? It's no
going to happen. But

surprise to see headlines warning that the grid is susceptible to attack. But why all the concern now? Well, it doesn't

a Pacific Gas & Electric substation that feeds Silicon Valley was shot
by snipers last year. And it's not the only such incident. A man tried to
take down the power grid in central Arkansas by bringing down several
power lines (with a stolen tractor and a passing train) and setting a substation on fire,
causing $2 million worth of damage. These attacks show the grid is
vulnerable to terrorism, a finding confirmed by a previously classified
report sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Leaked
portions of the FERC report paint a dark picture. "Destroy nine
interconnection substations and a transformer manufacturer and the
entire United States grid would be down for at least 18 months, probably
longer," a summary of the report reads. Perhaps most disturbingly, the California
substation attack, in which snipers destroyed 17 transformers,
"demonstrates that it does not require sophistication to do significant
damage to the U.S. grid," according to FERC. And it's not just physical
attacks. Despite the recent focus on physical security, some say
cyberattacks present an even greater threat to the grid. A "sophisticated,
targeted cyberattack" could knock out large portions of the U.S. power
grid for 9 to 18 months, cybersecurity consultant Joe Weiss told Utility
Dive. Such an attack would be "irrecoverable," he said. More than a
decade after 9/11, experts believe the U.S. has failed to adequately
safeguard critical infrastructure, including grid operations, from
cyberattacks. "We've been led down the path to believe that: one, these systems are secure; and two, other
help that

countries don't have the capability to effectively attack the U.S. electric grid," Weiss said. "Both of those

The U.S. electrical grid was not

designed with today's complexities in mind let alone the ability to
withstand terrorist attacks. The power grid is inherently vulnerable because it is spread across
assumptions are wrong. Why the grid is 'inherently vulnerable'

hundreds of miles, and many key facilities are unguarded, the report prepared for Homeland Security found.
"Electric systems are not designed to withstand or quickly recover from damage inflicted simultaneously on multiple
components. Such an attack could be carried out by knowledgeable attackers with little risk of detection or
interdiction. Further well-planned and coordinated attacks by terrorists could leave the electric power system in a

Another big reason the

grid is vulnerable is that it takes a long time to replace equipment such
as large boilers, turbines and transformers underpinning the nation's
large region of the country at least partially disabled for a very long time."

critical infrastructure. It could take months or even years to replace such

equipment, according to estimates. And yet this is all old news. Policymakers, security experts
and the utility industry have known about the grid security issue for the last 30 years. Amory Lovins, chairman of
the Rocky Mountain Institute, wrote in his 1982 book Brittle Power that "a few people could probably black out most
of the country." The book surprised people when it came out citing frequent instances of grid terrorism
throughout the 1970s, such as transformer shootings and substation bombings but the same debate over grid
security continues today.

Cascade effect
Plumer 14

Brad, senior editor at Vox.com, where he oversees the site's science, energy, and
environmental coverage, "It's way too easy to cause a massive blackout in the US",
April 14 2014, Vox, www.vox.com/2014/4/14/5604992/us-power-grid-vulnerability
Back in 2012, the National Research Council worried that a well-coordinated
attack on the grid "could deny large regions of the country access to bulk
system power for weeks or even months. If such large extended outages were to occur
during times of extreme weather, they could also result in hundreds or even thousands of deaths due to heat stress
or extended exposure to extreme cold." How would that work? It's worth walking through the
mechanics of how a truly massive blackout like the 2003 Northeast blackout that left 50 million people without

Power
grids are, by their nature, extremely complex. It's hard to store electricity for
any extended period. That means that the output from power plants has
to be equal to the use of electricity at all times. Otherwise, power lines
can get overloaded or generators underloaded, causing damage to the
equipment. Usually, the grid has protective devices that switch off a piece
of equipment if there's a problem. So if, say, a sagging power line hits a tree causing it to
overheat that line will get disconnected. The problem is that all the other lines now
have to carry excess current. If they start overheating and have to switch
off, you can get cascading failures. So power grid operators have to
constantly monitor the system to make sure that power generation and
power use are matched up and that a single fault can't cause the entire
grid to fail. They're usually very good at this. But it's a difficult task and if, the grid is
already running at capacity or a major piece of equipment falters, it can
be hard to prevent "cascading failure s." The National Research Council was worried about an
power can happen. REALLY BIG BLACKOUTS ARE OFTEN CAUSED BY CASCADING FAILURES IN THE GRID

attack causing this sort of cascading effect.

EXT- Grid Impact

Collapse of the power grid causes extinction
IBT 11
International Business Times, Solar Flare Could Unleash Nuclear Holocaust Across
Planet Earth, Forcing Hundreds of Nuclear Power Plants Into Total Meltdowns,
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/213249/20110914/solar-flare-could-unleash-nuclearholocaust-across-planet-earth-forcing-hundreds-of-nuclear-power-pl.htm
What happens when there's no electricity? Imagine a world without electricity. Even for
just a week. Imagine New York City with no electricity, or Los Angeles, or
Sao Paulo. Within 72 hours, most cities around the world will devolve into
total chaos, complete with looting, violent crime, and runaway fires. But
that's not even the bad news. Even if all the major cities of the world
burned to the ground for some other reason, humanity could still recover
because it has the farmlands: the soils, the seeds, and the potential to
recover, right? And yet the real crisis here stems from the realization that
once there is no power grid, all the nuclear power plants of the world
suddenly go into "emergency mode" and are forced to rely on their on-site
emergency power backups to circulate coolants and prevent nuclear meltdowns from occurring. And

yet, as we've already established, these facilities typically have only a few hours of battery power available,
followed by perhaps a few days worth of diesel fuel to run their generators (or propane, in some cases). Did I also
mention that half the people who work at nuclear power facilities have no idea what they're doing in the first place?
Most of the veterans who really know the facilities inside and out have been forced into retirement due to reaching

lifetime limits of on-the-job radiation exposure, so most of the workers at nuclear facilities right now
There are 440 nuclear power plants
operating across 30 countries around the world today. There are an additional 250 socalled "research reactors" in existence, making a total of roughly 700 nuclear reactors to be
dealt with (http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/i...). Now imagine the scenario: You've got a
their

are newbies who really have no clue what they're doing.

massive solar flare that knocks out the world power grid and destroys the majority of the power grid transformers,
thrusting the world into darkness. Cities collapse into chaos and rioting, martial law is quickly declared (but it hardly
matters), and every nation in the world is on full emergency. But that doesn't solve the really big problem, which is

you've got 700 nuclear reactors that can't feed power into the grid (because
and yet simultaneously have to be fed a steady
stream of emergency fuels to run the generators the keep the coolant
pumps functioning. How long does the coolant need to circulate in these facilities to cool the nuclear fuel?
Months. This is also the lesson of Fukushima: You can't cool nuclear fuel in mere hours or days. It takes
months to bring these nuclear facilities to a state of cold shutdown. And that means in order to avoid a
multitude of Fukushima-style meltdowns from occurring around the world,
you need to truck diesel fuel, generator parts and nuclear plant workers to
every nuclear facility on the planet, ON TIME, every time, without fail, for
months on end. Now remember, this must be done in the middle of the total
chaos breakdown of modern civilization, where there is no power, where law enforcement and
that

all the transformers are blown up)

emergency services are totally overrun, where people are starving because food deliveries have been disrupted,
and when looting and violent crime runs rampant in the streets of every major city in the world. Somehow, despite
all this, you have to run these diesel fuel caravans to the nuclear power plants and keep the pumps running. Except
there's a problem in all this, even if you assume you can somehow work a logistical miracle and actually deliver the

Where do you
get diesel fuel? Why refineries will be shut down, too from petroleum refineries. Most people
don't realize it, but petroleum refineries run on electricity. Without the power grid,
the refineries don't produce a drop of diesel. With no diesel, there are no generators keeping the
diesel fuel to the backup generators on time (which you probably can't). The problem is this:

coolant running in the nuclear power facilities. But wait, you say: Maybe we could just acquire diesel from all the
gas stations in the world. Pump it out of the ground, load it into trucks and use that to power the generators, right?

Except there are other problems here: How do you pump all that fuel without electricity? How do you acquire all the
tires and spare parts needed to keep trucks running if there's no electricity to keep the supply businesses running?
How do you maintain a truck delivery infrastructure when the electrical infrastructure is totally wiped out? Some
countries might be able to pull it off with some degree of success .

With military escorts and the total

government control over all fuel supplies, a few nations will be able to keep a few
nuclear power facilities from melting down. But here's the real issue: There are 700 nuclear

power facilities in the world, remember? Let's suppose that in the aftermath of a massive solar flare, the nations of
the world are somehow able to control half of those facilities and nurse them into cold shutdown status. That still
leaves roughly 350 nuclear facilities at risk. Now let's suppose half of those are somehow luckily offline and not
even functioning when the solar flare hits, so they need no special attention. This is a very optimistic assumption,
but that still leaves 175 nuclear power plants where all attempts fail. Let's be outrageously optimistic
and suppose that a third of those somehow don't go into a total meltdown by some miracle of God, or some bizarre

115 nuclear power plants that "go Chernobyl."

Imagine the devastation of 100+ nuclear power
plants, all going into meltdown all at once across the planet . It's not the loss of
electricity that's the real problem; it's the global tidal wave of invisible radiation that blankets
twist in the laws of physics. So we're still left with
Fukushima was one power plant.

the planet, permeates the topsoil, irradiates everything that breathes and delivers the final crushing blow to human

100 simultaneous global nuclear

meltdowns, the tidal wave of radiation will make farming nearly impossible
for years. That means no food production for several years in a row. And that,
in turn, means a near-total collapse of the human population on our planet . How
civilization as we know it today. Because if you have

many people can survive an entire year with no food from the farms? Not one in a hundred people. Even beyond

that, how many people can essentially live underground and be safe enough from the radiation that they
can have viable children and repopulate the planet? It's a very, very small fraction of the total population.

AT: Backups
Backups dont solve meltdowns.
AP 11 (Associated Press 3-29, Nuclear power plants in U.S. vulnerable to power
outages, study shows,
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/03/nuclear_power_plants_in_us_v
ul.html)
Long before the nuclear emergency in Japan, U.S. regulators knew that a power failure lasting for days at
an American nuclear plant, whatever the cause, could lead to a radioactive leak. Even so, they have
required the nation's 104 nuclear reactors only to develop plans for
dealing with much shorter blackouts on the assumption that power would
be restored quickly. In one simulation presented by the N uclear R egulatory
C ommission in 2009, it would take less than a day for radiation to escape from a
reactor at a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant after an earthquake, flood or fire knocked
out all electrical power and there was no way to keep the reactors cool after
backup battery power ran out. That plant, the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station outside

Lancaster, has reactors of the same older make and model as those releasing radiation at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant, which is using other means to try to cool the reactors. And like Fukushima Dai-ichi, the Peach Bottom
plant has enough battery power on site to power emergency cooling systems for eight hours. In Japan, that wasn't
enough time for power to be restored. The risk of a blackout leading to core damage, while extremely remote,
exists at all U.S. nuclear power plants, and some are more susceptible than others, according to an Associated Press

While regulators say they have confidence that measures

adopted in the U.S. will prevent or significantly delay a core from melting
and threatening a radioactive release, the events in Japan raise questions
about whether U.S. power plants are as prepared as they could and should
be.
investigation.

AT: Not Likely

Attacks comingnot a question of if but whenbuilding
resilience key
Weise 14

Elizabeth, works in USA Today's San Francisco bureau, "Experts: Major cyberattack
will hit in next 11 years", Oct 29 2014, USA Today,
www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/10/29/pew-survey-cyber-attack/18114719/
SAN FRANCISCO Almost two-third of technology experts expect a "major" cyber
attack somewhere in the world that will cause significant loss of life or property losses in the tens of billions of
dollars by 2025. A survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center found that many of
analysts expect disruption of online systems like banking, energy and
health care to become a pillar of warfare and terrorism. The survey asked
over 1,600 technology experts whether a major attack that would cause
"widespread harm to a nation's security and capacity to defend itself"
would be launched within the next 11 years. Sixty-one percent said yes.
The probability of a major cyber attack is not 'if' but 'when .' Oliver CrepinLeblond, Global Information Highway, United Kingdom It's already beginning to happen, several of
the researchers noted. One recent example given was an attack on Apple's iCloud
data storage system earlier this month, which some security experts
believe was linked to the Chinese government. Another was the the July
attack on JPMorgan. Some some in the White House wonder if it was
orchestrated by the Putin regime in Russia in retaliation for U.S. support
of Ukraine, the New York Times reported. As critical infrastructure moves online,
cyber attacks could take out financial systems, the power grid and health
systems, wreaking as much damage as bombs, the experts said. There's already
been "a Pearl Harbor event," said Jason Pontin, editor of the MIT Technology Review. He
cited the 2009 Stuxnet computer worm that disabled Iranian nuclear plant
centrifuges. Many in the defense world believe the attack was launched by the United States and Israel.
"Cyberware just plain makes sense. Attacking the power grid or other
industrial control systems is asymmetrical and deniable and devilishly
effective," said Stewart Baker, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson, a Washington D.C. law firm. Futurist Jamais
Cascio thinks cyber attacks will become part of military engagements . "Cyber is
a force-multiplier," he said. "We'll likely see a major attack that has a cyber
component, but less likely to see a major cyber-attack only. Part of the problem is
that security tends to be an add-on. Building resiliency into systems is crucial , said futurist
David Brin.

We dont need a perfect storm scenarioa single blackout

increases the likelihood of the next failure
Ascher 12
Brock, Communications Specialist at Iowa State University, "Quantifying Cascading
Failure", Aug 17 2012, Iowa State University College of Engineering,
news.engineering.iastate.edu/2012/08/17/quantifying-cascading-failure/
People always say It was the perfect storm. Dobson says. But these
large blackouts happen because of the cascading effect. Youre never
going to get 20 different independent failures to happen at the same time

because thats vanishingly unlikely. But if the first couple events make the
next events more likely, then those events happen and make the next
ones more likely then you get those rare events happening. This is the
typical way that large complicated systems have catastrophic failures, and
it is not really a perfect storm.
Cascading failure is difficult to analyze because of the huge number of unanticipated
variables. In other words, researchers dont know what they dont know. In addition, the
dependence of individual failures on previous failures and their effect on
subsequent failures creates an incredibly complex system of dependent
variables. Large blackouts involve the failure of many interconnected
variables, each of which affect how variables down the line interact with
each other. Imagine youre very, very tightly scheduled on a certain day ,
Dobson says. Then, things start getting delayed in the morning and things get worse and worse throughout the

Because your first appointment was delayed, Its more likely that the
next one will be delayed. Pretty soon you start missing appointments
altogether in the afternoon. Thats a very small example of cascading
failure. There are a few common attributes, like critical loading, that researchers can look for when studying
cases of cascading failure. A power grids critical loading can be defined as a point
somewhere between a very low load and a very high load where the risk of
a blackout increases sharply. If the amount of electricity flowing through
the system is higher than the power grid critical load, the likelihood of a
blackout spikes. The power grids critical load acts as a reference point for cascading failure; stay below it
and the system will likely be fine. Go above it, and the risk of a blackout is more severe. If a transmission
line carrying its usual load fails, other lines can pick up the slack without
much trouble, he says. But if the power grid as a whole is carrying a
load that is above its critical loading, its burden has a much greater effect
on the other lines. Thats something we look for.
day.

AT: Resiliant
Their defense doesnt assume the scenario of a nuclear
meltdown with a grid blackoutmakes containtment
impossible
Stein 12
Matthew, Matthew Stein is a design engineer, green builder and author of two
bestselling books, "When Disaster Strikes: A Comprehensive Guide to Emergency
Planning and Crisis Survival" (Chelsea Green 2011), and "When Technology Fails: A
Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency"
(Chelsea Green 2008). Stein is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), where he majored in mechanical engineering. Stein has appeared
on numerous radio and television programs and is a repeat guest on Fox News,
Lionel, Coast-to-Coast AM and the Thom Hartmann Show, "Four Hundred
Chernobyls: Solar Flares, Electromagnetic Pulses and Nuclear Armageddon",
Truthout, truth-out.org/news/item/7301-400-chernobyls-solar-flares-electromagneticpulses-and-nuclear-armageddon
What do extended grid blackouts have to do with potential nuclear
catastrophes? Nuclear power plants are designed to disconnect
automatically from the grid in the event of a local power failure or major
grid anomaly; once disconnected, they begin the process of shutting down
the reactor's core. In the event of the loss of coolant flow to an active
nuclear reactor's core, the reactor will start to melt down and fail
catastrophically within a matter of a few hours, at most. In an extreme GMD,
nearly every reactor in the world could be affected. It was a short-term cooling-system
failure that caused the partial reactor core meltdown in March 1979 at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. Similarly,

it was not direct damage from Japan's 9.0

magnitude Tohoku Earthquake on March 11, 2011, that caused the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear reactor disaster, but the loss of electric power to the
reactor's cooling system pumps when the reactor's backup batteries and
diesel generators were wiped out by the ensuing tidal waves. In the hours
and days after the tidal waves shuttered the cooling systems, the cores of
reactors number 1, 2 and 3 were in full meltdown and released hydrogen gas,
fueling explosions which breached several reactor containment vessels and
blew the roof off the building housing reactor number 4's spent-fuel storage pond. Of even greater
danger and concern than the reactor cores themselves are the spent fuel
rods stored in on-site cooling ponds. Lacking a permanent spent nuclear fuel storage facility,
so-called "temporary" nuclear fuel containment ponds are features common
to nearly all nuclear reactor facilities. They typically contain the accumulated spent fuel from
ten or more decommissioned reactor cores. Due to lack of a permanent repository, most
of these fuel containment ponds are greatly overloaded and tightly packed
beyond original design. They are generally surrounded by common light
industrial buildings with concrete walls and corrugated steel roofs. Unlike
the active reactor cores, which are encased inside massive "containment vessels" with thick walls of
concrete and steel, the buildings surrounding spent fuel rod storage ponds would
do practically nothing to contain radioactive contaminants in the event of
prolonged cooling system failures. Since spent fuel ponds typically hold
far greater quantities of highly radioactive material then the active
nuclear reactors locked inside reinforced containment vessels, they clearly
according to Japanese authorities,

present far greater potential for the catastrophic spread of highly

radioactive contaminants over huge swaths of land, polluting the
environment for multiple generations. A study by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
determined that the "boil down time" for spent fuel rod containment ponds runs from between 4 and 22 days after
loss of cooling system power before degenerating into a Fukushima-like situation, depending upon the type of

Reactor fuel
rods have a protective zirconium cladding, which, if superheated while
exposed to air, will burn with intense, self-generating heat, much like a
magnesium fire, releasing highly radioactive aerosols and smoke . According to
nuclear whistleblower and former senior vice president for Nuclear Engineering Services Arnie Gundersen, once
a zirconium fire has started, due to its extreme temperatures and high
reactivity, contact with water will result in the water dissociating into
hydrogen and oxygen gases, which will almost certainly lead to violent
explosions. Gundersen says that once a zirconium fuel rod fire has started, the
worst thing you could do is to try to quench the fire with water streams,
which would cause violent explosions. Gundersen believes the massive explosion that blew the
nuclear reactor and how recently its latest batch of fuel rods had been decommissioned.[9]

roof off the spent fuel pond at Fukushima was caused by zirconium-induced hydrogen dissociation.[10] Had it not
been for heroic efforts on the part of Japan's nuclear workers to replenish waters in the spent fuel pool at
Fukushima, those spent fuel rods would have melted down and ignited their zirconium cladding, which most likely
would have released far more radioactive contamination than what came from the three reactor core meltdowns.

Japanese officials have estimated that Fukushima Daiichi has already released just
over half as much total radioactive contamination as was released by Chernobyl into the local environment, but

could be significantly more than at Chernobyl. In the event of an

extreme GMD-induced long-term grid collapse covering much of the globe, if just half of the world's
spent fuel ponds were to boil off their water and become radioactive,
zirconium-fed infernos, the ensuing contamination could far exceed the
cumulative effect of 400 Chernobyls.
other sources estimate it

Grid vulnerablelots of different groups

Gertz 14

Bill, a national security columnist for The Washington Times and senior editor at The
Washington Free Beacon, "Inside the Ring: U.S. power grid defenseless from
physical and cyber attacks", April 16 2014, The Washington Times,
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/16/inside-the-ring-us-power-griddefenseless-from-att/?page=all
The U.S. electrical power grid is vulnerable to cyber and physical attacks
that could cause devastating disruptions throughout the country, federal
and industry officials told Congress recently. Gerry Cauley, president of the North
American Electric Reliability Corp., said that several if not all other critical U.S.
infrastructures depend on electricity, and that he is deeply concerned
about attacks, extreme weather and equipment failures causing power outages. I am most concerned
about coordinated physical and cyber attacks intended to disable
elements of the power grid or deny electricity to specific targets, such as
government or business centers, military installations, or other
infrastructures, Mr. Cauley told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last Thursday. Mr.
Cauley said the April 2013 attack on a California electrical power substation by unidentified gunmen did not result
in power outages, but highlighted the vulnerability of the countrys three-sector power grid. The incident at the
Metcalf substation in Northern California demonstrates that attacks are possible and have the potential to cause

significant damage to assets and disrupt customer service, he said. Cheryl A. LaFleur, acting chairman of the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who testified at the Senate hearing, said the Metcalf attack led federal

LaFleur said
cyber threats to electrical infrastructure are fast-changing, as she called for
authorities to conduct a 13-city campaign to warn utilities about the need for better security. Ms.

better information-sharing about threats between government and industry. Sue Kelly, head of the American Public
Power Association of more than 2,000 U.S. electric utilities, testified about the growing danger of cyberattacks

The threat of cyberattack is relatively new compared to

long-known physical threats, but an attack with operational consequences
could occur and cause disruptions in the flow of power if malicious actors
are able to hack into the data and control systems used to operate our
electric generation and transmission infrastructure, Ms. Kelly said. To date,
security measures have prevented a successful cyberattack on the bulk electric system, she said. An Energy
Department-sponsored study published last fall said the U.S. power grid is
vulnerable to catastrophic disruption by nation states like China and North
Korea, terrorist groups like al Qaeda, and non-state criminals. The 269-page
against the power grid.

study Electric Sector Failure Scenarios and Impact Analyses was published in September by the National Electric

A
malicious software cyberattack on the power grids Distributed Energy
Resource Management System (DERMS), which manages requests and
commands for the power system, would damage transformers that are
costly and difficult to replace. Cyberattacks against computers that
distribute electrical power over wide areas could be jammed or disrupted
through wireless signals. And cyber attackers could cause widespread
power outages or cascading power failures by gaining access to
distribution systems and equipment via remote hacking. After gaining
the required access, the threat agent manufactures an artificial cascade
through sequential tripping of select critical feeders and components,
causing automated tripping of generation sources due to power and
voltage fluctuations, the report said. A blackout of varying degree and
potential equipment damage ensues. According to the report, nation state threats to the grid
include China, North Korea and Cuba. Among the cyber terrorist threats listed: al Qaeda
and the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taibi, and the
Palestinian group Hamas. Domestic threats include lone wolf
extremists, ecoterrorists among Earth First and Greenpeace, U.S.
separatist groups, and militias and hate groups, the report said.
Sector Cybersecurity Organization Resource, a non-government group of industry and security specialists.

Solvency

AT: Cant solve cyberterrorism

NSA hacking means cyber-criminals become more capable of
exploiting vulnerabilitieswe must end our offensive strategy
in order to garner international cooperation and end the zeroday race
Brewster, reporter @ The Guardian, 14

Tom, "The NSA Is Screwing Up The Fight Against Cybercrime", March 7 2014,
Business Insider, www.businessinsider.com/nsa-screwing-up-fight-againstcybercrime-2014-3
Criminals learning from NSA Intelligence agency hacking techniques will
also be adopted by criminals, according to security luminaries speaking with The Guardian. This
has been seen in other nations in recent history. The spear-phishing tricks we saw the
Chinese secret police using against the Dalai Lama in 2008 were being used by Russian crooks to steal money from
US companies by 2010. We predicted as much in 2009, said Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at

Cryptography
expert and author Bruce Schneier said some of the techniques the NSA
used to hack routers are starting to be seen in criminal cases, amongst
other attack types. Indeed, from compromises of much used but vulnerable
mobile applications, to spying on people through their web cams, dark
web dealers were already using the same methods as the NSA. Todays
the University of Cambridge. A lot more people have become aware of what can be done.

secret NSA programs are tomorrows PHD theses and the next days
hacker tools, he added. The US has done an enormous amount of damage
here. There is a basic level of trust that has been lost There is a lot of
international mistrust right now because the US was supposed to be a
trusted keeper of everything, but it turned out they were subverting it
with every chance they got. And the NSA keeps saying its not as bad as you think, but who the hell
believes that? The zero-day race Purposeful backdoors in security products another revelation from leaked security agency documents - benefit all
hackers. If firms have allowed for weaknesses in their product sets, they
dont just open up holes for agents to exploit, but criminals too. Organized
crime groups are pumping money into hunting for such vulnerabilities,
placing the everyday user at ever greater risk. Those crooks and the NSA
are racing to uncover and use zero-day flaws - previously-unknown,
unpatched weaknesses in software and hardware. After governments buy,
discover or use these vulnerabilities, they often filter down into the wider
criminal community, says Jason Steer, director of technology strategy at FireEye. We know that
governments purchase undisclosed zero-day vulnerabilities, and the
providers of such zero-days such as Vupen openly acknowledge that
government are big buyers of their research in text on their website, Steer
said. All exploits have an inevitable lifecycle - from highly targeted usage to APT [advanced persistent threat]

Once an exploit is used in the

wild, its effectiveness will drop as researchers in both the black hat and
white hat communities discover it and learn about it. Once its
effectiveness is weakened, any zero-day is picked up by the broader
attacker community as this gives them an opportunity to monetize their
window for a time, until the targeted software or hardware fixes the
usage, then to broader cyber criminals and finally hacktivists.

vulnerability - its quite simply a race. Government malware = criminal

malware But the NSA isnt the only official body that is spurring on digital
crime, whether willingly or unwittingly. In using offensive digital tools against one
another, governments have brought about a degradation of co-operation
on dealing with cybercrime, according to RSA chief Art Coviello. The only ones deriving
advantage from governments trying to gain advantage over one another
on the internet are the criminals. Our lack of immediate, consistent and
sustained cooperation, globally, gives them the equivalent of safe
havens, Coviello said during his keynote. And the introduction of government-owned
malware on global networks only gives criminals yet more tools to play
with. The genie is out the bottle on the use of cyber weaponry and unlike
nuclear weapons, cyber weapons are easily propagated and can be turned
on the developer, Coviello added. Anderson has concerns around organized
criminals taking advantage. If governments keep on giving millions of
people access to this stuff, its only a matter of time before serious
organized crime gets in there. Its long been believed governments
across the world are paying cyber criminals to help them attack foreign
entities too. While this has never been detailed, Coviello and numerous others in the
security industry have claimed knowledge of it happening. This has all
combined to create a chaotic, dangerous environment, where attack
numbers continue to rise and aggressive, sophisticated techniques have
been given a sense of legitimacy, whether the targets are governmental
data or individuals money. Paraphrasing a famous quote, those who seek military
advantage riding the back of the tiger will end up inside, Coviello said during his
keynote. Many are now calling for the NSA and other government bodies
contributing to the rise in digital crime to get off that tiger.

AT: No US Leadership
The US can make up for past cyber-hypocrisy with leadership
now
Weigant 13 Chris, is a political commentator, author, and blogger, We Need a
Geneva Convention on Cyber Warfare, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chrisweigant/we-need-a-geneva-conventi_b_4171853.html
Preventing any or all of this by means of international diplomacy might at first glance seem to

be a fool's errand. But it's certainly worth a try , considering what could be avoided if it
were successful. Hammering out exactly what will and will not be allowed in
cyberwarfare will be a tough task -- made even more tough by the
knowledge that any such agreement would almost certainly have to be
updated (at a minimum) every decade or so, to keep up with new technological
developments.
America has lost a lot of its moral standing in the world, since 9/11. This is not a partisan
problem, either. Both Republicans and Democrats alike have given their consent to practices which we used to
consider not only illegal, but downright abhorrent and inhumane. This includes waterboarding and all the other
Orwellian-named "enhanced interrogation techniques" (which we used to consider ourselves morally above using),
to dropping bombs from remotely-controlled airplanes to assassinate people we consider fair targets (how would we
feel if people in Peoria were being assassinated in this fashion?).

But while this might leave the U.S. open to cries of "hypocrisy" from other
countries, leading the effort to define allowable cyberwarfare techniques would go a long
way towards regaining some of that moral standing. America could make
the case: "OK, look, we may have crossed a few lines in our war on terror,
but a lot of this stuff is brand-new, so we just had the opportunity before
other countries were faced with similar choices -- and now that we've had
time to consider, we think there ought to be some rules to cover futuristic
battlefields, both real and virtual."
America should be the one to call for another Geneva Convention in the
cyberwar realm . "Let's lay down some rules" we could say to the rest of
the world, and then we could all start creating a few definitions and
banning certain tactics (like, for instance, a cyber attack on hospital management software -- which
could grind hospitals' capacity to deal with emergencies to an absolute standstill). American politicians -after secrets are revealed by leakers, of course -- always say "we welcome this
conversation," from President Obama on down. But this conversation needs
to include the whole world.
The whole effort could be doomed to failure, of course -- but this is always true
of diplomacy. It could take a century to actually have any effect, as just the dates of the chemical weapons
bans of 1899 and 1997 prove. But that doesn't mean that banning chemical weapons wasn't a worthwhile thing to
attempt. We could indeed have to see a future cyber disaster of "World War I mustard gas" proportions before the
nations of the world even begin to take such a thing seriously. In fact, it is very easy to be pessimistic about the
chances for success.

The "brave new world" of computer

warfare -- in all its frightening aspects -- desperately needs some rules and limits.
But again, that doesn't mean it isn't worth the attempt.

Communications spying and drone attacks are only the precursors for what could be eventually deployed against

If we don't take the lead now in calling for some definition of what is humanely
allowable even by countries at war with each other, we may seriously regret not doing so
later.
the United States.

EXT-Solves Cybersecurity
Trust between the government and the private sector is key to
ensure cybersecurity
Kelly, reporter @ USA Today, 15
Erin, "Tech companies leery of sharing cyber threats with feds", April 2 2015,
www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/04/02/phyllis-schneck-cybersecuritytechnology-summit/70838226/
WASHINGTON U.S. tech companies still don't trust the federal government

enough to share information about cyber threats , the top cybersecurity

official at the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday. "My top
priority is building that trust," said Phyllis Schneck, the department's deputy under secretary for
cybersecurity and communications for the National Protection and Programs Directorate. Privacy concerns
have grown in the wake of the 2013 revelations by former National Security Agency
contractor Edward Snowden that the agency was collecting phone and other data
on millions of Americans not suspected of any crime, often with the help
of tech companies. The tech industry is now seeking to convince
customers that their personal data will be protected from government
surveillance as well as from hackers. But companies have yet to overcome the
backlash they faced for complying with government orders to turn over
emails, photos and other data. "It's very hard for companies to be
optically aligned with the U.S. government,"

Schneck said at a Cybersecurity Technology

Summit hosted by the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics
Association ."But

there has never been a more important time to build that

trust." Companies will become more trusting when the federal

government can begin "showing value" to them by providing effective
information to battle cyber criminals while still protecting Americans'
privacy and civil liberties, Schneck said. Both the Obama administration and Congress are pushing for
more information-sharing between the business community and the federal government so that the private and

Obama announced an
executive order in February to create a process for information-sharing . Last
public sectors can help one another detect and thwart cyber criminals. President

month, both the Senate and House intelligence committees passed bills that would give companies protection from
lawsuits when they share cyber threat information with the government. William Evanina, head of national
counterintelligence for the U.S. government, said the government is working to be able to provide companies with
information beyond just who is hacking them. "We want to put context on what they (the hackers) are doing," he

That
information will help the government and private companies do a better
job of figuring out how to thwart cyber criminals, Evanina said. He said many
hackers laugh at how easy it is to get victims to click on a link that allows
the criminals to get around a company's cybersecurity system.
said. "What's the intent of the person who is doing it? Who else is being hit the same way?"

AT: Trust Now

Rebuilding trust between the government and the private
sector is necessary to create cybersecurity
Kumar, enterprise IT investor at General Catalyst Partners, 15
Deepak Jeevan, "Crossing the Cybersecurity Trust Chasm", March 29 2015, Tech
Crunch, techcrunch.com/2015/03/29/crossing-the-cybersecurity-trustchasm/#.lxjyep:iRNX

Kudos to the President for visiting Silicon Valley last month and drawing the attention of the nation to a new world

The executive order signed by the President addresses

the critical piece that is needed to help companies protect themselves in
of continuous cyber attacks.

the future by sharing cyber threat information

companies, and

between different private sector

between the government and the private sector. But we need

to cross the cybersecurity trust chasm to make sharing really work . Today,
this trust has been broken in the system due to incessant hacking of
employee/customer confidential data stored in private sector enterprises.
Multiple allegations of excessive snooping against the private sector and
the government have only complicated matters. We need to (re)build
trust :

between the government and the public; between a company and its employees; between a company

and its customers; between different private sector companies; and finally

between the government

and the private sector . The traditional cybersecurity debate has been
portrayed as a security vs. privacy dialog. Trust has largely been ignored.
But, trust and only trust can bring together the repelling poles of security
& privacy.

EXT: Econ Imp

Perception of global economic decline triggers lashout and
global war---economic institutions wont check
Harold James 14, Professor of history at Princeton Universitys Woodrow Wilson

School who specializes in European economic history, 7/2/14, Debate: Is 2014, like
1914, a prelude to world war?, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globedebate/read-and-vote-is-2014-like-1914-a-prelude-to-world-war/article19325504/
As we get closer to the centenary of Gavrilo Princips act of terrorism in Sarajevo, there is an ever more vivid fear:

it could happen again . The approach of the hundredth anniversary of 1914 has
put a spotlight on the fragility of the worlds political and economic security
systems .
At the beginning of 2013, Luxembourgs Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker was widely ridiculed for evoking the

the security situation in the

South China Sea deteriorated, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cast China as the equivalent to
Kaiser Wilhelms Germany; and the fighting in Ukraine and in Iraq is a sharp reminder
of the dangers of escalation.
Lessons of 1914 are about more than simply the dangers of national and sectarian animosities. The main
story of today as then is the precariousness of financial globalization , and the
shades of 1913. By now he is looking like a prophet. By 2014, as

consequences that political leaders draw from it.

the interdependency of
the increasingly complex global economy made war impossible. But a
quite opposite conclusion was possible and equally plausible and proved
to be the case . Given the extent of fragility, a clever twist to the control
levers might make war easily winnable by the economic hegemon.
In the wake of an epochal financial crisis that almost brought a complete
global collapse, in 1907, several countries started to think of finance as
primarily an instrument of raw power, one that could and should be turned to national
In the influential view of Norman Angell in his 1910 book The Great Illusion,

advantage.
The 1907 panic emanated from the United States but affected the rest of the world and demonstrated the fragility
of the whole international financial order. The aftermath of the 1907 crash drove the then hegemonic power Great
Britain - to reflect on how it could use its financial power.
Between 1905 and 1908, the British Admiralty evolved the broad outlines of a plan for financial and economic
warfare that would wreck the financial system of its major European rival, Germany, and destroy its fighting
capacity.
Britain used its extensive networks to gather information about opponents. London banks financed most of the
worlds trade. Lloyds provided insurance for the shipping not just of Britain, but of the world. Financial networks
provided the information that allowed the British government to find the sensitive strategic vulnerabilities of the
opposing alliance.
What pre-1914 Britain did anticipated the private-public partnership that today links technology giants such as
Google, Apple or Verizon to U.S. intelligence gathering. Since last year, the Edward Snowden leaks about the NSA
have shed a light on the way that global networks are used as a source of intelligence and power.
For Britains rivals, the financial panic of 1907 showed the necessity of mobilizing financial powers themselves. The
United States realized that it needed a central bank analogous to the Bank of England. American financiers thought
that New York needed to develop its own commercial trading system that could handle bills of exchange in the
same way as the London market.

the dynamics of the pre-1914 financial world are now re-emerging.

Then an economically declining power , Britain, wanted to use finance as a
weapon against its larger and faster growing competitors, Germany and the United States. Now America
is in turn obsessed by being overtaken by China according to some calculations, set to
Some of

become the worlds largest economy in 2014.

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, financial institutions appear

both as dangerous weapons of mass destruction , but also as potential instruments for the
application of national power.

In managing the 2008 crisis, the dependence of foreign banks on U.S. dollar funding constituted a major weakness,
and required the provision of large swap lines by the Federal Reserve. The United States provided that support to
some countries, but not others, on the basis of an explicitly political logic, as Eswar Prasad demonstrates in his new
book on the Dollar Trap.
Geo-politics is intruding into banking practice elsewhere. Before the Ukraine crisis, Russian banks were trying to
acquire assets in Central and Eastern Europe. European and U.S. banks are playing a much reduced role in Asian
trade finance. Chinese banks are being pushed to expand their role in global commerce. After the financial crisis,
China started to build up the renminbi as a major international currency. Russia and China have just proposed to
create a new credit rating agency to avoid what they regard as the political bias of the existing (American-based)
agencies.
The next stage in this logic is to think about how financial power can be directed to national advantage in the case
of a diplomatic tussle. Sanctions are a routine (and not terribly successful) part of the pressure applied to rogue
states such as Iran and North Korea. But financial pressure can be much more powerfully applied to countries that
are deeply embedded in the world economy.
The test is in the Western imposition of sanctions after the Russian annexation of Crimea. President Vladimir Putins
calculation in response is that the European Union and the United States cannot possibly be serious about the
financial war. It would turn into a boomerang: Russia would be less affected than the more developed and complex
financial markets of Europe and America.

The threat of systemic disruption generates a new sort of uncertainty, one

that mirrors the decisive feature of the crisis of the summer of 1914. At
that time, no one could really know whether clashes would escalate or not.
That feature contrasts remarkably with almost the entirety of the Cold War, especially since the 1960s, when the
strategic doctrine of M utually A ssured D estruction left no doubt that any
superpower conflict would inevitably escalate .
The idea of network disruption relies on the ability to achieve advantage by surprise, and to win at no or low cost.
But it is inevitably a gamble, and raises prospect that others might, but also might not be able to, mount the same

there is an enhanced temptation to roll the dice,

even though the game may be fatal.

sort of operation. Just as in 1914,

2AC Internet Adv

Balkanization Now
The Snowden leaks have destroyed international trust in the
US as a responsible steward of the internetcountries are
pushing for a Balkanized internet
Cooper, vice president of research and emerging issues at the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, 15
Rich, "Say No to the Balkanization of the Internet", March 30 2015, US Chamber of
Commerce Foundation, www.uschamberfoundation.org/blog/post/say-nobalkanization-internet/42923
Motivations for Balkanization Currently, the United States is the worlds
undisputed Internet hub. America invented and built the Internet (in terms of infrastructure and
software), and by consequence, the United States is at the center of the World Wide Web. Even as wireless

the Internet still operates primarily via cables. These cables

and by virtue of the United
States economic prowess, early adoption of digital capabilities (relative to the
rest of the world), and central role in developing the Internet, there are
numerous points at which global Internet traffic runs through the United
States. If you are a security organization interested in monitoring evolving
threats by snooping through digital traffic, these U.S.-based nodes would be
excellent places to set up shop. Enter Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency (NSA)
contractor who stole troves of secret data and began leaking it to the world in 2013. Snowdens traitorous
leaks revealed U.S. activities in digital intelligence gathering, prompting
an international backlash that led some world leaders to question the
prudence of running their nations Web traffic through the United States .
One example is Brazil. In 2013, Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff, incensed over
reports of U.S. digital espionage, spoke to the UN General Assembly,
calling on countries to build their own sovereign Internet. Brazil also
developed plans for using only Brazil-based Internet services (like e-mail and data
storage) in an attempt to keep the nations data in-house. This kind of
thinking would turn the World Wide Web into a Web of Webs around the
World, dividing up the Internet along arbitrary lines, like political
boundaries. Think of it as a perpetual series of defacto Cold War nationstates aligning along their own self-imposed East vs. West borders . The former
capabilities steadily improve,

connect to different nodes across the world (hence the term Web),

fosters the free flow of ideas and data; the latter achieves the opposite. (Fortunately, Brazilian lawmakers realized
the folly of isolating their data and their networks and removed a portion of a proposed law, Marco Civil da
Internet, that would have required foreign Internet providers to store data about Brazilians in country.) Yet,

Brazil has not been alone in calling for a change in Internet stewardship.
Countries like Indonesia and India have discussed the possibility of an
international framework for Internet governance, something that is currently decided by
the United States (because we invented and built it). Meanwhile, countries in the European Union
have considered terminating data-sharing agreements with the United
States, also in response to the Snowden revelations. Totalitarian regimes
in China, Iran, and elsewhere have realized a potential benefit of a
cloistered, country-specific Internet: the capacity to monitor everything
their citizens say and do online, making it easier to identify and quell
dissent. Something that each of those named countries has done in various forms. These motivations for
changing how data is accessed and transferred come at a time when cloud computing is raising real questions
about the applicability of national laws to a virtual environment in which geopolitical borders are irrelevant. If data,

much like the cloud transcends nationality and long-held geographic borders, how do nations decide whose laws
apply to that data? The answer to this still-unanswered question will have consequences for all Internet

What all of this points to is a real

potential for a Balkanized Internetone that lacks a centralized authority
guiding Internet development but is instead composed of a confusing and
cumbersome patchwork of laws, rights, access, and all the minutia that
make-up cyberspace. Make no mistake, a Balkanized Internet would be a bad
thing. It would frustrate innovation, slow economic growth, and limit
individual freedoms. What makes this scenario even moretroubling is that unlike in years past, digital
stakeholdersbusinesses, governments and individuals.

technologies have become easier to build and implement, allowing any country with means to build their own
Internet. Its not just that some countries want to Balkanize the Internet; its that now they actually can.

The controversy surrounding NSA surveillance has undermined

a US-centric model of internet governancecountries are
pushing for a more regional/balkanized system
Rotenberg, President and Executive Director of the Electronic
Privacy Information Center, 14

Marc, "On International Privacy: A Path Forward for the US and Europe", June 15
2014, Harvard International Review, hir.harvard.edu/archives/5815The US Response
President Obamas initial response to the Snowden disclosures mirrored the
statements of his intelligence advisors but they were not sufficient to address concerns in the
United States and Europe. Obama appeared to think that if there was more
openness and explanation for the program activities, public support would
follow. But it became clear that substantive changes were needed to
address opposition in the United States and the criticism of its allies. At a
Obama took the first steps toward reform.
He said he would revise the controversial section 215 program that permitted the bulk
news conference about a month after the initial disclosures, President

collection of American telephone records. The President announced that he would take steps to put in place

He also said that he favored the establishment of a public

interest advocate to argue at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court , a
greater oversight and greater transparency.

move favored by civil liberties advocates and former judges on the secretive court, but one that would not actually
limit the scope of the surveillance program. The President further said that he would disclose more of the activities
of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, appoint a privacy officer for the agency, and create a

the President announced the

creation of a high level expert group, including former White House advisors, to make specific
website to make the agency programs more transparent. Finally,

recommendations for changes in intelligence gathering activities. That expert group would eventually produce a
report with far more sweeping recommendations. The Presidents speech was intended to set out concrete steps for
reform and to address criticisms about the scope of the NSA programs that were known at the time.

But there

was too little in the announcement to satisfy foreign governments and

too much was still to be released by Snowden. Foreign governments were
also becoming increasingly critical of the NSAs practices, and a move
toward non-US based computing services was emerging. The President then
returned to the topic at a speech in January 2014. That speech had the benefit of the report from the Presidents
expert group which recommended a dramatic overhaul of the NSAs activities. The review panel called for an end to
the bulk collection of telephone data in the US that had triggered various lawsuits. It also recommended the
narrowing of surveillance on foreign government and foreign leaders. The review panel said that the NSA had to
stop subverting Internet security standards and called for the establishment of new oversight mechanisms. The
President did not endorse all of the recommendations, but he did make a commitment to implement a majority of
the proposals. He also announced that the NSAs bulk collection of telephone records would end. He further set out
a new Presidential Policy Directive on signals intelligence which intends to narrow the scope of US spying on foreign
leaders and foreign nations. But by this point far more was known about the scope of NSA surveillance and
opposition to the Administration was increasing.

Although the President had embraced

significant reforms, the responses were mixed and European leaders in

particular continued to express concerns about the mass surveillance
practices of the US government. The Internet Governance Dimension The
current dispute over the scope of US surveillance also has implications for
the future of Internet Governance. For many years, the United States
defended an Internet management system that placed a US-based
corporation,ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), at its hub. The
Internet Governance system was never stable, but until now, most serious
threats to its future have been beaten back. This may

also

change with the

Snowden revelations and the news of the NSAs widespread surveillance .

Nelie Kroes, the EU Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, said recently that
countries now need to move from ICANN to a model that is transparent,
accountable and inclusive, views that echo earlier statements by EU Commissioner Vivian Reding.
It has become increasingly difficult for the United States to decouple the
debate over the future of Internet governance from the reality of NSA
surveillance . Too much of Internet policy is tied to decisions about
security and stability which rest on technical standards that many fear the
NSA has compromised. Internet advocates strongly favor a global, seamless network. But the
movement toward regional Internets may come about for the practical
reason that national governments and non-US firms may have no choice if
the US-led Internet is unable to protect their interests . Recent comments by
Chancellor Merkel make clear the concern as she is calling on France and other countries to lead an EU-based effort

The increasing effort to develop cloud-based

services outside of the United States reveals the potential scope of the
problem. One estimate suggests that US firms could lose between US $30
billion and US $180 billion over the next five years if non-US firms
conclude that data storage in the US, and the prospects of easy access by
the NSA, no longer provide a viable business model.
that would avoid reliance on US Internet firms

EXT- Cloud Comp-I/L

Updating ECPA will help boost US tech competiveness globally
Leahy and Lee, 15, senators, Update Privacy Laws for the Digital Age,
1/28/15,
http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2015/01/28/update_privacy_laws_for_the_digital
_age_1185.html
Our legislation will take into account privacy interests, law-enforcement
needs, and the interests of our thriving American tech sector. In our global
economy, American technology companies are competing internationally and
need to rebuild consumer trust. And just like the bill that garnered broad support in the last
Congress, our bill will include balanced exceptions to the warrant requirement
to address emergency circumstances. Support for ECPA reform continues to grow. We
have been joined in the effort by senators from both sides of the aisle , and
last year 273 members of the House of Representatives supported this
legislation. A diverse coalition of more than 100 leaders in the privacy,
civil-liberties, civil-rights, and technology communities , including Americans for Tax
Reform, the ACLU, the Heritage Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and many major technology

also support our bill. Just last week, many of these organizations joined
together to urge the Senate to pass ECPA reform. In a letter to the Judiciary Committee,
these organizations said that not only would ECPA legislation "allow law
enforcement officials to obtain electronic communications in all
appropriate cases while protecting Americans' constitutional rights," but it
also would "provide certainty for American businesses developing
innovative new services and competing in a global marketplace."
companies,

ECPA reform key to maintain cloud computing competitiveness

Fred Humphries, 3/4, Corporate Vice President, U.S. Government Affairs,

Microsoft, US overdue for Electronic Communications Privacy Act reform, 3/4/15,

http://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2015/03/04/us-overdue-for-electroniccommunications-privacy-act-reform/
people and organizations increasingly store personal
information in the cloud and rely on the free flow and exchange of
information online so protecting their privacy in the cloud is critical to
enabling trust in technology and advancing the benefits of the Internet . Our
goal is simple: the law should, at a minimum, ensure that data stored in the cloud
receives the same legal protections as data stored in our homes or in our
offices. The fact that we use new technological means to communicate or
store that information should not diminish the legal protections afforded
to it. Therefore, law enforcement should be required to get a warrant before
demanding disclosure of emails or other documents stored in the cloud.
As weve said before,

Balkanization ImpactX!
Preserving global internet stability is key to solve existential
crisis
DeNardis, 2014 Laura, tenured Professor and Associate Dean in the School of Communication at
American University, The Global War for Internet Governance, pg 15-18

The preservation of the Internet's stability and security

parallels other global collective action problems that have cumulative
Internet Globalization

effects on all nations. Some of these global problems obviously include

environmental protection, the prevention of terrorism, the eradication of
infectious diseases, and the protection of human rights . Similar to these global
collective action problems, the regional value of Internet infrastructure is
dependent on the network effects afforded by globally coordinated Internet governance functions. Universal and consistent technical standards
are the common denominator enabling interoperability among computing
devices . The international coordination of Internet names and numbers
ensures that each is globally unique. Cooperation at Internet interconnection points
collectively creates the Internet's global backbone. Globally coordinated
responses to Internet worms and viruses collectively minimize the impact
of new cybersecurity threats . International trade agreements provide
coordinated enforcement of i ntellectual p roperty rights. The local value of stable
and secure global Internet governance is inestimable in contemporary
societies dependent on networked technologies to handle basic business
transactions, the movement of currency, and the exchange of financial
securities. The amount of money changing hands electronically measures
in the trillions range annually.1* Social life is also intertwined with digital
life. Reputation systems serve as social currency. Couples meet in online dating sites and social life materializes
in social media platforms. Press freedom and individual freedom of expression alike
are dependent on online infrastructures and the policies enacted to preserve both liberty and
infrastructure reliability. Political campaigns rely on Internet-based fundraising and communi- cation with voters.

Law enforcement and national security efforts use digital infrastructures

for data gathering and information warfare . No less than economic
security, modern social life, culture, political discourse, and national
security are at stake in keeping the Internet globally opera- tional and
secure.

CensorshipAT: China Censorship Inev

Censorship is NOT locked in - censors have been forced to back
down reveling the cracks in China's attempts to censor the
internet
Masnick 15 - China's Great Firewall Turned Around: Why China Wants To Censor Global Internet Free
Speech by Mike Masnick Tue, Mar 31st 2015 11:36am
(https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150331/07002030498/chinas-great-firewall-turned-around-why-china-wants-tocensor-global-internet.shtml) CM
But the much more interesting part is why China is using a DDoS attack, rather than its standard approach of just
blocking access in China, as it has historically done. The key is that, two years ago, China tried to block Github
entirely... and Chinese programmers flipped out, pointing out that they couldn't do their jobs without Github. The

Chinese censors were forced to back down , leading to a sort of loophole in

the Great Firewall. That leads to the next question of why China doesn't just block access to the URLs of
the two repositories it doesn't like? And the answer there: HTTPS. Because all Github traffic is encrypted
via HTTPS, China can't just block access to those URLs , because it doesn't
know specifically what's being accessed . And thus, we get the decision to turn its firewall
around, launching a rather obvious DDoS attack on the two sites it doesn't like, with the rather clear message being
sent to Github: if you stop hosting these projects, the DDoS will stop. Of course, so far Github is taking a stand and
refusing to take down those projects (which is great and exactly what it should be doing). However, this does

You see
various countries demanding (or forcing) certain websites get blocked. But
those solutions are truly only temporary . Because the overall internet is
too important to block , and because some sites are necessary (like Github)
there are always holes in the system . Add in a useful dose of encryption
(yay!) and the ability to control everything that's read in one particular
country becomes increasingly difficult. You might hope the response would be to give up
suggest an interesting escalation in questions about the increasing attempts to fragment the internet.

attempts to censor, but China isn't likely to give up just like that. So, instead, it's basically trying to censor the
global internet, by launching a high powered attack on the site that is the problem, while basically saying "get rid of
these projects and we'll stop the attack."

only going to continue

It seems likely that this sort of escalation is

It shows that there

-- but in some ways it's actually a good sign.

are real cracks in China's attempts to censor the inte rnet. We're basically
realizing the limits of the Great Firewall of China , and useful services

like Github have

allowed a way to tunnel through. China is responding by trying to make life difficult for Github, but as long as Github
and others can figure out ways to resist, censorship attempts like the Great Firewall will increasingly be useless.

CensorshipFailed States Add-On

Disease spread outweighs war and causes state failure
Brown and Chalk, RAND science and political analysts, 2003

(Jennifer Brown, RAND S&T policy analyst, Ph.D. in public health from Harvard
University and Peter, RAND senior political scientist, Ph.D. in political science from
the University of British Columbia, The Global Threat of New and Reemerging
Infectious Diseases; Reconciling U.S. National Security and Public Health Policy,
www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1602.html)
The argument that the transnational spread of disease poses a threat to human security
rests on the simple proposition that it seriously threatens both the individual and the quality of life that a person is able to attain
within a given society, polity or state. Specifically, this occurs in at least six ways. First and most fundamental, disease killsfar
surpassing war as a threat to human life. AIDS alone is expected to have killed over 80 million people by the year 2011, while
tuberculosis (TB), one of the viruss main opportunistic diseases, accounts for three million deaths every year, including 100,000
children. 2 1 In general, a staggering 1,500 people die each hour from infectious ailments, the vast bulk of which are caused by just
six groups of disease: HIV/AIDS, malaria, measles, pneumonia, TB, and dysentery and other gastrointestinal disorders. 22 Second, if

disease can undermine public confidence in the states general

custodian function, in the process eroding a politys overall governing legitimacy as well as undermining the ability of
left unchecked,

the state itself to function. When large-scale outbreaks occur, such effects can become particularly acute as the ranks of first
responders and medical personnel are decimated, making it doubly difficult for an already stressed government to respond
adequately. During the initial weeks of the anthrax attacks in fall 2001, the lack of coordination at the federal level, especially with
regard to communication, led to a loss of confidence by some citizens, especially postal workers in Washington, D.C. Potentially
exposed individuals were given conflicting advice on antibiotic treatment and the efficacy of the anthrax vaccine. The general
public, largely because of inconsistent information enunciated by government officials, bought Cipro, the antibiotic approved for the
treatment of anthrax, in large numbers. Similarly, in 1996, Japan suffered a severe food poisoning epidemic caused by Escherichia
coli O157. Over the course of two months, eight people died and thousands of others were sickened. The perceived inability of the
Tokyo government to enact an appropriate response generated widespread public criticism, compounding popular dissatisfaction
with an administration that was still reeling from the effects of the previous years Kobe earthquake. As one commentator remarked
at the height of the crisis, The cries against government authorities are growing louder by the day. . . . The impression here [in
Japan] is too much talk and not enough action has led to yet another situation that has spun out of control. 23 Third, disease
adversely affects the economic foundation upon which both human and state security depends. The fiscal burden imposed by the
HIV/AIDS epidemic provides a case in point. Twenty-five million people are currently HIV-positive in subSaharan Africa, costing already

impoverished governments billions of dollars in direct economic costs and loss of productivity. Treating HIV-related illnesses in South Africa, the worst-hit
country on the continent, is expected to generate annual increases in healthcare costs in excess of US$500 million by 2009 (see Chapter Three). 2 4 South

demographic
widely destabilize countries with fragile economies

and Southeast Asia are expected to surpass Africa in terms of infections by the year 2010. If this in fact occurs,

upheaval could

tax and

and public health infrastructures . Economies will be greatly affected by the

loss of a stable and productive workforce as well as from a reduction of external
capital investment, potentially reducing general gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as 20
percent. 25 Fourth, disease can have a profound, negative impact on a states social
order, functioning, and psyche. In Papua New Guinea, for instance, AIDS has severely distorted the wa n t o k systemwhich
formalizes reciprocal responsibilities, ensuring that those who hit hard times will be taken care of by extended familybecause of the fear and stigma
attached to the disease. 26 The Ebola outbreak that hit the crowded Ugandan district of Gulu in late 2000 caused people to completely withdraw from
contact with the outside world, reducing common societal interactions and functions to a bare minimum. 27 Epidemics may also lead to forms of posttraumatic stress. A number of analyses have been undertaken to assess the long-term psychological effects on those who have been continually subjected
to poor sanitary conditions and outbreaks of disease. The studies consistently document the extreme emotional stress suffered by these people and the

infectious diseases can act as a catalyst

for regional instability. Epidemics can severely undermine defense force
capabilities (just as they distort civilian worker productivity ). By galvanizing mass
cross-border population flows and fostering economic problems, they can also help
create the type of widespread volatility that can quickly translate into heightened
tension both within and between states. This combination of military, demographic, and fiscal effects has already been created by the AIDS crisis in
Africa. Indeed, the U.S. State Department increasingly speculates that the disease will
emerge as one of the most significant conflict starters and possibly even war outcome
determinants during the next decade.
difficulty of integrating them back into normal society. 28 Fifth, the spread of

Risks nuclear conflict

Johnson, Forbes contributor and Presidential Medal of Freedom
winner, 2013
(Paul, A Lesson For Rogue States, 5-8,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/currentevents/2013/05/08/a-lesson-for-rogue-states/,
ldg)
Although we live in a violent world, where an internal conflict such as the Syrian civil war can cost 70,000 lives over a two-year

Todays three superpowersthe

U.S., Russia and Chinahave no conflicts of interest that cant be resolved
through compromise. All have hair-trigger nuclear alert systems, but the sheer scale of their armories has forced
period, there hasnt been a major war between the great powers in 68 years.

them to take nuclear conflict seriously. Thus, in a real sense, nuclear weapons have succeeded in abolishing the concept of a
winnable war.

The same cannot be said,

however,

for certain paranoid rogue states,

namely North Korea and Iran. If these two nations appear to be prospering that is, if their nuclear
threats are winning them attention and respect, financial bribes in the form of aid and all the other goodies by which petty dictators
count successother

prospective rogues will join them. One such state is

Venezuela. Currently its oil wealth is largely wasted, but it is great enough
to buy entree to a junior nuclear club. Another possibility is Pakistan, which
already has a small nuclear capability and is teetering on the brink of chaos. Other potential rogues are one
or two of the components that made up the former Soviet Union. All the more
reason to ensure that North Korea and Iran are dramatically punished for traveling the nuclear path. But how? Its of little use
imposing further sanctions, as they chiefly fall on the long-suffering populations. Recent disclosures about life in North Korea reveal
how effectively the ruling elite is protected from the physical consequences of its nuclear quest, enjoying high standards of living
while the masses starve. Things arent much better in Iran. Both regimes are beyond the reach of civilized reasoning, one locked into
a totalitarian vise of such comprehensiveness as to rule out revolt, the other victim of a religious despotism from which there
currently seems no escape. Either country might take a fatal step of its own volition. Were North Korea to attack the South, it would
draw down a retribution in conventional firepower from the heavily armed South and a possible nuclear response from the U.S.,
which would effectively terminate the regime. Iran has frequently threatened to destroy Israel and exterminate its people. Were it to
attempt to carry out such a plan, the Israeli response would be so devastating that it would put an end to the theocracy forthwith.

The balance of probabilities is that neither nation will embark on a

deliberate war but instead will carry on blustering. This, however, doesnt
rule out war by accidenta small-scale nuclear conflict precipitated by the
blunders of a totalitarian elite. Preventing Disaster The most effective, yet coldblooded, way to teach these states the consequences of continuing their
nuclear efforts would be to make an example of one by destroying its
ruling class. The obvious candidate would be North Korea. Were we able to contrive circumstances in which this occurred,
its probable that Iran, as well as any other prospective rogues, would abandon its nuclear aims. But how to do this? At the least
there would need to be general agreement on such a course among Russia, China and the U.S. But China would view the
replacement of its communist ally with a neutral, unified Korea as a serious loss. Compensation would be required. Still, its worth
exploring.

What we must avoid is a jittery world in which proliferating rogue

states perpetually seek to become nuclear ones. The risk of an accidental

conflict breaking out that would then drag in the major powers is too
great. This is precisely how the 1914 Sarajevo assassination broadened into World War I. It is fortunate the
major powers appear to have understood the dangers of nuclear conflict
without having had to experience them. Now they must turn their minds,
responsibly, to solving the menace of rogue states. At present all we have
are the bellicose bellowing of the rogues and the well-meaning drift of
the Great Powersa formula for an eventual and monumental disaster
that could be the end of us all.

Censorship ScenarioSolvency
A credible internet freedom agenda is key to avoiding
balkanizationcurtailing surveillance promotes cooperation
and accountability
(Castro 2015, Daniel Castro, Director for the Center for Data Innovation at ITIF,
Vice President of ITIF, member of the Federal Commerce Data Advisory Council, June
2015, Beyond the USA Freedom Act: How U.S. Surveillance Still Subverts U.S.
Competitiveness, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation,
http://www2.itif.org/2015-beyond-usa-freedom-act.pdf?
_ga=1.114044933.369159037.1433787396)
The ability of companiesboth tech and traditionalto easily share data across
borders has brought a vast array of benefits to countries, companies, consumers, and
economies through increased efficiency, decreased costs, and improved
services.26 And yet nations have continued to erect barriers to cloud computing and cross-border data flows,

much to their own detriment.27 While some defenders of these policies have asserted that they are designed to
increase the privacy or security of their citizens data, it is clear that they are also motivated by misguided selfinterest. By creating rules that advantage domestic firms over foreign firms, many countries believe they will build a
stronger domestic tech industry or gain short-term economic value, such as jobs in domestic data centers. In
reality, these policies unwittingly limit the ability of a countrys own firms to innovate by shielding them from
international competition.28 These policies not only limit the number of services that a countrys citizens and
businesses can enjoy, but also harm that countrys productivity and competitiveness. Some countries used U.S.
surveillance laws to justify data protectionism even before Snowdens NSA revelations. For example, when
Rackspace built data centers in Australia in 2012, an Australian competitor stirred up fears that the United States
would use the Patriot Act to track Australian citizens as a means to force Rackspace out of Australia.29 In addition,
this same Australian company funded a report calling on Australian policymakers to impose additional regulations

since the recent

NSA revelations, the use of privacy concerns to justify protectionist
barriers has grown significantly. Amid growing anti-U.S. sentiment,
Europe has seen calls for data localization requirements, procurement preferences
designed to put foreign cloud computing competitors at a disadvantage.30 However,

for European providers, and even a Schengen area for dataa system that keeps as much data in Europe as

France
and Germany have even started to create dedicated national networks:
possibleas ways to promote deployment of cloud services entirely focused on the European market.31

Schlandnet for the former and the Sovereign Cloud for the latter. 32 The French government has gone so far as
to put 150 million ($200 million) into two start-ups, Numergy and Cloudwatt, to create a domestic infrastructure
independent of U.S. tech giants.33 Furthermore, some groups have invoked U.S. cyberespionage to argue that
European citizens are not adequately protected and are calling for the removal of the safe harbor agreementan
agreement that allows Internet companies to store data outside of the European Union. Yet if this were removed it

There is also an increasingly

distressing trend of countries, such as Australia, China, Russia, and India,
passing laws that prevent their citizens personal information from leaving
the countrys borderseffectively mandating that cloud computing firms build data centers in those
countries or risk losing access to their markets. For example, in 2014 Russian implemented and
Indonesia began considering policies that would require Internet-based
companies to set up local data centers.35 These policies are often a veiled
attempt to spur short term economic activity by creating data-center job s.
However, this benefit is often outweighed by the substantial cost of building
unnecessary data centers, a cost that is eventually passed along to the countrys citizens. Several
would cut Europeans off from many major Internet services. 34

U.S. tech giants, such Apple and Salesforce, have already started to build their data centers abroad to appease
foreign watchdogs and privacy advocates.36 For example, Amazon started running Internet services and holding
data in Germany for its European business partners in an effort to downplay threats of online spying.37

Protectionist policies in China have further strained the U.S. tech industry.
In January 2015, the Chinese government adopted new regulations that forced companies that
sold equipment to Chinese banks to turn over secret source code , submit to

aggressive audits, and build encryption keys into their products.38 While ostensibly an attempt to strengthen

many western tech companies saw these

policies as a shot across the bow trying to force them out of Chinas
markets. After all, the Chinese government had already launched a de-IOE movementIOE stands for IBM,
cybersecurity in critical Chinese industries,

Oracle and EMC to convince its state-owned banks to stop buying from these U.S. tech giants. 39 To be sure, the
Chinese government recently halted this policy under U.S. pressure.40 However, the halted policy can be seen as a
part of a larger clash between China and the United States over trade and cybersecurity. Indeed, these proposed
barriers were in part a quid pro quo from China, after the United States barred Huawei, a major Chinese computer
maker, from selling its products in the United States due to the fear that this equipment had back doors for the
Chinese government.41 Since the Snowden revelations essentially gave them cover, Chinese lawmakers have
openly called for the use of domestic tech products over foreign goods both to boost the Chinese economy and in
response to U.S. surveillance tactics. This system of retaliation has not only led to a degradation of business
interests for U.S. tech companies in China, but also disrupted the dialogue between the U.S. government and China

The free and open Internet that powers the

economy is dependent on the ability of individuals and companies to engage in commerce
without geographic restrictions. To turn back the tide of technology protectionism,
U.S. trade negotiators will need a stronger hand to play. They cannot go to
other nations and tell them to not discriminate against U.S. tech firms if
the U.S. intelligence system continues to follow policies that threaten
their citizens and businesses. As a result, it is incumbent on the Congress and
the Obama administration to take the lead in showing the world the best
standards for transparency, cooperation, and accountability.
on cybersecurity issues.42 RECOMMENDATIONS
globally networked

Cloud-ComputingNSA Bad
Surveillance leaks have blanketed the tech industry with
concern over data privacythe government needs to take
significant steps in order to avoid losing hundreds of billions of
dollars
Miller, reporter @ NYT, 14

Claire Cain, "Revelations of N.S.A. Spying Cost U.S. Tech Companies",

www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/business/fallout-from-snowden-hurting-bottom-lineof-tech-companies.html
Microsoft has lost customers, including the government of Brazil. IBM is
spending more than a billion dollars to build data centers overseas to
reassure foreign customers that their information is safe from prying eyes
in the United States government. And tech companies abroad, from Europe to
South America, say they are gaining customers that are shunning United States
providers, suspicious because of the revelations by Edward J. Snowden that tied these providers
to the National Security Agencys vast surveillance program. Even as Washington
grapples with the diplomatic and political fallout of Mr. Snowdens leaks, the more urgent issue, companies and
analysts say, is economic. Technology executives, including Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, raised the issue when

It is impossible to see
now the full economic ramifications of the spying disclosures in part
because most companies are locked in multiyear contracts but the
pieces are beginning to add up as businesses question the trustworthiness
of American technology products. The confirmation hearing last week for the new N.S.A. chief,
they went to the White House on Friday for a meeting with President Obama.

the video appearance of Mr. Snowden at a technology conference in Texas and the drip of new details about
government spying have kept attention focused on an issue that many tech executives hoped would go away.

Despite the tech companies assertions that they provide information on

their customers only when required under law and not knowingly through a back door
the perception that they enabled the spying program has lingered . Its
clear to every single tech company that this is affecting their bottom line,
said Daniel Castro, a senior analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, who predicted that

Forrester Research, a
technology research firm, said the losses could be as high as $180 billion,
the United States cloud computing industry could lose $35 billion by 2016.

or 25 percent of industry revenue , based on the size of the cloud

computing, web hosting and outsourcing markets and the worst case for
damages. The business effect of the disclosures about the N.S.A. is felt most in the daily conversations
between tech companies with products to pitch and their wary customers. The topic of surveillance ,
which rarely came up before, is now the new normal in these conversations, as one tech company
executive described it. Were hearing from customers, especially global
enterprise customers, that they care more than ever about where their
content is stored and how it is used and secured, said John E. Frank, deputy general
counsel at Microsoft, which has been publicizing that it allows customers to store their data in Microsoft data

companies say they believe the

federal government is only making a bad situation worse. Most of the
companies in this space are very frustrated because there hasnt been any
kind of response thats made it so they can go back to their customers and
say, See, this is whats different now, you can trust us again, he said. In some
cases, that has meant forgoing potential revenue. Though it is hard to quantify missed opportunities, American
centers in certain countries. At the same time, Mr. Castro said,

businesses are being left off some requests for proposals from foreign
customers that previously would have included them, said James Staten, a cloud
computing analyst at Forrester who has read clients requests for proposals. There are German companies, Mr.
Staten said, explicitly not inviting certain American companies to join. He added, Its like, Well, the very best

The result has been a boon for foreign

companies. Runbox, a Norwegian email service that markets itself as an
alternative to American services like Gmail and says it does not comply with foreign court orders
seeking personal information, reported a 34 percent annual increase in customers
after news of the N.S.A. surveillance. Brazil and the European Union , which
had used American undersea cables for intercontinental communication, last month decided to build
their own cables between Brazil and Portugal, and gave the contract to Brazilian and Spanish companies.
vendor to do this is IBM, and you didnt invite them.

Brazil also announced plans to abandon Microsoft Outlook for its own email system that uses Brazilian data centers.

an antiAmerican attitude took root after the passage of the Patriot Act , the
counterterrorism law passed after 9/11 that expanded the governments surveillance powers. But the
volume of the discussion has risen significantly post-Snowden, he said. For
Mark J. Barrenechea, chief executive of OpenText, Canadas largest software company, said

instance, after the N.S.A. surveillance was revealed, one of OpenTexts clients, a global steel manufacturer based in

Issues like privacy are more

important than finding the cheapest price, said Matthias Kunisch, a German software
executive who spurned United States cloud computing providers for Deutsche Telekom. Because of
Snowden, our customers have the perception that American companies
have connections to the N.S.A.
Britain, demanded that its data not cross United States borders.

NSA surveillance is negatively impacting US tech

competitiveness
Otto, Tech reporter @ fedscoop, 14
Greg, "Is NSA's PRISM program ruining cloud computing's growth", July 30 2014,
fedscoop.com/nsa-prism-cloud-computing/
A report released Tuesday looks beyond the privacy implications of the National
Security Agency's PRISM program, saying that areas such as cloud computing,
web-hosting services and the entire cybersecurity industry are taking severe economic hits. The
New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute said that without
reforms, NSA will continue to "cause significant damage to the interests of
the United States and the global Internet community." "Too often, we have discussed
[NSA]'s surveillance programs through the distorting lens of a simplistic 'security versus privacy' narrative,"

in
the name of security, we're trading away not only privacy, but also the U.S. tech
economy, Internet openness, America's foreign policy interests and
cybersecurity." The report says U.S.-based cloud computing companies are
already starting to lose market share and stand to lose more over the
coming years if the government doesn't institute reforms. The report
backs a study done by the Information Technology and Innovation
Foundation that says U.S. cloud companies could lose $22 billion to $35
billion in foreign market share over the next three years due to the
scandal. OTI points to a number of surveys saying global IT professionals
have changed their purchasing behavior or are currently not storing data
in the cloud due to NSA's actions. "Not only do people have initial
concerns about deceiving U.S. technology, but we've seen a lot of
countries take steps to put policies in place that would really give an
advantage to domestic or block U.S. firms out of their market," Daniel Castro,
Danielle Kehl, a policy analyst at OTI, said in a statement. "But if you look closer, the more accurate story is that

One U.S. company, Virginia-based Servint, said

international clients have declined by as much as half, dropping from
approximately 60 percent of its business to 30 percent since the leaks
began. "It is abundantly clear that the NSA surveillance programs are
author of the ITIF report, told FedScoop.

currently having a serious, negative impact on the U.S. economy and

threatening the future competitiveness of American technology
companies," the OTI report says. "Not only are U.S. companies losing overseas
sales and getting dropped from contracts with foreign companies and
governments they are also watching their competitive advantage in
fast-growing industries like cloud computing and [web-hosting] disappear,
opening the door for foreign companies who claim to offer more secure
alternative products to poach their business."

Cloud-ComputingFragmentation IL
Fragmentation destroys cloud computing
McDowell, 12
(5/31, FCC Chair, Comm'r. McDowell's Congressional Testimony,
http://www.fcc.gov/document/commr-mcdowells-congressional-testimony-5-312012)
It is a pleasure and an honor to testify beside my friend, Ambassador Phil Verveer. First, please allow me to dispense
quickly and emphatically any doubts about the bipartisan resolve of the United States to resist efforts to expand
the International Telecommunication Unions (ITU) authority over Internet matters. Some ITU officials have
dismissed our concern over this issue as mere election year politics. Nothing could be further from the truth as
evidenced by Ambassador Verveers testimony today as well as recent statements from the White House, Executive
Branch agencies, Democratic and Republican Members of Congress and my friend and colleague, FCC Chairman

it is
important to define the challenge before us. The threats are real and not imagined,
although they admittedly sound like works of fiction at times. For many years now,
scores of countries led by China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and many others, have
pushed for, as then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said almost a year ago, international control
of the Internet through the ITU.1 I have tried to find a more concise way to express this issue, but I
Julius Genachowski. We are unified on the substantive arguments and have always been so. Second,

cant seem to improve upon now-President Putins crystallization of the effort that has been afoot for quite some
time. More importantly, I think we should take President Putin very seriously. 1 Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister of the
Russian Federation, Working Day, GOVT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDN, http://premier.gov.ru/eng/events/news/15601/
(June 15, 2011) (last visited May 14, 2012). Six months separate us from the renegotiation of the 1988 treaty that

What proponents of Internet

freedom do or dont do between now and then will determine the fate of the Net,
affect global economic growth and determine whether political liberty can
proliferate. During the treaty negotiations, the most lethal threat to Internet freedom may not
come from a full frontal assault, but through insidious and seemingly innocuous expansions
of intergovernmental powers. This subterranean effort is already under way. While influential ITU
led to insulating the Internet from economic and technical regulation.

Member States have put forth proposals calling for overt legal expansions of United Nations or ITU authority over
the Net, ITU officials have publicly declared that the ITU does not intend to regulate Internet governance while also
saying that any regulations should be of the light-touch variety.2 But which is it? It is not possible to insulate the
Internet from new rules while also establishing a new light touch regulatory regime. Either a new legal paradigm
will emerge in December or it wont. The choice is binary. Additionally, as a threshold matter, it is curious that ITU
officials have been opining on the outcome of the treaty negotiation. The ITUs Member States determine the fate of
any new rules, not ITU leadership and staff. I remain hopeful that the diplomatic process will not be subverted in
this regard. As a matter of process and substance, patient and persistent incrementalism is the Nets most
dangerous enemy and it is the hallmark of many countries that are pushing the proregulation agenda. Specifically,
some ITU officials and Member States have been discussing an alleged worldwide phone numbering crisis. It
seems that the world may be running out of phone numbers, over which the ITU does have some jurisdiction. 2
Speech by ITU Secretary-General Tour, The Challenges of Extending the Benefits of Mobile (May 1,
2012),http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/index.aspx?lang=en (last visited May 29, 2012). 2 Today,
many phone numbers are used for voice over Internet protocol services such as Skype or Google Voice. To function
properly, the software supporting these services translate traditional phone numbers into IP addresses. The Russian
Federation has proposed that the ITU be given jurisdiction over IP addresses to remedy the phone number
shortage.3 What is left unsaid, however, is that potential ITU jurisdiction over IP addresses would enable it to
regulate Internet services and devices with abandon. IP addresses are a fundamental and essential component to
the inner workings of the Net. Taking their administration away from the bottomup, non-governmental, multistakeholder model and placing it into the hands of international bureaucrats would be a grave mistake. Other
efforts to expand the ITUs reach into the Internet are seemingly small but are tectonic in scope. Take for example
the Arab States submission from February that would change the rules definition of telecommunications to
include processing or computer functions.4 This change would essentially swallow the Internets functions with
only a tiny edit to existing rules.5 When ITU leadership claims that no Member States have proposed absorbing
Internet governance into the ITU or other intergovernmental entities, the Arab States submission demonstrates
that nothing could be further from the truth. An infinite number of avenues exist to 3 Further Directions for Revision
of the ITRs, Russian Federation, CWG-WCIT12 Contribution 40, at 3 (2011), http://www.itu.int/md/T09-CWG.WCIT12C-0040/en (last visited May 29, 2012) (To oblige ITU to allocate/distribute some part of IPv6 addresses (as same

way/principle as for telephone numbering, simultaneously existing of many operators/numbers distributors inside
unified numbers space for both fixed and mobile phone services) and determination of necessary requirements.). 4
Proposed Revisions, Arab States, CWG-WCIT12 Contribution 67, at 3 (2012), http://www.itu.int/md/T09CWG.WCIT12C-0067/en (last visited May 29, 2012). 5 And Iran argues that the current definition already includes the Internet.
Contribution from Iran, The Islamic Republic of Iran, CWG-WCIT12 Contribution 48, Attachment 2 (2011),
http://www.itu.int/md/T09-CWG.WCIT12C-0048/en (last visited May 29, 2012). 3 accomplish the same goal and it is
camouflaged subterfuge that proponents of Internet freedom should watch for most vigilantly. Other examples
come from China. China would like to see the creation of a system whereby Internet users are registered using their
IP addresses. In fact, last year, China teamed up with Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to propose to the UN
General Assembly that it create an International Code of Conduct for Information Security to mandate
international norms and rules standardizing the behavior of countries concerning information and cyberspace.6
Does anyone here today believe that these countries proposals would encourage the continued proliferation of an
open and freedom-enhancing Internet? Or would such constructs make it easier for authoritarian regimes to identify
and silence political dissidents? These proposals may not technically be part of the WCIT negotiations, but they give
a sense of where some of the ITUs Member States would like to go. Still other proposals that have been made
personally to me by foreign government officials include the creation of an international universal service fund of
sorts whereby foreign usually state-owned telecom companies would use international mandates to charge
certain Web destinations on a per-click basis to fund the build-out of broadband infrastructure across the globe.

the U.S.
and like-minded proponents of Internet freedom and prosperity across the globe
should resist efforts to expand the powers of intergovernmental bodies over the
Internet 6 Letter dated 12 September 2011 from the Permanent Representatives of China, the Russian
Google, iTunes, Facebook and Netflix are mentioned most often as prime sources of funding. In short,

Federation, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General, Item 93 of the
provisional agenda - Developments in the field of information and telecommunications in the context of
international security, 66th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, Annex (Sep. 14, 2011),
http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/csci1800/sources/2012_UN_Russia_and_China_Code_o_Conduct.pdf (last visited
May 29, 2012). even in the smallest of ways. As my supplemental statement and analysis explains in more detail

such a scenario would be devastating to global economic activity , but

it would hurt the developing world the most. Thank you for the opportunity to appear
below,

before you today and I look forward to your questions. Thank you, Chairman Walden and Ranking Member Eshoo,
for holding this hearing. Its topic is among the most important public policy issues affecting global commerce and
political freedom: namely, whether the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), or any other
intergovernmental body, should be allowed to expand its jurisdiction into the operational and economic affairs of
the Internet. As we head toward the treaty negotiations at the World Conference on International
Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai in December, I urge governments around the world to avoid the temptation to

the Internet has flourished across

the world under the current deregulatory framework. In fact, the long-standing
international consensus has been to keep governments from regulating core
functions of the Internets ecosystem. Yet, some nations, such as China, Russia, India, Iran and
Saudi Arabia, have been pushing to reverse this course by giving the ITU or the United
Nations itself, regulatory jurisdiction over Internet governance. The ITU is a treaty-based
tamper with the Internet. Since its privatization in the early 1990s,

organization under the auspices of the United Nations.1 Dont take my word for it, however. As Russian Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin said almost one year ago, the goal of this well-organized and energetic effort is to establish
international control over the Internet using the monitoring and supervisory capabilities of the [ITU].2 Motivations
of some ITU Member states vary. Some of the arguments in support of such actions may stem from frustrations with
the operations of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Any concerns regarding ICANN,
however, should not be used as a pretext to end the multi-stakeholder model that has served all nations
especially the developing world so well. Any reforms to ICANN should take place through the bottom-up multistakeholder process and should not arise through the WCITs examination of the International Telecommunication
Regulations (ITR)s. Constructive reform of the ITRs may be needed. If so, the scope of any review should be limited
to traditional telecommunications services and not expanded to include information services or any form of Internet
services. Modification of the current multistakeholder Internet governance model may be necessary as well, but we
should all work together to ensure no intergovernmental regulatory overlays are placed into this sphere. Not only
would nations surrender some of their national sovereignty in such a pursuit, but they would suffocate their own
economies as well, while politically paralyzing engineering and business decisions within a global regulatory body. 1
History, IThttp://www.itu.int/en/about/Pages/history.aspx">U, http://www.itu.int/en/about/Pages/history.aspx (last
visited May 14, 2012). 2 Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Working Day, GOVT OF THE
RUSSIAN FEDN, http://premier.gov.ru/eng/events/news/15601/ (June 15, 2011) (last visited May 14, 2012). Every
day headlines tell us about industrialized and developing nations alike that are awash in debt, facing flat growth

Not only must governments, including our own, tighten

their fiscal belts, but they must also spur economic expansion. An unfettered
Internet offers the brightest ray of hope for growth during this dark time
of economic uncertainty, not more regulation. Indeed, we are at a crossroads for
curves, or worse, shrinking GDPs.

the Internets future. One path holds great promise, while the other path is fraught
with peril. The promise, of course, lies with keeping what works, namely maintaining
a freedom-enhancing and open Internet while insulating it from legacy regulations .
The peril lies with changes that would ultimately sweep up Internet services into
decades-old ITU paradigms. If successful, these efforts would merely imprison the
future in the regulatory dungeon of the past. The future of global growth and
political freedom lies with an unfettered Internet. Shortly after the Internet was
privatized in 1995, a mere 16 million people were online worldwide.3 As of early 2012, approximately 2.3 billion

Internet connectivity quickly evolved from being a novelty in

industrialized countries to becoming an essential tool for commerce and
sometimes even basic survival in all nations, but especially in the developing
world. Such explosive growth was helped, not hindered, by a deregulatory
construct. Developing nations stand to gain the most from the rapid pace of
deployment and adoption of Internet technologies brought forth by an Internet free
from intergovernmental regulation. By way of illustration, a McKinsey report released in January
people were using the Net.4

examined the Nets effect on the developing world, or aspiring countries.5 In 30 specific aspiring countries
studied, including Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Turkey and Vietnam,6 Internet penetration has grown 25
percent per year for the past five years, compared to only five percent per year in developed nations.7 Obviously,
broadband penetration is lower in aspiring countries than in the developed world, but that is quickly changing
thanks to mobile Internet access technologies. Mobile subscriptions in developing countries have risen from 53
percent of the global market in 2005 to 73 percent in 2010.8 In fact, Cisco estimates that the number of mobileconnected devices will exceed the worlds population sometime this year.9 Increasingly, Internet users in these
countries use only mobile devices for their Internet access.10 This trend has resulted in developing countries
growing their global share of Internet users from 33 percent in 2005, to 52 percent in 2010, with a projected 61
percent share by 2015.11 The 30 aspiring countries discussed earlier are home to one billion Internet users, half of

The effect that rapidly growing Internet connectivity is having on

aspiring countries economies is tremendous. The Net is an economic growth
accelerator. It contributed an average 1.9 percent of GDP growth in aspiring
countries for an estimated total of $366 billion in 2010.13 In some developing economies, Internet
connectivity has contributed up to 13 percent of GDP growth over the past five
years.14 In six aspiring countries alone, 1.9 million jobs were associated with the Internet.15 And in other
all global Internet users.

countries, the Internet creates 2.6 new jobs for each job it disrupts.16 I expect that we would all agree that these

The best path forward is the one that has served the global
economy so well, that of a multi-stakeholder governed Internet. One potential
outcome that could develop if pro-regulation nations are successful in granting the
ITU authority over Internet governance would be a partitioned Internet. In particular,
positive trends must continue.

fault lines could be drawn between countries that will choose to continue to live under the current successful model
and those Member States who decide to opt out to place themselves under an intergovernmental regulatory

A balkanized Internet would not promote global free trade or increase living
standards. At a minimum, it would create extreme uncertainty and raise costs for all
users across the globe by rendering an engineering, operational and financial
morass. For instance, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently announced placing
many of their courses online for free for anyone to use. The uncertainty and economic and
engineering chaos associated with a newly politicized intergovernmental legal
regime would inevitably drive up costs as cross border traffic and cloud
computing become more complicated and vulnerable to regulatory
arbitrage. Such costs are always passed on to the end user consumers and may very well negate the ability of
regime.

content and application providers such as Harvard and MIT to offer first-rate educational content for free.

Nations that value freedom and prosperity should draw a line in the sand
against new regulations while welcoming reform that could include a nonregulatory role for the ITU. Venturing into the uncertainty of a new regulatory
quagmire will only undermine developing nations the most.

Cloud-ComputingK2 Econ
Advancing the American cloud-computing industry is necessary
to save the economythe information economy affects all
organizations and is ripe for innovation
Coviello, Executive Vice President, EMC Corporation, 11
Art, "Can Cloud Computing Save The American Economy?", March 13 2011, Forbes,
www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2011/03/13/can-cloud-computing-save-theamerican-economy/
The American dream is in peril from the confluence of sky rocketing
deficits, high unemployment, and the ticking time bomb of an aging baby
boomer generation, with its coincident increase in the burden of
entitlements as a percentage of GDP. For the first time, the next generation of Americans, our

grandchildren, risk having a lower standard of living than we enjoyed. It is not a problem that can be remedied with

We will not save or cut our way back to economic

prosperity. The way forward is innovation . America must innovate its way
out of economic stagnation and back to economic growth. As has been the case for
tax increases and budget reductions.

the last 150 years, Americans have always responded well in a crisis and yet again, we are well positioned to lead
the world out of this one. Want proof? American businesses systemically and culturally react fast. Two years after
the economic downturn began the United States was generating 97% of its economic output with only 90% of the
labor. This sort of gain in productivity ultimately translates into increased economic activity, the ability to pay down
debt and a higher standard of living for those of us who are employed. Unfortunately it does not directly address

productivity gains from working harder can

only take us so far. Innovation and technology can and must take us the
rest of the way, creating new jobs and new industries . Our so called
the issue of unemployment. The fact is that

information economy , for example, is ripe for innovation . Today, all

organizations are dependent on information technology. What makes me
optimistic about the future is that we have not even begun to scratch the
surface of all that can be accomplished by actually applying information
technology pervasively. We have spent trillions of dollars worldwide for
the computers to create and process information, networks to move it
around and the hardware to store it. But we are at a point where we spend
60 to 70% of IT budgets just to maintain those systems and
infrastructures. No wonder progress in applying IT is so slow. This is the technology
equivalent of every organization in the world, big or small, investing the
capital and human resources to build and operate their own electricity
producing power plants. But instead, picture a world where software
platforms are available online and easily customizable. Picture a world
where compute power is generated off site, available in quantities when
and where you need it. And picture a world where information is safely
stored, efficiently managed and accessible, when and where you need it.
These are cloud infrastructures. The economies of scale, flexibility and
efficiency they offer will not only save organizations massive amounts of
capital and maintenance costs but emancipate them to apply and use
information as never before. An unbelievable opportunity to raise
productivity while creating unprecedented opportunities for businesses
and workers. Now picture a health-care system where a doctor has medical records at his fingertips, can see
x-rays with the click of a mouse, is able to learn and apply the latest diagnostic and surgical technique from

anywhere in the world. Think of the efficiencies in hospital supply chains, the delivery of prescription drugs, the
processing of billing and insurance claims, reductions in fraud, and the application of best practices for cost
controls. The capacity for improvement is endless. As a matter of fact, these innovations are already being applied

But for us to seize the opportunity before us its imperative

that we move from isolated centers of excellence to connected systems of
excellence. Pick any industry and systemic improvements like these are available. A new age of
innovation and technology advancement is within our grasp an
opportunity for job creation, greater productivity and economic growth.
The time for cloud computing is now. We need government and industry to
accelerate broad scale adoption of cloud infrastructures so we can reap
the rewards of a true information based economy. As I said at the outset, Americans
in isolated pockets.

respond well in a crisis. It is the nature of our society: egalitarian, free, open and competitive that make us the most
adaptive, inventive and resilient country in the world. Time again for us to lead.

Cloud-ComputingK2 Competitiveness
Cloud computing has incredible economic potential and would
make the US more competitive in the global marketplace
Pincus, a Student Volunteer at the White House Office of
Science and Technology Policy, 11
Erica, "Cloud Computing and American Competitiveness", America and the Global
Economy, Wilscon Center, June 24 2011,
https://americaandtheglobaleconomy.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/cloud-computingand-american-competitiveness/
In todays economy, an effective information technology (IT)
infrastructure is essential to the proper functioning of almost every
organization. Cloud computing expands the potential of this effectiveness
by facilitating automatic syncing of a users devices and by creating
borderless IT networks. In 2008, The Economist cited cloud computing as
possibly being the ultimate form of globalization . It allows users to rent
virtual storage space for their information on an off-site multi-tenant
server and access that information externally through the internet. In this
way, cloud computing conserves time and money and has the potential to
revolutionize the organization, syncing, storage and sharing of filesall
tasks that increase productivity and operational efficiency, which can help
to make America more competitive in the global market. Cloud computing can also
act as a facilitator for entrepreneurship by lowering barriers to entry such as those associated with financing an IT

cloud computing
provides start-up companies with access to enterprise-class servers and
systems without [the] excessive up-front costs associated with traditional
hardware and software licenses. The article also asserts that cloud computing
infrastructure. According to an article published in The MIT Entrepreneurship Review,

creates opportunities for the next generation of technopreneurs similar

to the opportunities that were created by the internet that resulted in the
e-commerce boom of the late 90s. In his article Can Cloud Computing Save The American
Economy? Art Coviello writes that cloud infrastructures offer economies of scale,
flexibility and efficiency, which will not only save organizations massive
amounts of capital and maintenance costs but emancipate them to apply
and use information as never before. Through its use of shared infrastructure, cloud
computing takes advantage of the aforementioned economies of scale and thus can provide savings for
entrepreneurs who are launching startups while also allowing them to streamline their performance via cloud
technology. Entrepreneurs are not the only ones that can benefit from cloud computing;

the U.S.

government has been looking into the gains in competitiveness

associated with this technology as well. The February 2011 White House
report titled Federal Cloud Computing Strategy cites cloud computing as a
fundamental shift in IT since it enables these systems to be scalable and
elastic. Furthermore, this report says that cloud computing improves existing systems
by shifting resources towards higher-value activities as a result of
efficiency improvements. It also asserts that cloud computing simplifies IT and

makes it more productive, accelerates data center consolidation, and

encourages a culture of entrepreneurship through the reduction of risk
and the minimum required investment. The growth of cloud computing has, however, been
accompanied by new security concerns. Nonetheless, there is a silver-lining: security initiatives such as the Cloud
Computing Act of 2011 (drafted by Senator Amy Klobuchar) are meant to create standards and enforcement tools to
ward off and prosecute hackers and promote online security. If such security concerns are reconciled,

cloud

computing is poised to take U.S. IT systems by storm and make America

a more efficient and competitive player within the international economy .
In the words of Coviello, The

time for cloud computing is now. We need

government and industry to accelerate broad scale adoption of cloud

infrastructures so we can reap the rewards of a true information based
economy.

EXT- Econ Decline= War

Current geo-political climate creates multiple scenarios for
global conflict
Duncan 12

Richard Duncan, former World Bank specialist and chief economist in Blackhorse
Asset Management, in 2012 (Richard, chief economist at Singapore-based
Blackhorse Asset Management, former financial sector specialist at the World Bank
and global head of investment strategy at ABN AMRO Asset Management, studied
literature and economics at Vanderbilt University (1983) and international finance at
Babson College (1986), The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money
Economy, http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Depression-Breakdownebook/dp/B007GZOYI6, 2/24/12)
The consequences of a New Great Depression would extend far beyond the realm of
economics. Hungry people will fight to survive . Governments will use force to maintain internal order
at home. This section considers the geopolitical repercussion of economic collapse, beginning with the United States. First, the
U.S. governments tax revenues would collapse with the depression. Second, because
global trade would shrivel up , other countries would no longer help finance
the U.S. budget deficit by buying government bonds because they would no longer
have the money to do so. At present, the rest of the world has a $500 billion annual trade surplus with the United States.
The central banks of the United States trading partners accumulate that surplus as foreign exchange reserves and invest most of

An economic collapse would cause global trade to plummet and

drastically reduce (if not eliminate altogether) the U.S. trade deficit. Therefore, this source
of foreign funding for the U.S. budget deficit would dry up. Consequently, the
government would have to sharply curtail its spending, both at home and abroad.
those reserves into U.S. government bonds.

Domestically, social programs for the old, the sick, and the unemployed would have to be slashed. Government spending on

Much less government spending would result

in a dramatic increase in poverty and, consequently, in crime. This would combine to produce a crisis
of the current two-party political system. Astonishment, frustration, and anger at the economic breakdown would
radicalize politics . New parties would form at both extremes of the political spectrum. Given the great and growing
education and infrastructure would also have to be curtailed.

income inequality going into the crisis, the hungry have-nots would substantially outnumber the remaining wealthy. On the one
hand, a hard swing to the left would be the outcome most likely to result from democratic elections. In that case, the tax rates on
the top income brackets could be raised to 80 percent or more, a level last seen in 1963. On the other hand, the possibility of a
right-wing putsch could not be ruled out. During the Great Depression, the U.S. military was tiny in comparison with what it became

In this New Great

Depression, it might be the military that ultimately determines how the
country would be governed. The political battle over Americas future would be bitter, and quite possibly
bloody. It cannot be guaranteed that the U.S. Constitution would survive . Foreign
during World War II and during the decades of hot, cold, and terrorist wars that followed.

affairs would also confront the United States with enormous challenges. During the Great Depression, the United States did not have
a global empire. Now it does. The United States maintains hundreds of military bases
across dozens of countries around the world. Added to this is a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers and 18 nuclear-armed submarines. The

more than $650 billion a year on its military. If the U.S. economy
collapses into a New Great Depression, the United States could not afford to maintain
its worldwide military presence or to continue in its role as global peacekeeper. Or, at least, it could
not finance its military in the same way it does at present . Therefore, either the United
country spends

States would have to find an alternative funding method for its global military presence or else it would have to radically scale it
back. Historically, empires were financed with plunder and territorial expropriation. The estates of the vanquished ruling classes

The U.S. model

of empire has been unique. It has financed its global military presence by issuing
government debt, thereby taxing future generations of Americans to pay for this generations global supremacy.
were given to the conquering generals, while the rest of the population was forced to pay imperial taxes.

That would no longer be possible if the economy collapsed. Costbenefit analysis

Manyor even mostof the
outposts that did not pay for themselves would have to be abandoned . Priority would be given to
would quickly reveal that much of Americas global presence was simply no longer affordable.

those places that were of vital economic interests to the United States. The Middle East oil fields would be at the top of that list. The
United States would have to maintain control over them whatever the price. In this global depression scenario,

the price of

oil could collapse to $3 per barrel . Oil consumption would fall by half and there
would be no speculators left to manipulate prices higher. Oil at that level would impoverish the oilproducing nations, with extremely destabilizing political consequences.
Maintaining control over the Middle East oil fields would become much more
difficult for the United States. It would require a much larger military presence than it does now. On the one hand, it
might become necessary for the United States to reinstate the draft (which
would possibly meet with violent resistance from draftees, as it did during the Vietnam War). On the other hand, Americas all-

The
army might have to be employed to keep order at home, given that mass unemployment would
volunteer army might find it had more than enough volunteers with the national unemployment rate in excess of 20 percent.

inevitably lead to a sharp spike in crime. Only after the Middle East oil was secured would the country know how much more of its
global military presence it could afford to maintain. If international trade had broken down, would there be any reason for the United

In a global
depression, the United States allies in Asia would most likely be unwilling
or unable to finance Americas military bases there or to pay for the upkeep of the U.S. Pacific
fleet. Nor would the United States have the strength to force them to pay for U.S.
States to keep a military presence in Asia when there was no obvious way to finance that presence?

protection. Retreat from Asia might become unavoidable. And Europe? What would a costbenefit analysis conclude about the
wisdom of the United States maintaining military bases there? What valued added does Europe provide to the United States?

Europe will have to defend itself. Should a New Great Depression

put an end to the Pax Americana, the world would become a much more
Necessity may mean

dangerous place . When the Great Depression began, Japan was the rising industrial power in Asia. It invaded
Manchuria in 1931 and conquered much of the rest of Asia in the early 1940s. Would China, Asias new rising power, behave the
same way in the event of a new global economic collapse? Possibly. China is the only nuclear power in Asia east of India (other than
North Korea, which is largely a Chinese satellite state). However, in this disaster scenario ,

it is not certain that

China would survive in its current configuration. Its economy would be in ruins . Most of its
factories and banks would be closed. Unemployment could exceed 30 percent. There would most likely be starvation both in the

The Communist Party could lose its grip on power, in which case
the country could break apart , as it has numerous times in the past. It was less than 100 years ago that
cities and in the countryside.

Chinas provinces, ruled by warlords, were at war with one another. United or divided, Chinas nuclear arsenal would make it Asias
undisputed superpower if the United States were to withdraw from the region. From Korea and Japan in the North to New Zealand in

hunger among Chinas

population of 1.3 billion people could necessitate territorial expansion into Southeast Asia. In
the South to Burma in the West, all of Asia would be at Chinas mercy. And

fact, the central government might not be able to prevent mass migration southward, even if it wanted to. In Europe, severe
economic hardship would revive the centuries-old struggle between the left and the right. During the 1930s, the Fascists movement
arose and imposed a police state on most of Western Europe. In the East, the Soviet Union had become a communist police state

It is difficult to judge
whether Europes democratic institutions would hold up better this time
even earlier. The far right and the far left of the political spectrum converge in totalitarianism.

that they did last time. England had an empire during the Great Depression. Now it only has banks. In a severe worldwide

Frustration over poverty and a

lack of jobs would erupt into anti-immigration riots not only in the United Kingdom but also
across most of Europe. The extent to which Russia would menace its European neighbors is unclear. On the one hand, Russia
would be impoverished by the collapse in oil prices and might be too preoccupied with
internal unrest to threaten anyone. On the other hand, it could provoke a war with the goal of
maintaining internal order through emergency wartime powers. Germany is very
depression, the country or, at least Londoncould become ungovernable.

nearly demilitarized today when compared with the late 1930s. Lacking a nuclear deterrent of its own, it could be subject to Russian
intimidation. While Germany could appeal for protection from England and France, who do have nuclear capabilities, it is uncertain
that would buy Germany enough time to remilitarize before it became a victim of Eastern aggression. As for the rest of the world, its
prospects in this disaster scenario can be summed up in only a couple of sentences. Global economic output could fall by as much
as half, from $60 trillion to $30 trillion. Not all of the worlds seven billion people would survive in a $30 trillion global economy.
Starvation would be widespread.

Food riots would provoke political upheaval and myriad big and small

conflicts around the world. It would be a humanitarian catastrophe so extreme as to be unimaginable for the
current generation, who, at least in the industrialized world, has known only prosperity. Nor would there be reason to hope that the
New Great Depression would end quickly. The Great Depression was only ended by an even more calamitous global war that killed
approximately 60 million people.

EXT- Heg decline=war

Decline causes every scenario for extinction
Brzezinski, John Hopkins American Foreign Policy professor, 2012

(Zbigniew, Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power, google books,
ldg)
An American decline would impact the nuclear domain most profoundly by inciting a crisis of
confidence in the credibility of the American nuclear umbrella. Countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Turkey, and even Israel,
among others, rely on the United States extended nuclear deterrence for security . If they were to see the United
States slowly retreat from certain regions, forced by circumstances to pull back its
guarantees, or even if they were to lose confidence in standing US guarantees, because
of the financial, political, military, and diplomatic consequences of an American decline, then they will have to seek security
elsewhere. That elsewhere security could originate from only two sources: from nuclear weapons of ones own or from
the extended deterrence of another powermost likely Russia, China, or India. It is possible that countries that feel threatened by
the ambition of existing nuclear weapon states, the addition of new nuclear weapon states, or the decline in the reliability of
American power would develop their own nuclear capabilities. For crypto-nuclear powers like Germany and Japan, the path to
nuclear weapons would be easy and fairly quick, given their extensive civilian nuclear industry, their financial success, and their
technological acumen. Furthermore, the continued existence of nuclear weapons in North Korea and the potentiality of a nuclearcapable Iran could prompt American allies in the Persian Gulf or East Asia to build their own nuclear deterrents. Given North Koreas
increasingly aggressive and erratic behavior, the failure of the six-party talks, and the widely held distrust of Irans megalomaniacal
leadership, the guarantees offered by a declining Americas nuclear umbrella might not stave off a regional nuclear arms race

China and India today maintain a responsible nuclear posture of

minimal deterrence and no first use, the uncertainty of an increasingly nuclear world could force both states to
reevaluate and escalate their nuclear posture. Indeed, they as well as Russia might even become inclined to extend
among smaller powers. Last but not least, even though

nuclear assurances to their respective client states. Not only could this signal a renewed regional nuclear arms race between these
three aspiring powers but it could also create new and antagonistic spheres of influence in Eurasia
driven by competitive nuclear deterrence. The decline of the United States would thus precipitate drastic changes to the nuclear

An increase in proliferation among insecure American allies and/or an arms race between the emerging
Asian powers are among the more likely outcomes. This ripple effect of proliferation would
undermine the transparent management of the nuclear domain and increase the likelihood of interstate rivalry,
miscalculation, and eventually even perhaps of international nuclear terror. In addition to the foregoing, in the course
domain.

of this century the world will face a series of novel geopolitical challenges brought about by significant changes in the physical
environment. The management of those changing environmental commonsthe growing scarcity of fresh water, the opening of the
Arctic, and global warmingwill require global consensus and mutual sacrifice. American leadership alone is not enough to secure

a decline in American influence would reduce the likelihood of

achieving cooperative agreements on environmental and resource management.
Americas retirement from its role of global policeman could create greater
opportunities for emerging powers to further exploit the environmental commons
for their own economic gain, increasing the chances of resource-driven conflict, particularly in Asia.
cooperation on all these issues, but

The latter is likely to be the case especially in regard to the increasingly scarce water resources in many countries. According to the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID), by 2025 more than 2.8 billion people will be living in either waterscarce or water-stressed regions, as global demand for water will double every twenty years.9 While much of the Southern
Hemisphere is threatened by potential water scarcity, interstate conflictsthe geopolitical consequences of cross-border water
scarcityare most likely to occur in Central and South Asia, the Middle East, and northeastern Africa, regions where limited water
resources are shared across borders and political stability is transient. The combination of political insecurity and resource scarcity
is a menacing geopolitical combination. The threat of water conflicts is likely to intensify as the economic growth and increasing
demand for water in emerging powers like Turkey and India collides with instability and resource scarcity in rival countries like Iraq
and Pakistan. Water scarcity will also test Chinas internal stability as its burgeoning population and growing industrial complex
combine to increase demand for and decrease supply of usable water.

In South Asia, the never-ending

political tension between India and Pakistan

combined with overcrowding and Pakistans heightening

internal crises may put the Indus Water Treaty at risk, especially because the river basin originates in the long-disputed territory of

dispute between India

and China over the status of Northeast India, an area through which the vital Brahmaputra River flows, also remains a
serious concern. As American hegemony disappears and regional competition
intensifies, disputes over natural resources like water have the potential to develop into fullJammu and Kashmir, an area of ever-increasing political and military volatility. The lingering

scale conflicts. The slow thawing of the Arctic will also change the face of the international competition for important resources.
With the Arctic becoming increasingly accessible to human endeavor, the five Arctic littoral statesthe United States, Canada,
Russia, Denmark, and Norwaymay rush to lay claim to its bounty of oil, gas, and metals. This run on the Arctic has the potential to
cause severe shifts in the geopolitical landscape, particularly to Russias advantage. As Vladimir Radyuhin points out in his article
entitled The Arctics Strategic Value for Russia, Russia has the most to gain from access to the Arctic while simultaneously being
the target of far north containment by the other four Arctic states, all of which are members of NATO. In many respects this new
great game will be determined by who moves first with the most legitimacy, since very few agreements on the Arctic exist. The first
Russian supertanker sailed from Europe to Asia via the North Sea in the summer of 2010.10 Russia has an immense amount of land
and resource potential in the Arctic. Its territory within the Arctic Circle is 3.1 million square kilometersaround the size of India
and the Arctic accounts for 91% of Russias natural gas production, 80% of its explored natural gas reserves, 90% of its offshore
hydrocarbon reserves, and a large store of metals.11 Russia is also attempting to increase its claim on the territory by asserting that
its continental shelf continues deeper into the Arctic, which could qualify Russia for a 150-mile extension of its Exclusive Economic
Zone and add another 1.2 million square kilometers of resource-rich territory. Its first attempt at this extension was denied by the
UN Commission on the Continental Shelf, but it is planning to reapply in 2013. Russia considers the Arctic a true extension of its
northern border and in a 2008 strategy paper President Medvedev stated that the Arctic would become Russias main strategic
resource base by 2020.12 Despite recent conciliatory summits between Europe and Russia over European security architecture, a
large amount of uncertainty and distrust stains the Wests relationship with Russia. The United States itself has always maintained a
strong claim on the Arctic and has continued patrolling the area since the end of the Cold War. This was reinforced during the last
month of President Bushs second term when he released a national security directive stipulating that America should preserve the
global mobility of the United States military and civilian vessels and aircraft throughout the Arctic region. The potentiality of an
American decline could embolden Russia to more forcefully assert its control of the Arctic and over Europe via energy politics;
though much depends on Russias political orientation after the 2012 presidential elections. All five Arctic littoral states will benefit
from a peaceful and cooperative agreement on the Arcticsimilar to Norways and Russias 2010 agreement over the Barents Strait
and the geopolitical stability it would provide. Nevertheless, political circumstances could rapidly change in an environment where

Global climate change is the final component of the

Scientists and policy makers alike
have projected catastrophic consequences for mankind and the planet if the world average
temperature rises by more than two degrees over the next century. Plant and animal species could grow extinct at a rapid
pace, large-scale ecosystems could collapse, human migration could increase to untenable levels, and global
economic development could be categorically reversed. Changes in geography, forced migration, and global
economic contraction layered on top of the perennial regional security challenges could create a geopolitical reality of
unmanageable complexity and conflict, especially in the densely populated and politically unstable areas of Asia such as
control over energy remains Russias single greatest priority.

environmental commons and the one with the greatest potential geopolitical impact.

the Northeast and South. Furthermore, any legitimate action inhibiting global climate change will require unprecedented levels of
self-sacrifice and international cooperation. The United States does consider climate change a serious concern, but its lack of both
long-term strategy and political commitment, evidenced in its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the repeated defeat of
climate-change legislation in Congress, deters other countries from participating in a global agreement. The United States is the
second-largest global emitter of carbon dioxide, after China, with 20% of the worlds share. The United States is the number one per
capita emitter of carbon dioxide and the global leader in per capita energy demand. Therefore,

US leadership is

essential in not only getting other

countries to cooperate, but also in actually inhibiting climate change.

Others around the world, including the European Union and Brazil, have attempted their own domestic reforms on carbon emissions
and energy use, and committed themselves to pursuing renewable energy. Even China has made reducing emissions a goal, a fact it
refuses to let the United States ignore. But none of those nations currently has the ability to lead a global initiative. President Obama
committed the United States to energy and carbon reform at the Copenhagen Summit in 2009, but the increasingly polarized
domestic political environment and the truculent American economic recovery are unlikely to inspire progress on costly energy
issues. China is also critically important to any discussion of the management of climate change as it produces 21% of the worlds
total carbon emissions, a percentage that will only increase as China develops the western regions of its territory and as its citizens
experience a growth in their standard of living. China, however, has refused to take on a leadership role in climate change, as it has
also done in the maritime, space, and cyberspace domains. China uses its designation as a developing country to shield itself from
the demands of global stewardship. Chinas tough stance at the 2009 Copenhagen Summit underscores the potential dangers of an
American decline: no other country has the capacity and the desire to accept global stewardship over the environmental commons.
Only a vigorous Unites States could lead on climate change, given Russias dependence on carbon-based energies for economic

The protection
and good faith management of the global commonssea, space, cyberspace, nuclear
proliferation, water security, the Arctic, and the environment itselfare imperative to the
long-term growth of the global economy and the continuation of basic
geopolitical stability. But in almost every case, the potential absence of constructive and
influential US leadership would fatally undermine the essential communality of the
global commons. The argument that Americas decline would generate global insecurity, endanger some vulnerable
growth, Indias relatively low emissions rate, and Chinas current reluctance to assume global responsibility.

states, produce a more troubled North American neighborhood, and make cooperative management of the global commons more
difficult is not an argument for US global supremacy. In fact, the strategic complexities of the world in the twenty-first century
resulting from the rise of a politically self-assertive global population and from the dispersal of global powermake such supremacy
unattainable. But in this increasingly complicated geopolitical environment, an America in pursuit of a new, timely strategic vision is
crucial to helping the world avoid a dangerous slide into international turmoil.

EXT: Solvency
ECPA reform key to rebuild consumer trust- need to solve
immediately
Cris DeBiase, 15, Government Affairs Assistant for the Direct Marketing

Association, Data Privacy Day: ECPA Isnt Vintage, Its Out-of-Style, 1/28/15,
http://thedma.org/advance/capitol-matters-advocacy-compliance/data-privacy-dayecpa-isnt-vintage-style/
customer trust is the key to building the relationships
that grow your brand. Consumer confidence is the bedrock of the entire
Data-Driven Marketing Economy, so marketers have every incentive to earn and safeguard that
Any good marketer knows that

trust. It is for just that reason that DMAs Guidelines for Ethical Business Practice have provided a clear path for

Decades of responsible marketing

mean that todays consumers can feel confident that when they share
data with the brands they love, marketers will use it responsibly, and only
in ways that benefit those consumers. But, even with all of that good work, maintaining
trust is a losing proposition if companies cant keep law enforcement from
swooping in and forcing them to turn over data about their customers .
Anything or anyone that gets between you and your customer has the
potential to impact that trust and your bottom line . Data Privacy Day just reinforces
the need to address this invasion of privacy immediately . And thats why DMA, as part
marketers to do the right thing for more than forty years.

of the diverse Digital Due Process Coalition, continues the push today to update the law. As one of DMAs Five
Fundamentals for the Future, the upcoming ECPA reform bills sponsored by Representatives Jared Polis (D-CO) and
Kevin Yoder (R-KS) in the House and by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Mike Lee (R-UT) in the Senate are of high
priority in our legislative efforts around data policy. Whats the Hold Up?

Government action is keyUS companies alone cant restore

international trust
Mello, Freelance technology and security writer and editor, 15

John P. Mello Jr., "US Snooping Costs High-Tech Sector $35B and Counting", June 10
2015, E-Commerce Times, www.ecommercetimes.com/story/82160.html
Other countries' concerns over U.S. government surveillance programs
likely will cost American businesses more than US$35 billion, according to
a report released Tuesday by the Information Technology & Innovation
Foundation. Originally it was thought that the fallout from Edward Snowden's
revelations of U.S. mass surveillance programs would be limited to cloud service providers,
but the impact has reached beyond that sector, the ITIF found. "Since then, it has become
clear that the U.S. tech industry as a whole , not just the cloud computing
sector, has underperformed as a result of the Snowden revelations,"
report.

says the

"Therefore, the economic impact of U.S. surveillance practices will

likely far exceed ITIF's initial $35 billion estimate." Opportunity Strikes
Surveillance concerns have been used in effective marketing campaigns in
other countries to grab business from U.S. companies. Moreover, those
concerns have been used as a pretext to put into place protectionist laws
that put U.S. tech firms at a competitive disadvantage. "While some defenders of
these policies have asserted that they are designed to increase the privacy or security of their citizens' data, it is

"By creating rules

that advantage domestic firms over foreign firms, many countries believe
they will build a stronger domestic tech industry or gain short-term
economic value, such as jobs in domestic data centers," it continues. "In reality, these policies unwittingly
clear that they are also motivated by misguided self-interest," says the ITIF report.

limit the ability of a country's own firms to innovate," the report maintains, "by shielding them from international

Despite the harm the government's surveillance

practices are having on the U.S. tech industry, federal officials seem
unconcerned. "Most of Washington has their head in the sand, and
competition." Head in the Sand

they're not addressing this issue head-on," said ITIF Senior Analyst Daniel Castro, coauthor
of the report. American companies have taken some measures -- such as
investing in data encryption and overseas data centers -- to build trust for
their wares in foreign markets, but more is needed from government , the
report says. "We really need to see top-level U.S. government leadership
coming in saying a balanced approach to this is needed . It's not just about
surveillance and law enforcement. It's also about the economic consequences," Castro told the E-Commerce Times.

"Until that happens, industry can do a lot, but they're not going to solve
this problem on their own,"

he added. A balanced approach to the issue may be elusive unless the

tech industry learns to play the Washington game, noted IT Harvest Chief Research Analyst Richard Stiennon, who
was among the first to predict the economic consequences of Snowden's revelations. "It's pretty typical for
government not to recognize players in the economy until they've got significant money in lobbying," he told the ECommerce Times.

AT: Current ECPA solves

2013 ECPA reforms failed to change substance of the old bill
Greg Nojeim, 2013, Senior Counsel and Director of the Freedom, Security, and
Technology Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, ECPA Reform Takes
a Giant Leap Forward, 4/25/2013,
https://cdt.org/blog/ecpa-reform-takes-a-giant-leap-forward/
The Judiciary Committee adopted two amendments that did not change
the substance of the bill. The first, a managers amendment by Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT),
clarified that the warrant requirement that the bill imposes for content in
criminal cases has no effect on the standards in the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, the Wiretap Act, and the pen register/trap and trace law.
The second, by Senator Grassley, would require the Government
Accountability Office to issue a report on law enforcements use of ECPA .

The report would reveal: (i) the number of times in the last five years that law enforcement officers obtained
communications content, transactional information and subscriber information under ECPA, (ii) the average length
of time it takes for providers to respond to law enforcement demands as well as the number of times a judge
required a provider to appear and explain any failure to comply with a warrant, (iii) the number of times in the last
five years law enforcement officers requested delayed notification to a subscriber or customer; and (iv) whether
requiring a warrant for content triggers an increase in emergency disclosures to law enforcement that providers
have discretion to make. This report will shed light on law enforcements use of the authority it has under ECPA and
will help the public understand the extent of government surveillance of stored communications.

ECPA is outdated- need to bring regulations back to internet to

protect constitutional rights
Tom Giovanetti, 4/15, president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, Without
ECPA update, Feds will spy on you like its 1986, 4/15/2015,
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/238781-without-ecpaupdate-feds-will-spy-on-you-like-its-1986
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA) is the main federal law that governs data stored

ECPA literally
predates the Internet, so it predates the widespread use of home
computers, email, and social media. It predates cloud storage . Almost any
30 year-old law probably requires updating, but ECPA is so out-of-date
that it demands it. Because ECPA is so outdated, right now virtually all of your electronic
life is subject to warrantless search and seizure. In the strange kind of twist of law that
electronically, including email, business data, your photographs, social media, etc. But

arises when laws are written before we understand what were regulating, ECPA currently gives protection to

if its older than 180 days, as almost

all of it is, it has no protection against warrantless search and seizure. ECPA
cries out for immediate reform. Right now, law enforcement agencies can demand your
electronic data for any reason, and no onenot you, not your employer, not your cloud
storage company, and not your social media sites has a basis under the current ECPA to
refuse. As proof of its bipartisan appeal, Sen. Pat Leahy (Vt.), a liberal
Democrat, and Sen. Mike Lee (Utah), a Tea Party Republican, have cosponsored legislation to bring ECPA up-to-date with current and future
communications technology. Updating ECPA for the Internet Age would allow
Congress to show that it is sensitive to Americans privacy concerns and
to reaffirm our Fourth Amendment protections. It would clarify the law so that law
enforcement agencies could obtain access to what they need by following
proper, constitutional procedures, and it would protect individuals and small
businesses that dont have the resources to navigate the ambiguities
electronic data that is more recent than 180 days old. But

It would give users of cloud

services confidence that the data they upload has at least basic
constitutional privacy protections. And it would give Congress an opportunity to work together
unnecessarily created by the current ECPAs outdated provisions.

and actually get something done that the American people would almost universally see as beneficial to their daily
lives.

2AC Soft Pwr Add on

Independently US tech innovation is key to soft power
Ritula Shah 11/19/14 (journalist and news presenter on BBC Radio Is US monopoly
on the use of soft power at an end? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-29536648 accessed
7/25/15 BP)

A new source of US soft power has come from the recent innovations in
technology, many of which have emerged from Silicon Valley in California.
Millions of people want a smartphone or access to Google. Social media
has given a voice to ordinary people and has been co-opted into fuelling
revolutions and uprisings, even if the aims do not always chime with "American" values. Lt Colonel
Steven Cole Lt Col Steven Cole says his aim is education Facebook and Twitter are
global brands with American origins, burnishing the country's reputation
for creativity and transformation and possibly creating more space for
free speech along the way. Twitter insists that it is only a conduit for its users and not a tool of soft
power or anything else. But Luis Villa of Wikipedia thinks US soft power is integral to
the internet: "It's sometimes difficult to disentangle the values of the
internet and the values of the US, particularly, freedom of speech, but
that does sometimes clash with how people think of speech in the rest of
the world." Soft power, via the internet or the cinema, is one way to
persuade people that your values are universal values.

Soft Power is key to Primacy and a laundry list of advantages

over competitors
Mark P. Lagon 2011 (is the International Relations and Security Chair at
Georgetown University's Master of Science in Foreign Service Program and adjunct
senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the former US Ambassadorat-Large to Combat Trafficking in Persons at the US Department of State. The Value
of Values: Soft Power Under Obama http://www.cfr.org/world/value-values-softpower-under-obama/p26212 accessed 7/28/15 BP)
Despite large economic challenges, two protracted military expeditions,
and the rise of China, India, Brazil, and other new players on the
international scene, the United States still has an unrivaled ability to
confront terrorism, nuclear proliferation, financial instability, pandemic
disease, mass atrocity, or tyranny. Although far from omnipotent, the United
States is still, as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called it, the
indispensible nation. Soft power is crucial to sustaining and best leveraging
this role as catalyst . That President Obama should have excluded it from his
vision of Americas foreign policy assetsparticularly in the key cases of Iran,
Russia, and Egyptsuggests that he feels the country has so declined, not only in
real power but in the power of example, that it lacks the moral authority to project
soft power. In the 1970s, many also considered the US in decline as it
grappled with counterinsurgency in faraway lands, a crisis due to
economic stagnation, and reliance on foreign oil. Like Obama, Henry Kissinger
tried to manage decline in what he saw as a multipolar world, dressing up

prescriptions for policy as descriptions of immutable reality. In the 1980s, however,

soft power played a crucial part in a turnaround for US foreign policy.
Applying it, President Reagan sought to transcend a nuclear balance of terror with
defensive technologies, pushed allies in the Cold War (e.g., El Salvador, Chile,
Taiwan, South Korea, and the Philippines) to liberalize for their own good, backed
labor movements opposed to Communists in Poland and Central America, and
called for the Berlin Wall to be torn downover Foggy Bottom objections. This
symbolism not only boosted the perception and the reality of US influence, but also
hastened the demise of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. For Barack Obama, this was
the path not taken. Even the Arab Spring has not cured his acute allergy to soft
power. His May 20, 2011, speech on the Middle East and Northern Africa came four
months after the Jasmine Revolution emerged. His emphasis on 1967 borders as the
basis for Israeli-Palestinian peace managed to eclipse even his broad words (vice
deeds) on democracy in the Middle East. Further, those words failed to explain his
deeds in continuing to support some Arab autocracies (e.g., Bahrains, backed by
Saudi forces) even as he gives tardy rhetorical support for popular forces casting
aside other ones. To use soft power without hard power is to be Sweden. To
use hard power without soft power is to be China. Even France, with its
long commitment to realpolitik, has overtaken the United States as
proponent and implementer of humanitarian intervention in Libya and
Ivory Coast. When the American president has no problem with France
combining hard and soft power better than the United States, something is
seriously amiss.

1AR Ext
Soft Power Solves War key to solving the threats hard power
cant
Kristin Lord 12/23/14 (Kristin M. Lord is President and CEO of IREX, a global
education and development NGO Soft Power Outage
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/23/soft-power-outage/ accessed 7/27/15 BP)

To be clear, investing in soft power does not negate the need for military
force or investments in hard power. Indeed, some applications of soft power
must be backed by hard power, the way bank loans must be backed by underlying
financial solvency, and there are objectives (defeating the Islamic State comes to
mind) that are nearly impossible to achieve without at least some use of force.
However, hard power is not appropriate to every mission, and in some
cases, it may even be counterproductive, generating a backlash that
multiplies the severity of the threat. Countering violent extremism is a case in
point: Force has a role, but its overuse can draw more recruits to the cause.
Meanwhile, undercutting the appeal of extremist ideologies can be
accomplished most effectively through non-military means. Most military
leaders would agree, and I find them, as a general rule, to be among the
strongest backers of soft power. It was not so long ago that a U.S. defense
secretary, Robert Gates, proved one of the most persuasive voices appealing,
alongside then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for more resources for diplomacy
and development. Ret. Gen. James Mattis put it even more bluntly in a statement to
the Senate Armed Services Committee in March, 2013: If you dont fund the
State Department [foreign operations] fully, then I need to buy more
ammunition. Is a reinvigorated soft power strategy possible at a time of
fiscal pressure and extreme partisan division? I think the answer is yes .
Though conventional wisdom suggests that a Republican-dominated Congress will
slash funding, my experience suggests otherwise. Party leaders with deep expertise
in foreign policy Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham (R-SC),
Representatives Mac Thornberry (R-TX) and Kay Granger (R-TX) in the House, to give
just a few examples are thoughtful and committed internationalists who
understand soft power. And many fiscal conservatives grasp that nonmilitary
strategies can be cost-effective ways of promoting U.S. national security objectives
and obviating the need to deploy ground forces, even as they demand proof that
such strategies deliver a return on investment. A focus on soft power is well
matched to the national security challenges of our time, which will require
the United States and its allies to counter rapidly evolving ideological
challenges and build coalitions of like-minded partners. Whether the
threat is countering violent extremism or reversing the trend of rising
authoritarianism, such efforts require moral purpose, a strong sense of
shared values, and broad networks of relationships that span sectors and
issue areas all of which should be the United States strong suits. But
they will require the United States to strengthen its soft power arsenal
with the same diligence applied to hard power. It will require the United
States to protect its moral authority.

AT: Terror DA

2AC

UQ CT Failing
Counter-terrorism ineffective now
David Fidler 6/18, James Louis Calamaras Professor of Law at Indiana University
Maurer School of Law, "ISILs Online Offensive: Challenges in Countering ISIL in
Cyberspace," 6/18/15, justsecurity.org/24017/isils-online-offensive-challengescountering-isil-cyberspace/?print
The US-led campaign against ISIL is going well in neither the terrestrial
nor cyber realms. ISILs successful offensives against Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in
Syria in late May triggered controversies that the Paris meeting of the anti-ISIL coalition in early June did little to
resolve. The State Department followed this bad news with an unflattering post-Paris
assessment of US and coalition efforts against ISILs online offensive. The New
York Times described this document as painting a dismal picture of the efforts by the
Obama administration and its foreign allies to combat the Islamic States message
machine, portraying a fractured coalition that cannot get its own
message straight . This perspective reinforced a Washington Post article from early May
about problems with US counter-militant messaging in the Bush and Obama
administrations.

No Link ECPA
Counter-terrorism is not dependent on metadata
Peterson 13 [Andrea Peterson covers technology policy for The Washington
Post, with an emphasis on cybersecurity, consumer privacy, transparency,
surveillance and open government. She also delves into the societal impacts of
technology access and how innovation is intertwined with cultural development.
December 23, 2013 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/theswitch/wp/2013/12/23/obama-cant-point-to-a-single-time-the-nsa-call-recordsprogram-prevented-a-terrorist-attack/ Obama cant point to a single time the NSA
call records program prevented a terrorist attack] (Vaibhav)
National Security Agency defenders, including President Obama, continue to cite the terrorist attack on Sept. 11,

if
he could identify a time when that program stopped a similar attack , President
Obama couldn't. That's because the program hasn't prevented a second 9/11. At
2001 when defending the program that scoops up domestic call records in bulk. But asked specifically, on Friday,

the end of the year news conference, Reuters's Mark Felsenthal asked: As you review how to rein in the National
Security Agency, a federal judge says that, for example, the government has failed to cite a single instance in which

you able to identify any

specific examples when it did so? Are you convinced that the collection of
that data is useful to national security to continue as it is? But President
Obama never answered the question about a specific examples. Instead he
spoke more broadly and tied the program, again, back to 9/11. What I've said in
analysis of the NSA's bulk metadata actually stopped an imminent attack. Are

the past continues to be the case, which is that the NSA, in executing this program, believed, based on experiences
from 9/11, that it was important for us to be able to track, if there was a phone number of a known terrorist outside
of the United States calling into the United States, where that call might have gone and that having that data in one
place and retained for a certain period of time allowed them to be confident in pursuing various investigations of
terrorist threats. The president's reliance on a 9/11 narrative is expected. The terrorist attack was a defining
moment for a generation and now serves as a tragic reminder of a time when the U.S. government failed to protect
its citizens. It's understandable that any president would want to be seen as vigilant in preventing another such

But the reason the president can't cite a specific time the phone
meta-data program stopped a similar tragedy is because it hasn't. Law
professor Geoffrey Stone, a member of the presidential task force charged
with reviewing NSA programs, told NBC News the group specifically looked
for times when the program may have helped prevent a terrorist attack,
but "found none." The task force's final report reflects that, saying: Our review suggests that the
information contributed to terrorist investigations by the use of section 215 telephony meta-data
was not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been
obtained in a timely manner using conventional section 215 orders. But the
attack.

lack of evidence that the program is effective will probably not prevent the NSA's defenders from continuing to
invoke 9/11 to protect the program. Another member of the task force, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, on
CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday, admitted the group had found that " the

program to date has not

played a significant role in stopping terrorist attacks in the United States ,"
but earlier in his interview credited the NSA as one of the agencies responsible for the lack of successful terrorist
attacks in the United States since 9/11.

Metadata not key to counterterrorism- studies

RT 14 [January 13, 2014 http://www.rt.com/usa/us-nsa-snowden-studyintelligence-527/ NSA snooping fails to prevent terrorist attacks, watchdog group
says] (Vaibhav)
The bulk collection of metadata phone records by the National Security
Agency has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism,
according to a study by the New America Foundation, a Washington-based

nonprofit group. Analysis revealed that much of the evidence it did find could readily have
been obtained in a timely manner using conventional [court] orders. The
study, to be released on Monday, echoes that of a White House-appointed study concluded
last month that the NSA program was not essential to preventing
attacks. President Obama on Friday will deliver his recommendations on the program, which has turned into a
political lightning rod. John McCain, the Republican senator, has called for a congressional inquiry into Americas
broken National Security Agency. There has been overreach, it seems to me, he said. Sometimes these
agencies have done things just because they can. I think we need a select committee in Congress to go over this
whole scenario, because it does overlap many committees. The NSA counterterrorism program, which amasses the
call details number called, time and length of the communications - of nearly every American, has come under
harsh public and political scrutiny since former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, blew the whistle on the program
last summer. The backlash from the NSA revelations has been international in scale, with even close political allies
of the United States enraged that their private communications were being scooped up in the vast intelligence net.
Intelligence officials, meanwhile, have argued on behalf of the program, saying it helps to unearth terrorist plots,
giving what the Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, called the peace of mind metric. Michael
Morell, a former acting CIA director and a member of the panel, said the program needs to be successful only once
to be invaluable. Incidentally, that was the exact number of cases the NSA program successfully intercepted.
Analysts at the New America Foundation said the massive collection of American citizens telephone metadata
resulted in a single lead when it was discovered that Basaaly Moalin, a San Diego cabdriver who in 2007 and 2008
provided $8,500 to al-Shabaab, Al-Qaedas affiliate in Somalia. The incident involved no risk of attack against the
United States. Moreover, according to the report, the FBI waited two full months to begin an investigation against

The overall problem for US counterterrorism

officials is not that they need vaster amounts of information from the bulk
surveillance programs, but that they dont sufficiently understand or
widely share the information they already possess that was derived from
conventional law enforcement and intelligence techniques, the report said.
Moalin, after being contacted by the NSA.

NSA surveillance is not used for counter-terrorism efforts

Sterman 14 [January 13, 2014 David Sterman is a program associate at New

America and holds a master's degree from Georgetowns Center for Security
Studies. His work focuses on homegrown extremism and the maintenance of New
America's datasets on terrorism inside the United States and the relative roles of
NSA surveillance and traditional investigative tools in preventing such terrorism.
Prior to working at New America, Mr. Sterman was a contributing editor at Southern
Pulse, and he interned at the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information in
Jerusalem. He continues to work as a research assistant for Dr. Gary Shiffman on
issues related to sub-state violence and economics. He graduated cum laude from
Dartmouth College in 2012.https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/donsas-bulk-surveillance-programs-stop-terrorists/ DO NSA'S BULK SURVEILLANCE
PROGRAMS STOP TERRORISTS?] (Vaibhav)
However, our review of the governments claims about the role that NSA bulk
surveillance of phone and email communications records has had in
keeping the United States safe from terrorism shows that these claims are
overblown and even misleading. An in-depth analysis of 225 individuals recruited
by al-Qaeda or a like-minded group or inspired by al-Qaedas ideology , and
charged in the United States with an act of terrorism since 9/11, demonstrates that traditional
investigative methods, such as the use of informants, tips from local communities, and targeted
intelligence operations, provided the initial impetus for investigations in the majority of cases, while the
contribution of NSAs bulk surveillance programs to these cases was
minimal. Indeed, the controversial bulk collection of American telephone metadata, which includes the
telephone numbers that originate and receive calls, as well as the time and date of those calls but not their content,

USA PATRIOT Act, appears to have played an identifiable

role in initiating, at most, 1.8 percent of these cases. NSA programs
involving the surveillance of non-U.S. persons outside of the United States
under Section 215 of the

under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act played a role in 4.4
percent of the terrorism cases we examined, and NSA surveillance under
an unidentified authority played a role in 1.3 percent of the cases we
examined. Regular FISA warrants not issued in connection with Section 215 or Section 702, which are the
traditional means for investigating foreign persons, were used in at least 48 (21 percent) of the cases we looked at,
although its unclear whether these warrants played an initiating role or were used at a later point in the
investigation. (Click on the link to go to a database of all 225 individuals, complete with additional details about
them and the governments investigations of these cases: http://natsec.newamerica.net/nsa/analysis).

Surveillance of American phone metadata has had no discernible impact

on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on
preventing terrorist-related activity, such as fundraising for a terrorist group. Furthermore, our
examination of the role of the database of U.S. citizens telephone metadata in the single plot the government uses
to justify the importance of the program that of Basaaly Moalin, a San Diego cabdriver who in 2007 and 2008
provided $8,500 to al-Shabaab, al-Qaedas affiliate in Somalia calls into question the necessity of the Section 215
bulk collection program. According to the government, the database of American phone metadata allows
intelligence authorities to quickly circumvent the traditional burden of proof associated with criminal warrants, thus
allowing them to connect the dots faster and prevent future 9/11-scale attacks. Yet in the Moalin case, after using
the NSAs phone database to link a number in Somalia to Moalin, the FBI waited two months to begin an
investigation and wiretap his phone. Although its unclear why there was a delay between the NSA tip and the FBI
wiretapping, court documents show there was a two-month period in which the FBI was not monitoring Moalins
calls, despite official statements that the bureau had Moalins phone number and had identified him. , This
undercuts the governments theory that the database of Americans telephone metadata is necessary to expedite
the investigative process, since it clearly didnt expedite the process in the single case the government uses to
extol its virtues. Additionally, a careful review of three of the key terrorism cases the government has cited to
defend NSA bulk surveillance programs reveals that government officials have exaggerated the role of the NSA in
the cases against David Coleman Headley and Najibullah Zazi, and the significance of the threat posed by a
notional plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.

Metadata does not help counter-terrorism

Cohn and Kayyali 14 [June 2, 2014 Cindy Cohn is the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation. From 2000-2015 she served as EFFs Legal Director as well as its General Counsel. Ms. Cohn first
became involved with EFF in 1993, when EFF asked her to serve as the outside lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of
Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. The National Law
Journal named Ms. Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America in 2013, noting: "[I]f Big Brother is
watching, he better look out for Cindy Cohn." She was also named in 2006 for "rushing to the barricades wherever
freedom and civil liberties are at stake online." In 2007 the National Law Journal named her one of the 50 most
influential women lawyers in America. In 2010 the Intellectual Property Section of the State Bar of California
awarded her its Intellectual Property Vanguard Award and in 2012 the Northern California Chapter of the Society of
Professional Journalists awarded her the James Madison Freedom of Information Award. Nadia Kayyali is a member
of EFFs activism team. Nadia's work focuses on surveillance, national security policy, and the intersection of
criminal justice, racial justice, and digital civil liberties issues. Nadia has been an activist since highschool, when
they participated in the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. Nadia's recent activism has focused on
addressing the racial profiling of the Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian community, particularly through
curtailing the collaboration of local and federal law enforcement. They have also provided legal support for
demonstrators through the National Lawyers Guild and Occupylegal. Nadia previously served as the 2012 Bill of
Rights Defense Committee Legal Fellow where they worked with grassroots groups to restrict the reach of overbroad
national security policies. Nadia earned a B.A. from UC Berkeley, with a major in Cultural Anthropology and minored
in Public Policy. Nadia received a J.D. from UC Hastings, where they served as Community Outreach Editor for the
Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal and the Student National Vice-President for the National Lawyers Guild.
During law school they interned at the ACLU of Northern California and Bay Area Legal Aid. Nadia currently serves
on the board of the National Lawyers Guild S.F. Bay Area chapter and works with Fists Up Legal Collective to provide
to provide legal support and community education for the Black Lives Matter actions in the Bay Area.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/top-5-claims-defenders-nsa-have-stop-making-remain-credible The Top 5
Claims That Defenders of the NSA Have to Stop Making to Remain Credible] (Vaibhav)
Over the past year, as the Snowden revelations have rolled out, the government and its apologists have developed
a set of talking points about mass spying that the public has now heard over and over again. From the President, to
Hilary Clinton to Rep. Mike Rogers, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and many others, the arguments are often eerily similar.
But as we approach the one year anniversary, its time to call out the key claims that have been thoroughly
debunked and insist that the NSA apologists retire them. So if you hear any one of these in the future, you can tell
yourself straight up: this person isnt credible, and look elsewhere for current information about the NSA spying.
And if these are still in your talking points (you know who you are) its time to retire them if you want to remain
credible. And next time, the talking points should stand the test of time .

1. The NSA has Stopped 54

Terrorist Attacks with Mass Spying The discredited claim NSA defenders
have thrown out many claims about how NSA surveillance has protected

us from terrorists, including repeatedly declaring that it has thwarted 54

plots. Rep. Mike Rogers says it often. Only weeks after the first Snowden leak, US President Barack Obama
claimed: We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of the NSAs spy powers. Former NSA
Director Gen. Keith Alexander also repeatedly claimed that those programs thwarted 54 different attacks. Others,
including former Vice President Dick Cheney have claimed that had the bulk spying programs in place, the
government could have stopped the 9/11 bombings, specifically noting that the government needed the program to
locate Khalid al Mihdhar, a hijacker who was living in San Diego. Why its not credible: These claims have been

First, the claim that the information stopped 54 terrorist

plots fell completely apart. In dramatic Congressional testimony, Sen. Leahy forced a formal
thoroughly debunked.

retraction from NSA Director Alexander in October, 2013: "Would you agree that the 54 cases that keep getting

only 13 had some nexus to the

U.S.?" Leahy said at the hearing. "Would you agree with that, yes or no?" "Yes," Alexander replied, without
cited by the administration were not all plots, and of the 54,

elaborating. But that didnt stop the apologists. We keep hearing the 54 plots line to this day. As for 9/11, sadly,
the same is true. The government did not need additional mass collection capabilities, like the mass phone records
programs, to find al Mihdhar in San Diego. As ProPublica noted, quoting Bob Graham, the former chair of the Senate
Intelligence Committee: U.S. intelligence agencies knew the identity of the hijacker in question, Saudi national
Khalid al Mihdhar, long before 9/11 and had the ability find him, but they failed to do so. "There were plenty of
opportunities without having to rely on this metadata system for the FBI and intelligence agencies to have located
Mihdhar," says former Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who extensively investigated 9/11 as chairman of

Moreover, Peter Bergen and a team at the New

America Foundation dug into the governments claims about plots in
America, including studying over 225 individuals recruited by al Qaeda
and similar groups in the United States and charged with terrorism, and
concluded: Our review of the governments claims about the role that NSA
"bulk" surveillance of phone and email communications records has had in
keeping the United States safe from terrorism shows that these claims are
overblown and even misleading... When backed into a corner, the governments apologists cite
the Senates intelligence committee.

the capture of Zazi, the so-called New York subway bomber. However, in that case, the Associated Press reported
that the government could have easily stopped the plot without the NSA program, under authorities that comply
with the Constitution. Sens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have been saying this for a long time. Both of the
Presidents hand-picked advisors on mass surveillance concur about the telephone records collection. The
Presidents Review Board issued a report in which it stated the information contributed to terrorist investigations
by the use of section 215 telephony meta-data was not essential to preventing attacks, The Privacy and Civil
Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) also issued a report in which it stated, we

have not identified a

single instance involving a threat to the United States in which [bulk
collection under Section 215 of the Patriot Act] made a concrete difference
in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation. And in an amicus brief in EFFs

case First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. the NSA case, Sens. Ron Wyden, Mark Udall, and Martin Heinrich stated
that, while the administration has claimed that bulk collection is necessary to prevent terrorism, they have
reviewed the bulk-collection program extensively, and none of the claims appears to hold up to scrutiny. Even
former top NSA official John Inglis admitted that the phone records program has not stopped any terrorist attacks
aimed at the US and at most, helped catch one guy who shipped about $8,000 to a Somalian group that the US has
designated as a terrorist group but that has never even remotely been involved in any attacks aimed at the US.

Link Turn- Surveillance makes it worst

Surveillance makes counter-terror tools ineffective
Corrigan 2015 (Ray [senior lecturer in mathematics, computing, and technology
at the Open University, U.K.]; Mass Surveillance Will Not Stop Terrorism; Jan 25;
www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2015/01/mass_surveillanc
e_against_terrorism_gathering_intelligence_on_all_is_statistically.html)
Police, intelligence, and security systems are imperfect . They process vast amounts
of imperfect intelligence data and do not have the resources to monitor all known suspects 24/7. The French
authorities lost track of these extremists long enough for them to carry out their murderous acts .

You cannot
fix any of this by treating the entire population as suspects and then
engaging in suspicionless, blanket collection and processing of personal data. Mass data
collectors can dig deeply into anyones digital persona but dont have the
resources to do so with everyone. Surveillance of the entire population, the
vast majority of whom are innocent, leads to the diversion of limited intelligence
resources in pursuit of huge numbers of false leads . Terrorists are comparatively rare,
so finding one is a needle-in-a-haystack problem. You dont make it easier by throwing more needleless hay on the

It is statistically impossible for total population surveillance to be an

effective tool for catching terrorists. Even if your magic terrorist-catching
machine has a false positive rate of 1 in 1,000and no security technology
comes anywhere near thisevery time you asked it for suspects in the U.K. it
would flag 60,000 innocent people. Law enforcement and security services need to be able to
stack.

move with the times, using modern digital technologies intelligently and through targeted data preservationnot a
mass surveillance regimeto engage in court-supervised technological surveillance of individuals whom they have
reasonable cause to suspect. That is not, however, the same as building an infrastructure of mass surveillance.

Mass surveillance makes the job of the security services more difficult
and the rest of us less secure.

Less data leads to effective data, the aff is key to solve

terrorism
Schwartz 2015 (Mattathias [Staff writer @ The New Yorker]; The Whole
Haystack; Jan 26; www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/whole-haystack)
Before the event, every bit of hay is potentially relevant. The most dangerous adversaries will
be the ones who most successfully disguise their individual transactions to
appear normal, reasonable, and legitimate, Ted Senator, a data scientist who worked on an early post-9/11

intelligence officials have

often referred to lone-wolf terrorists, cells, and, as Alexander has put it, the terrorist
program called Total Information Awareness, said, in 2002. Since then,

who walks among us, as though Al Qaeda were a fifth column, capable of camouflaging itself within civil society.
Patrick Skinner, a former C.I.A. case officer who works with the Soufan Group, a security company, told me that this

Mass
surveillance, he continued, gives a false sense of security. It sounds great when you say
youre monitoring every phone call in the United States. You can put that in a PowerPoint. But, actually, you
have no idea whats going on. By flooding the system with false
positives, big-data approaches to counterterrorism might actually make it
harder to identify real terrorists before they act. Two years before the Boston Marathon
bombing, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of the two brothers alleged to have committed the attack, was
assessed by the citys Joint Terrorism Task Force. They determined that he
was not a threat. This was one of about a thousand assessments that the
Boston J.T.T.F. conducted that year, a number that had nearly doubled in the previous two years,
image is wrong. We knew about these networks, he said, speaking of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

according to the Boston F.B.I. As of 2013, the Justice Department has trained nearly three hundred thousand lawenforcement officers in how to file suspicious-activity reports. In 2010, a central database held about three
thousand of these reports; by 2012 it had grown to almost twenty-eight thousand. The bigger haystack makes it
harder to find the needle, Sensenbrenner told me. Thomas Drake, a former N.S.A. executive and whistle-blower
who has become one of the agencys most vocal critics, told me, If

you target everything, theres

no target. Drake favors what he calls a traditional law-enforcement approach to
terrorism, gathering more intelligence on a smaller set of targets.
Decisions about which targets matter, he said, should be driven by human
expertise, not by a database.

Link Turn Cyberterror

Cyberterror turns the DA makes conventional attacks worse
Gabriel Weimann 4, senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and

professor of communication at the University of Haifa, "Cyberterrorism How Real Is

the Threat?," Dec 2004, www.usip.org/sites/default/files/sr119.pdf
Verton argues that al Qaeda [has] shown itself to have an incessant appetite for
modern technology and provides numerous citations from bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders to show
their recognition of this new cyberweapon. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden
reportedly gave a statement to an editor of an Arab newspaper claiming that
hundreds of Muslim scientists were with him who would use their
knowledge . . . ranging from computers to electronics against the infidels. Sheikh
Omar Bakri Muhammad, a supporter of bin Laden and often the conduit for his messages to the
Western world, declared in an interview with Verton, I would advise those who doubt al
Qaedas interest in cyber-weapons to take Osama bin Laden very
seriously. The third letter from Osama bin Laden . . . was clearly addressing using
the technology in order to destroy the economy of the capitalist states .
While

bin Laden may have his finger on the trigger, his grandchildren

may have their fingers on the computer mouse , remarked Frank Cilluffo of the Office of
Future terrorists may indeed see
greater potential for cyberterrorism than do the terrorists of today. Furthermore, as Denning
argues, the next generation of terrorists is now growing up in a digital world, one in which hacking tools
are sure to become more powerful, simpler to use, and easier to access.
Cyberterrorism may also become more attractive as the real and virtual
worlds become more closely coupled. For instance, a terrorist group might
simultaneously explode a bomb at a train station and launch a
Homeland Security in a statement that has been widely cited.

cyberattack on the communications infrastructure, thus magnifying the

impact of the event . Unless these systems are carefully secured, conducting an
online operation that physically harms someone may be as easy tomorrow
as penetrating a website is today.

Surv Fails General

Now is the time to decrease surveillance- terrorists dont use electronic
surveillance and people dont want it
Jim Arkedis 6/19/13 (Jim Arkedis is a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.
PRISM Is Bad for American Soft Power
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/prism-is-bad-for-american-softpower/277015/ accessed 7/25/15 BP)

"I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run we cannot keep
this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental
values... My administration will make all information available to the
American people so that they can make informed judgments and hold us
accountable." The president's inability to live up to this ideal is
particularly jarring as he defends PRISM. Following the leaks, he's said he is pushing the intelligence
community to release what it can, and rightly insists that the NSA is not listening in on Americans' phone calls.
Those are helpful steps, but should have been raised during the National Archives speech just months into his

Intelligence James Clapper

continues to argue that disclosure of collection methods will give
America's enemies a "'playbook' to avoid detection." That's thin gruel.
First, America's enemies are already aware of the NSA's extensive
electronic surveillance capabilities. That's why Osama Bin Laden and
deceased al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi used a complex
network of couriers rather than electronic communications. It's typical operational
administration, not six months into his second term. Director of National

security of truly dangerous operatives. Second, Obama stated as recently as late May that the threat from al
Qaeda's core operatives has decreased significantly, shifting to less deadly cells scattered throughout the Middle
East and North Africa.

The lack of public debate, shifting attitudes towards civil

liberties, insufficient disclosure, and a decreasing terrorist threat

demands that collecting Americans' phone and Internet records must
meet the absolute highest bar of public consent. It's a test the Obama
administration is failing . This brings us back to Harry Truman and Jim Crow. Even though PRISM is
technically legal,

the lack of recent public debate and support for aggressive

domestic collection is hurting America's soft power. The evidence is

rolling in . The China Daily, an English-language mouthpiece for the Communist Party, is having a field day,
pointing out America's hypocrisy as the Soviet Union did with Jim Crow. Chinese dissident artist Ai Wei Wei made the

even in the U.S., officials

always think what they do is necessary... but the lesson that people
should learn from history is the need to limit state power." Even America's
allies are uneasy, at best. German Chancellor Angela Merkel grew up in
the East German police state and expressed diplomatic "surprise" at the
NSA's activities. She vowed to raise the issue with Obama at this week's G8 meetings. The Italian data
link explicitly, saying "In the Soviet Union before, in China today, and

protection commissioner said the program would "not be legal" in his country. British Foreign Minister William Hague
came under fire in Parliament for his government's participation. If Americans supported these programs, our
adversaries and allies would have no argument. As it is, the next time the United States asks others for help in
tracking terrorists, it's more likely than not that they will question Washington's motives. It's not too late. The
PATRIOT Act is up for reauthorization in 2015. In the context of a diminished threat ,

the White House

still has time to push the public debate on still-hidden, controversial
intelligence strategies (while safeguarding specific sources and methods) .
Further, the administration should seek to empower the FISA court. Rather that defer to the Supreme Court to
appoint its panel of judges, it would be better to have Senate-confirmable justices serving limited terms. President

Obama has said Americans can't have 100 percent security and 100 percent privacy. But you can have an honest

Americans to legitimately decide where to strike that

balance. It's both the right thing to do and American foreign policy
demands it.
public debate about that allows

Bulk surveillance isnt key broad consensus among external

agencies
Yochai Benkler 13, staff writer for The Guardian, "Fact: the NSA gets negligible

intel from Americans' metadata. So end collection," 10/8/13,

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/08/nsa-bulk-metadata-surveillanceintelligence
***PSP = Presidents Surveillance Program, the original bulk surveillance initiative
The admissions Leahy forced out of the NSA heads and DNI Clapper that they have been
systematically overstating the effectiveness of bulk collection are consistent with
the only other official assessments of bulk collection. The sole publicly available FISC opinion (pdf) that assesses the
impact of bulk collection from 2006 to 2009 was unimpressed that: [T]he government's submission cites three
examples in which the FBI opened three new preliminary investigations of persons in the US based on tips from the
BR metadata program. Judge Walton wrote that this achievement "does not seem particularly significant". Perhaps
most damning are the results of

the consensus report authored by the five inspectors

general of the Departments of Defense and Justice and the CIA, NSA, and Office of DNI, mandated by Congress
as part of the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008. That report provides the most detailed official
assessment of the effectiveness of bulk collection, from inception as the President's
Surveillance Program (PSP) in the fall of 2001 until 2007. It is revealing about both the NSA and its bulk collection
program. The NSA's inspector general only reported the agency's top brass beliefs; his report merely quoted then
NSA Director Michael Hayden in his view that there were "no communications more important to NSA efforts to

The D epartment o f J ustice

"concluded that although PSP-derived information had value in some counterterrorism
investigations, it generally played a limited role in the FBI's overall
defend the nation". Other inspectors general were more skeptical.

counterterrorism efforts ". The CIA reported: [W]orking-level CIA analysts and targeting
officers who were read into the PSP had too many competing priorities, and too
many other information sources and analytic tools available to them, to fully
utilize PSP reporting. Officials also stated that much of the PSP reporting was vague or
without context, which led analysts and targeting officers to rely more
heavily on other information sources and analytic tools, which were more easily
accessed and timely than the PSP. The inspector general of the DNI reported that "National
Counterterrorism Center analysts characterized the PSP information as

being a useful tool, but noted that the information was only one of several valuable sources of information available
to them", and " not

of greater value than other sources of intelligence ". It is hardly

surprising that supporters of bulk collection fervently believe it is critical to national security. No
psychologically well-balanced person could permit herself to support a program that compromises the privacy of
tens of millions of Americans, costs billions of dollars, and

imposes direct and articulable harm

to cyber security by undermining the security of commercial products and

public standards without holding such a belief truly and honestly. But the honest faith of
insiders that their bureaucratic mission is true and critical is no substitute for credible
evidence . A dozen years of experience has produced many public
overstatements and much hype from insiders, but nothing to support the proposition
that the program works at all, much less that its marginal contribution is
significant enough to justify its enormous costs in money, freedom, and

destabilization of internet security. No rational cost-benefit analysis could

justify such a leap of faith .

Surv Fails Empirics

Zero empirical successes with any connection to the US
Yochai Benkler 13, staff writer for The Guardian, "Fact: the NSA gets negligible
intel from Americans' metadata. So end collection," 10/8/13,
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/08/nsa-bulk-metadata-surveillanceintelligence
It's a prohibition whose time has come. Dragnet surveillance, or bulk collection, goes to the heart of
what is wrong with the turn the NSA has taken since 2001. It implements a perpetual "state of
emergency" mentality that inverts the basic model outlined by the fourth amendment: that there are
vast domains of private action about which the state should remain ignorant unless it provides clear prior
justification. And all public evidence suggests that, from its inception in 2001 to this day,

bulk collection

has never made more than a marginal contribution to securing Americans

from terrorism , despite its costs. In a 2 October hearing of the Senate judiciary committee,
Senator Leahy challenged the NSA chief, General Keith Alexander: Would you agree that the 54 cases that
keep getting cited by the administration were not all plots, and that of the 54 only
13 had some nexus to the US? Would you agree with that, yes or no? Alexander responded: Yes.
Leahy then demanded that Alexander confirm what his deputy, Christopher Inglis, had said in
the prior week's testimony: that there is only one example where collection of bulk
data is what stopped a terrorist activity. Alexander responded that Inglis might have said two, not
one. In fact, what Inglis had said the week before was that there was one case "that comes
close to a but-for example and that's the case of Basaaly Moalin". So, who is Moalin,
on whose fate the NSA places the entire burden of justifying its metadata collection program? Did his capture
foil a second 9/11? A cabby from San Diego, Moalin had immigrated as a teenager from Somalia. In February, he

was convicted of providing material assistance to a terrorist organization:

he had transferred $8,500 to al-Shabaab in Somalia. After the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi, few would argue

But al-Shabaab is involved in a local war,

and is not invested in attacking the US homeland. The indictment against Moalin
explicitly stated that al-Shabaab's enemies were the present Somali government
and "its Ethiopian and African Union supporters". Perhaps, it makes sense for prosecutors
that al-Shabaab is not a terrorist organization.

to pursue Somali Americans for doing essentially what some Irish Americans did to help the IRA; perhaps not. But

this single successful prosecution, under a vague criminal statute, which

stopped a few thousand dollars from reaching one side in a local conflict in
the Horn of Africa, is the sole success story for the NSA bulk domestic
surveillance program.

AT: Peace of Mind

Peace of mind isnt quantifiable, and its empirically ineffective
Yochai Benkler 13, staff writer for The Guardian, "Fact: the NSA gets negligible
intel from Americans' metadata. So end collection," 10/8/13,
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/08/nsa-bulk-metadata-surveillanceintelligence
At the hearing, perhaps trying to bolster Alexander's feeble defense of the program's effectiveness, Director
of National Intelligence James Clapper complained that "plots foiled"
should not be the metric. He said: There's another metric I would use; let's call it the
" peace of mind metric ". In the case of the Boston Marathon bomber, we
were able to use these tools to determine whether there was, or was not, a
subsequent plot in NYC. Clapper actually used the clearest example that his
program offers Americans little real security its failure to pick up the
Tsarnaev brothers before they attacked as a way of persuading us that
we should use an amorphous and unmeasurable "peace of mind" metric;
peace of mind we should gain from knowing that the same system that failed to
detect the Boston bombers also detected no bombers in New York. One is left

picturing Inspector Clouseau: I did not know the bank was being robbed because I was engaged in my sworn duty
as a police officer.

CT Bad
Counter-terrorism bolsters homegrown terrorism and
devastates international credibility
Alice LoCicero 15, faculty member at Center for Multicultural Training in
Psychology at the Boston Medical Center and adjunct professor at Lesley University,
"Domestic Consequences of US Counter-Terrorism Efforts: Making it Harder to
Prevent Homegrown Terrorism," The Open Psychology Journal 8(32-37),
benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOPSYJ/TOPSYJ-8-32.pdf
The effects of counterterrorism policies , especially taken together, appear to have deeply
scarred the American reputation and psyche . Prisoners of war--who were, in a transparent and
ultimately unsuccessful attempt to skirt international treatiescalled enemy combatants, were detained, often with little or no evidence, and with no

enemy combatants were detained for years, tortured,

and then, when they went on hunger strikes, were force-fed in inhuman ways, further violating
international conventions [14]. The highly respected former Four Star American General and later CIA Director David Petraus
charges placed against them. Many

had stated clearly in 2009 that he believed it likely that the military had violated the Geneva Conventions in the post 9/11 era. (Soon thereafter,

Such violations of the Geneva Conventions

continue to take place at so called Black Box facilities, such as the prison at
Guantanamo Bay, where a Navy nurse, earlier this year, refused to force feed detainees in the inhuman way that has become standard
revelations about his personal life caused a scandal that led to his resignation in 2012) [15].

there. He is now at risk of having his Navy career terminated resulting from his refusal to obey orders that he was convinced were unlawful [16]. This risk
is despite the ratified international principle that following orders is not an acceptable defense for engaging in unlawful behavior, such as cruel and

imagine the long-term impact on Americans of seeing

authorities endorse a long list of violations of international treaties ,
engage in torture, and punish those who refuse to violate international
treaties to which the US is a signatory. It remains to be seen whether awareness of such violations, without direct
inhuman treatment [17]. It is worrisome to

experience of terror, will have a brutalizing effect similar to that seen in communities that have experienced trauma and violence firsthand [18].

one
cannot avoid being concerned about the potential emergence of new
Considering the medias focus and sometimes idealization of government-sanctioned violence, such as war and brutal treatment of detainees,

values and new norms. Such new norms are likely to be driven

less by civility and egalitarianism and more

by fear and power dynamics . Beyond the effects on ordinary Americans, it is

worrisome to imagine the way that these actions in violation of
international treaties are perceived outside the US, or by those who may be
immigrants to the US, but who have dual allegiances, one of them being to a group that the US has targeted. It
seems highly likely that these actions, taken in violation of international treaties, will
be used by groups seeking to recruit youth to engage in anti-western
terrorist actions . Such recruitment will increase the likelihood of
homegrown terrorism .

No Terror Impact
No impact the magnitude is empirically tiny
Micah Zenko 6/19, Douglas Dillon fellow in the Center for Preventive Action at
the Council on Foreign Relations, "Terrorism Is Booming Almost Everywhere But in
the United States," 6/19/15, https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/19/terrorism-isbooming-almost-everywhere-but-in-the-united-states-state-department-report/
Third, even with these worsening trends, terrorism still represents only a
small fraction of overall violent deaths . The annual number of violent deaths worldwide is
508,000, according to the Global Burden of Armed Violence 2015: Every Body Counts report. In other words,

less

than 7 percent of violent deaths are a result of acts of terrorism. Compare the
32,727 terrorist fatalities to the estimated 377,000 people who were killed, collectively, in
interpersonal violence, gang violence, or economically motived crimes.
Citizens of several Central American and Caribbean countries are still more likely to be the victim of homicide than

there
have always been disagreements with the methodologies employed . In
2003, under the leadership of its then-director John Brennan, the Terrorist Threat Integration
Center (TTIC) provided wildly inaccurate data to the CIA, which was then
incorporated into the State Department report. The TTIC found there had been 307
Iraqis or Syrians are from terrorism. Fourth, readers of the State Department report should know that

fatalities, but after Secretary of State Colin Powell directed an exhaustive re-examination of the evidence, the total
amount grew by 104 percent to 725. More recently, the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism charged that the
current compilers of the State Departments statistics, the University of Marylands National Consortium for the
Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, undercounted the violence during the Iraq war, which subsequently

terrorism continues to
pose an extremely small threat to the United States and its citizens. The number
of Americans killed by international terrorism grew over the past year from 16 to 24.
However, this is still fewer than the average number that has tragically been killed
each year since 9/11, which is 28. Moreover, not one U.S. citizen died from
terrorism within the United States last year. Rather, as has been consistent with previous
years, Americans die from terrorism when they travel to war zones, or areas
makes the recent increase in violence more extreme than it really is. Finally,

marked by violent instability: of the 24 deaths last year, 10 were in Afghanistan, 5 in Israel or the Occupied
Territories, 3 in Somali, 3 in Syria, and 1 a piece in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. See the chart below to
visualize how relatively safe Americans are from terrorism when compared to the rest of the world. At todays press
briefing on the findings of the report, Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State
Department Tina Kaidanow pointed out that numbers

dont tell the whole story. Truly numbers

but they should be understood by the interested public,
and ideally serve as the basis for public policy responses to this ever worsening
global challenge.
never do, and they are always contested,

No Nuke Terror
No nuclear terror
John J. Mearsheimer 14, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of
Political Science at the University of Chicago, America Unhinged, January 2,
nationalinterest.org/article/america-unhinged-9639?page=show
Am I overlooking the obvious threat that strikes fear into the hearts of so many Americans, which is terrorism?
Not at all. Sure, the United States has a terrorism problem . But it is a minor
threat . There is no question we fell victim to a spectacular attack on September 11, but it did not cripple
the United States in any meaningful way and another attack of that magnitude
is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future. Indeed, there has not been a single instance
over the past twelve years of a terrorist organization exploding a primitive
bomb on American soil, much less striking a major blow. Terrorismmost of it arising from domestic groups
was a much bigger problem in the United States during the 1970s than it has been since the
Twin Towers were toppled. What about the possibility that a terrorist group might
obtain a nuclear weapon? Such an occurrence would be a game changer, but the chances of that
happening are virtually nil . No nuclear-armed state is going to supply
terrorists with a nuclear weapon because it would have no control over how the
recipients might use that weapon. Political turmoil in a nuclear-armed state could in
theory allow terrorists to grab a loose nuclear weapon, but the United States
already has detailed plans to deal with that highly unlikely contingency.
Terrorists might also try to acquire fissile material and build their own bomb.
But that scenario is extremely unlikely as well : there are significant
obstacles to getting enough material and even bigger obstacles to
building a bomb and then delivering it. More generally, virtually every country has a
profound interest in making sure no terrorist group acquires a nuclear
weapon, because they cannot be sure they will not be the target of a nuclear
attack, either by the terrorists or another country the terrorists strike. Nuclear terrorism, in short, is not
a serious threat . And to the extent that we should worry about it, the main remedy is to encourage and help other
states to place nuclear materials in highly secure custody.

1AR

Ext. CT Failing
US counter-terrorism is failing after successful ISIL offensives
in Iraq and Syria military alliances are fragmented and recent
State Department reports show weak counter-militant
messaging thats Fidler
Forces are insufficient and targeted killing is ineffective
Chad Groening 6/18, military and political correspondent, "Analyst: Obama's
anti-ISIS approach futile," 6/18/15, www.onenewsnow.com/nationalsecurity/2015/06/18/analyst-obamas-anti-isis-approach-futile

During Wednesday's testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Ash Carter

efforts to train Iraqi forces to fight Islamic State terrorists have

been slowed by a lack of recruits and that the U.S. won't be able to train as many by this fall as
it initially had predicted. "Well, if those countries can't recruit enough qualified
people for us to train, then obviously they're going to have insufficient ground
forces ... for defeating ISIS certainly in Iraq," says Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis (USA-Ret.), a senior fellow
for national security at the Family Research Council. In addition, says Maginnis, the inadequate
number of recruits bodes very poorly for the president's two-pronged
revealed that

strategy of providing air support for U.S. trained ground troops from
other countries. The Pentagon had initially envisioned training 24,000 Iraqi security forces. But according
to Secretary Carter, the U.S. has received only enough recruits to be able to train about 7,000 in addition to about
2,000 counterterrorism service personnel. Maginnis also

argues that Obama's use of

drones to take out terrorist leaders isn't

really that

effective

in putting a hurt on the

terrorist organization. "I would argue that the strategy itself, if we were only after a few people, that would be

now that all those people that we kill are back-filled by two
it's
obviously failing ." The retired Army officer says the president must articulate

different," he explains. "But

or three people standing in line to take their place or other groups standing in line to take their place,

whether he believes ISIS is a serious enough threat to America's national

security that sufficient manpower and treasure must be expended to
destroy it.

Ext. Cyber Link Turn

Link turn effective cyberterror defense is a prerequisite to
counter-terrorism cyber-vulnerabilities massively amplify the
magnitude of conventional terrorist attacks thats Weimann
Cyberterrorism enables conventional terrorism
P. Madhava Soma Sundaram 8, Head of the Department of

Criminology and Criminal Justice at Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, India, K.

Jaishankar, Cyber Terrorism: Problems, Perspectives, and Prescription, 1/10/08,
https://www.academia.edu/812094/Cyber_Terrorism_Problems_Perspectives_and_Pre
scription
A spectrum of criminal acts may be conducted via the Internet, ranging from cyber espionage and information
warfare carried out by foreign governments to cyber crimes carried out by smaller groups or individuals.

Although cyber terrorism may be carried in conjunction with cyber espionage

or cyber crime, it is considered distinct from the two entities. Cyber terrorism
combines both cyberspace and terrorism and it is the use of intentional
violence against computer systems that support or protect the health of human
communities or the information stored in these systems. Unlike cyber espionage, virtually all
instances of cyber terrorism to date have been carried out by organized
factions unconnected to world governments. Often, cyber terrorism is aimed
at coercing a population or its government to accede to certain political or
social objectives. In addition, cyber terrorism usually is more extensive and
destructive than is simple cyber crime. As a result, cyber terrorism either harms the health of
human communities or generates a fear of this harm. Cyber terrorism still is in its infancy. Although there have
been numerous cyber-terrorist events, there have been no large-scale incidents affecting large geographic areas.
Despite the challenge of producing damage of this magnitude,

the potential for large-scale,

cyber-terrorist events increases as the Internet continues to expand.

Furthermore,

cyber terrorism may be used to: 1. help plan other terrorist

activities 2. soften a target prior to a physical attack 3. generate more

fear and confusion concurrent with other terrorist acts

Ext. Surv Fails

Bulk surveillance isnt key to counter-terrorism NSA officials
have incentives to overstate program efficacy external
consensus among five inspectors general indicates bulk
collections contain too much data to provide timely benefits
programs havent defeated a single case of terrorism
connected to the US homeland thats Benkler
Surveillance doesnt solve counter-terrorism creates false
leads and investigative overstretch
Maggie Ybarra 5/21, "FBI admits no major cases cracked with Patriot Act

snooping powers," 5/21/15, www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/21/fbiadmits-patriot-act-snooping-powers-didnt-crack/?page=all

FBI agents cant point to any major terrorism cases theyve cracked thanks to
the key snooping powers in the Patriot Act, the Justice Departments inspector general said in a report Thursday that could complicate efforts to keep key parts of
the law operating. Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said that between 2004 and 2009, the FBI tripled its use of bulk
collection under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows government agents to compel businesses to turn over records and documents, and
increasingly scooped up records of Americans who had no ties to official
terrorism investigations. The FBI did finally come up with procedures to try to minimize the information it was gathering on nontargets, but it took
far too long, Mr. Horowitz said in the 77-page report, which comes just as Congress is trying to decide whether to extend, rewrite or entirely nix Section 215. Backers
say the Patriot Act powers are critical and must be kept intact, particularly with the spread of the
threat from terrorists. But opponents have doubted the efficacy of Section 215, particularly when its used to justify bulk data collection such as in the
case of the National Security Agencys phone metadata program, revealed in leaks from former government contractor Edward Snowden. The new report
adds ammunition to those opponents, with the inspector general
concluding that no major cases have been broken by use of the Patriot
Act s records-snooping provisions. The agents we interviewed did not
identify any major case developments that resulted from use of the
records obtained in response to Section 215 orders, the inspector general concluded though he said agents did view
the material they gathered as valuable in developing other leads or corroborating information. The report said agents bumped their number of bulk-data requests under Section 215
from seven in 2004 to 21 in 2009 as a result of technological advances and legislative changes that the intelligence community believed expanded the reach of the law. Increasingly,
that meant scooping up information on those who werent targets of a terrorism investigation, Mr. Horowitz said. He said that while Section 215 authority allows the government to do
that, the FBI needed more checks to make sure it was using the power properly. While the expanded scope of these requests can be important uses of Section 215 authority, we
believe these expanded uses require continued significant oversight, he concluded. The report was an update to a previous study done in 2008 that urged the department to figure out
ways to minimize the amount of data it was gathering on ordinary Americans even as it was targeting terrorists. In Thursdays report Mr. Horowitz said the administration finally came
up with procedures five years later. He said it never should have taken that long but that he considers that issue solved. The report was heavily redacted, and key details were
deleted. The entire chart showing the number of Section 215 requests made from 2007 through 2009 was blacked out, as was the breakdown of what types of investigations they
stemmed from: counterintelligence, counterterrorism, cyber or foreign intelligence investigations. Section 215 of the Patriot Act is slated to expire at the end of this month. The House,
in an overwhelming bipartisan vote, passed a bill to renew it but also to limit it so the government could no longer do bulk collection such as the NSA phone data program. That
legislation is known as the USA Freedom Act. But Senate Republican leaders have balked, insisting the NSA program and Section 215 should be kept intact as is. Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell, who is leading the fight to protect the NSA program, is counting on his opponents not being able to muster the 60 votes needed to pass the bill, leaving them with the choice
of either extending Section 215 or seeing all of the powers expire including those that would go after specific terrorist suspects. Mr. McConnell believes that, faced with that choice,
enough of his colleagues will vote to extend all of the powers. FBI Director James B. Comey asked Congress this week to make sure Section 215 and two other parts of the Patriot Act,
also slated to expire at the end of the month, are preserved. Those other powers include the ability to target lone wolf actors and to switch wiretaps if suspects switch their phones. As
for Section 215, Mr. Comey said Congress should at least preserve the power to go after individuals records. If we lose that authority, which I dont think is controversial with folks,
that is a big problem, he said Wednesday at a forum at the Georgetown University Law Center. But most of the Section 215 debate has revolved around bulk collection. Earlier this
month a federal appeals court ruled that the Patriot Act does not envision the kind of phone program the NSA has been running, which gathers and stores five years worth of records of
the numbers, dates and durations of calls made in the U.S. For anti-bulk surveillance advocates, Thursdays report further undermines Section 215. This report adds to the mounting

Bulk data
collection creates false leads, ties up investigative resources and , essentially,
evidence that Section 215 has done little to protect Americans and should be put to rest, said American Civil Liberties Union Staff Attorney Alex Abdo.

undermines national security , said Stephen Kohn, an attorney at Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto,
FBI dependency on that bulk data collection
indicates that the agency is lacking the appropriate resources for
LLP and advocate for government whistleblowers. Also, increased

conducting successful counterterrorism operations, Mr. Kohn said.

Ext. CT Bad
Counter-terrorism causes widespread violations of
international treaties devastates US credibility and strengths
terrorist recruitment initiatives thats LoCicero
Counter-terrorism fails and bolsters terrorist recruitment
Alice LoCicero 15, faculty member at Center for Multicultural Training in

Psychology at the Boston Medical Center and adjunct professor at Lesley University,
"Domestic Consequences of US Counter-Terrorism Efforts: Making it Harder to
Prevent Homegrown Terrorism," The Open Psychology Journal 8(32-37),
benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOPSYJ/TOPSYJ-8-32.pdf
After the APA withdrew support for their work, task force members published the reports in the 2006
book, Collateral Damage [4]. They wrote about specific likely ill effects of policies such
as the use of color-coded designations to signal levels of terrorism threat .
In the foreword to the book, psychologist Phil Zimbardo argues that these threat
level changes generate fear of an undefined danger without providing
suggestions for possible actions . This omission inadvertently enhances the
intended effects of terrorist actions : psychological terror, crippling
anxiety, and difficulty in making decisions on a rational basis. In short,
Americans were even more likely to respond to terrorism with panic than
with reasonable actions. This panic was a result of being told to be afraid of a
vague threat by an unknowable enemy and not being told how to cope or how to reduce the threat [5]. Such
unproductive fear of terrorism has been shown to have measurable
consequences, such as psychological distress and constriction of activities [6]. Other effects of
US counterterrorism policies accurately predicted by the APA task force
include increases in hate crimes against
marginalized groups; intolerance for antiwar perspectives; acceptance of measures
favoring security over freedom; and enhanced recruitment by terrorist groups , who
use negative reactions to US policies as a recruiting tool. The collective
adverse impacts of the ongoing counter terrorism policies have had the
have also come to pass. These effects

predictable and predicted

deleterious impacts on US society .

Ext. No Impact
The impact is tiny recent analysis shows terrorism causes
under 7% of violent deaths, and the vast majority of casualties
arent domestic thats Zenko
No impact threats are decreasing and current enforcement is
sufficient
Brian Michael Jenkins 14, MA in History from University of California, Los Angeles,
Andrew Liepman, Henry H. Willis, "Identifying Enemies Among Us Evolving Terrorist
Threats and the Continuing Challenges of Domestic Intelligence Collection and
Information Sharing," 2014,
www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/conf_proceedings/CF300/CF317/RAND_CF317.
pdf
Todays threat environment is more diffuse. Al Qaeda is more decentralized, more dependent
on its affiliates and allies, and reliant on its ability to inspire homegrown recruits to carry out terrorist
attacks. It is still unquestionably a dangerous organization, but its ability to launch a 9/11-scale
spectacular has been substantially lessened, if not eliminated . Al Qaedas
international plotting persists, but fewer of the plots are core-connected. Al Qaeda
affiliates and homegrown terrorist plots now constitute a bigger part of the threat. While al Qaeda remains
committed to ambitious strategic attacks, it also has embraced do-it-yourself terrorism, exhorting followers to do
whatever they can, wherever they are. Thus far, however, its

efforts to mobilize homegrown

terrorists have achieved only limited success . Al Qaeda has exploited the turmoil created
by the political upheavals in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Syria. The distraction of established security
mechanisms in the region has created a more permissive environment for militants and extremistsboth those with
links to al Qaeda and like-minded, locally focused groups across the region, including in the Sahara, the Sahel, the
Sinai Peninsula, Yemen, and Syria. In Afghanistan, al Qaeda, although weakened, remains well positioned to benefit
from Taliban advances as U.S. and allied forces withdraw. And as evidenced by recent revelations, al Qaedas
presence and abilities overseas remain active, especially in the Arabian Peninsula. The

domestic radicalization has not gained

the kind of

traction

threat of

some thought it might five

years ago, when authorities became aware of a number of Somali-Americans who were returning to Mogadishu to
fight alongside al Qaeda affiliate al Shabaab. (There is now concern about Western recruits going to fight in Syrias
civil war.) Despite more than 200 arrests in the United States since 9/11 for
providing material support to jihadist groups or, more seriously, for plotting terrorist attacks in the United States,

few homegrown operatives have proven to be determined or very skillful.

(This does not mean they are not dangerous.) Nevertheless, authorities continue to interrupt local terrorist

There could be another surge of terrorist plots on the home front,

but the success rate of the authorities has been good .
conspiracies.

Ext. No Nuke Terror

No nuclear terror acquisition is virtually impossible, loose
nukes are ineffective, and obstacles to material acquisition and
construction are enormous thats Mearsheimer
Transportation is impossible
Augustine Kwok 13, Policy Assistant - Global Partnership Program at Foreign

Affairs and International Trade Canada, Evaluating the Threat of Nuclear Terrorism:
Cutting Through the Rhetoric,
http://www.ruor.uottawa.ca/fr/bitstream/handle/10393/30520/KWOK,%20Augustine
%2020139.pdf?sequence=1
Furthermore, if terrorists were able to purchase fissile materials, they would
still have to find a way to transport the materials from point of purchase,
to assembly point, to destination point. There are a number of initiatives set up in
order to prevent such transit from being possible . Through the Global Initiative to Combat
Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT), the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction

countries
identified with major transshipment points have had their transport and
maritime security infrastructure upgraded and supplemented with
(GP), the US National Nuclear Security Administrations (NNSA) Megaports initiative and INTERPOL;

equipment to detect the transfer of nuclear material . Such safeguards, in

addition to the implementation of norms across the global nuclear
industry through the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Wassenaar Arrangement and the Zangger Committee
have ensured that the highest standards are applied to global transport
infrastructure. Security is geared to facilitate the safe and secure transport of
authorized nuclear materials while detecting, interdicting and preventing
any illegal transfers

of material.

AT: Big Data

2AC Frontline
Talent shortages will restrict growth of the big data sector
regardless of the plan
Manyika et al 11 (May 2011. McKinsey Global Institute is a research contracting firm. This project was
led by James Manyika, the director of McKinsey Global Institute and a former leader within technology companies
where he focused on innovation, growth, and strategy. Michael Chui also assisted in leading the research. Chui is a
partner of McKinsey Global Institute where he specializes in research on the impact of information tech and
innovation on businesses, the econ, and society. Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and
Productivity McKinsey Global Institute.
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology/big_data_the_next_frontier_for_innovation //HS)

A significant constraint on realizing value from big data will be a shortage

of talent, particularly of people with deep expertise in statistics and
machine learning, and the managers and analysts who know how to
operate companies by using insights from big data. In the United States, we
expect big data to rapidly become a key determinant of competition
across sectors. But we project that demand for deep analytical positions in a big
data world could exceed the supply being produced on current trends by
140,000 to 190,000 positions (Exhibit 4). Furthermore, this type of talent is difficult
to produce, taking years of training in the case of someone with intrinsic mathematical abilities.
Although our quantitative analysis uses the United States as illustration,
we believe that the constraint on this type of talent will be global , with the
caveat that some regions may be able to produce the supply that can fill talent gaps in other regions. In
addition, we project a need for 1.5 million additional managers and
analysts in the United States who can ask the right questions and consume the
results of the analysis of big data effectively. The United Statesand other
economies facing similar shortagescannot fill this gap simply by
changing graduate requirements and waiting for people to graduate with
more skills or by importing talent (although these could be important actions to take). It will
be necessary to retrain a significant amount of the talent in place; fortunately,
this level of training does not require years of dedicated study.

Big Data does not solve any impacts.

Tom Siegfried, managing editor of Science News, Why Big Data is bad for
science, November 2013, https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/why-big-

data-bad-science
If Star Trek: The Next Generation were to return to TV in the 21st century, Lt.
Commander Datas nickname would be Big. Big Data, after all, is the
biggest buzzword of the new millennium. Its everywhere, from genomics,
biomics and a bunch of other omics to the NSAs database on writers who
mention NSA in their blogs. Social networks, financial networks, ecological
networks all contain vast amounts of data that no longer overwhelm computer hard
drive storage capabilities. Scientists are now swimming in a superocean of endless
information, fulfilling their wildest dreams of data nirvana. What a nightmare. You
see, scientists usually celebrate the availability of a lot of data. Most of them
have been extolling all the research opportunities that massive databases
offer. But perhaps thats because everybody isnt seeing the big data
picture. Here and there you can find warnings from some experts that Big
Data has its downsides. Scientific advances are becoming more and more
data-driven, write statistician Jianqing Fan of Princeton University and

colleagues. The massive amounts of data bring both opportunities and new
challenges to data analysis. For one thing, huge datasets are seductive. They
invite aggressive analyses with the hope of extracting prizewinning scientific
findings. But sometimes Big Data In means Bad Data Out. Wringing intelligent
insights from Big Data poses formidable challenges for computer science,
statistical inference methods and even the scientific method itself.
Computer scientists, of course, have made the accumulation of all this big
data possible by developing exceptional computing power and information
storage technologies. But collecting data and storing information is not
the same as understanding it. Figuring out what Big Data means isnt the
same as interpreting little data, just as understanding flocking behavior in
birds doesnt explain the squawks of a lone seagull. Standard statistical tests
and computing procedures for drawing scientific inferences were designed to
analyze small samples taken from large populations. But Big Data provides
extremely large samples that sometimes include all or most of a
population. The magnitude of the task can pose problems for
implementing computing processes to do the tests. Many statistical
procedures either have unknown runtimes or runtimes that render the
procedure unusable on large-scale data, writes Michael Jordan of the
University of California, Berkeley. Faced with this situation, gatherers of
large-scale data are often forced to turn to ad hoc procedures that may
have poor or even disastrous statistical properties. Sounds bad. But it gets
worse. Not only do Big Data samples take more time to analyze, they also typically
contain lots of different information about every individual that gets sampled
which means, in statistics-speak, they are high dimensional. More dimensions
raises the risk of finding spurious correlations apparently important links
that are actually just flukes.

2AC Retail
Decline in retail sector doesnt signal economic collapse
Craig Adeyanju, Contributor to the Street, 7/22, Bad Retail Sales Data Doesn't
Necessarily Mean Economic Growth Is Coming to an End,
http://www.thestreet.com/story/13221445/2/bad-retail-sales-data-doesntnecessarily-mean-economic-growth-is-coming-to-an-end.html
Don't panic when you see retail sales slipping -- it doesn't necessarily mean
that the economic expansion is coming to an end. In June, retail sales
declined 0.3% from the May level, coming in at a seasonally adjusted $442
billion. This decline, coupled with the downward retail sales revision for
the previous two months might make you think that economic growth is
tapering. You wouldn't be the first to make that assumption. Comparing this
economic expansion to the last, looking at retail sales, we see that this
isn't necessarily the case. There was an economic expansion between November
2001 and December 2007 -- the fourth longest economic expansion period since
October 1945. That's a good basis for comparison since it's close to the current
economic climate. The economic realities, such as technological advancement and
the dominant sectors of the economy, are somewhat similar. Let's take a look at the
data: There is no major difference between retail sales trends during the
previous expansion and now. In fact, of the 72 months between 2002 and 2007,
retail sales went up 48 months, dipped 22 months and remained unchanged two
months. Of the 72 months between 2009 and 2014, retail sales went up 52 months,
dipped 17 months and remained unchanged three months. Another thing to note
in the data is that the percentage retail sales decline during the economic
expansion period was worse than the current recovery. On average, retail
sales dipped 0.756% between 2002 and 2007, while the dip was just 0.595%
between 2009 and 2014. Decreases in retail sales often follow months of impressive
retail sales -- mostly the months that had over 1% increase. While the trend is not
true for every dip, it is the case for about 80% of the dips. And, as the data shows,
this was exactly the case for the dip in June -- following a large increase in May. The
most probable explanation for this is that, having spent so much in a given month,
consumers actually have less need to spend so much the following month
to build on the prior month's increased spending. And perhaps this is the
ultimate takeaway from historical data. Dips in retail sales don't necessarily
mean the economy is struggling. It could simply mean consumers have
purchased so much in a given month that there is no pressing need to
spend even more in following month. Moreover, the fact that it is rare to find
consecutive months of declines further strengthens the argument that dip
in retail sales is more of a sign that consumers don't have as much need
as the month before.

Multiple alternate barriers to effectiveness- even in the world

of the plan they still have to be overcome.
Manyika et al 11 (May 2011. McKinsey Global Institute is a research contracting firm. This project was
led by James Manyika, the director of McKinsey Global Institute and a former leader within technology companies
where he focused on innovation, growth, and strategy. Michael Chui also assisted in leading the research. Chui is a
partner of McKinsey Global Institute where he specializes in research on the impact of information tech and
innovation on businesses, the econ, and society. Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and

Productivity McKinsey Global Institute.

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology/big_data_the_next_frontier_for_innovation //HS)

retail executives must manage and overcome multiple barriers to

realize the full potential of big data . The first is the mind-set of employees and firms;
many people still view IT as a back-office function and therefore as a large
cost center rather than as an engine for business growth. In contrast, leading
For their part,

companies in their use of big data understand that their IT initiatives will be a crucial source of competitive

companies must make sure that business and IT leaders

collaborate closely so that the use of big data underpins improvements in
efficiency improvement and opportunities for creating value . Companies should
advantage. These

also actively seek out and implement big-data-based innovations that will give them longterm competitive

Another common obstacle for big data leaders is their legacy IT

systems. Many of these systems were installed decades ago, well before
todays big data opportunities were considered or even possible. These legacy
systems usually include multiple silos of information generated in incompatible
standards and formats so that they cannot be readily integrated,
accessed, and analyzed. Attempts to upgrade and integrate these systems
can be so difficult and plagued with the potential for introducing new system bugs that one retail
expert complained that such an effort was much worse than starting from
scratch. Even deploying new IT-enabled systems can present tremendous
challenges. The gap between the predicted scale of adoption of RFID systems and their actual deployment
advantages.

tells a cautionary tale. RFID held the promise of providing a source of supply chain data that could be exploited
using big data techniques. In the early days, RFID reader reliability was far worse than originally expected,
necessitating manual inputs to correct for reader errors. This destroyed the productivity gains expected from
deploying this technology. Adoption slowed, RFID tags were in lower demand, and per-tag costs did not decline as
quickly as anticipated, as economies of scale were muted. Higher tag prices hurt the business case for further RFID
deployment, reinforcing a negative cycle in which the application of big data levers based on this technology has

Potentially as daunting for retail executives is the task of finding

the talent that can execute big data levers. Globally, executives complain
about the scarcity of highquality candidates for these jobs, and many
retailers do not have sufficient talent in-house. Moreover, existing analytical
and technical talent tends to be managed inefficiently, isolated in particular
departments, or scattered in different business units. People with the requisite skills are
rarely directly involved in strategic decision making and have little impact
beyond answering highly specific questions. Retailers with the foresight and intelligence to
been delayed.

hire big data talent in sufficient numbers and then involve these hires in strategic decisions and planning will take
the fullest advantage of value-creation opportunities at the expense of their less nimble competitors.

(ONLY IF YOU DONT READ ECON DECLINE CAUSES WAR)

Economic collapse doesnt cause war
Bazzi et al., UCSD economics department, 2011

(Samuel, Economic Shocks and Conflict: The (Absence of?) Evidence from
Commodity Prices, November,
http://www.chrisblattman.com/documents/research/2011.EconomicShocksAndConfli
ct.pdf?9d7bd4, ldg)
VI. Discussion and conclusions A. Implications for our theories of political instability and conflict The state is not a prize?Warlord
politics and the state prize logic lie at the center of the most influential models of conflict, state development, and political

we see no evidence for this idea in economic

shocks, even when looking at the friendliest cases: fragile and
unconstrained states dominated by extractive commodity revenues.
Indeed, we see the opposite correlation: if anything, higher rents from
transitions in economics and political science. Yet

commodity prices weakly 22 lower the risk and length of conflict.

Perhaps

shocks are the wrong test. Stocks of resources could matter more than price shocks (especially if shocks are transitory). But
combined with emerging evidence that war onset is no more likely even with rapid increases in known oil reserves (Humphreys
2005; Cotet and Tsui 2010) we regard the state prize logic of war with skepticism.17 Our main political economy models may need a
new engine. Naturally, an absence of evidence cannot be taken for evidence of absence. Many of our conflict onset and ending
results include sizeable positive and negative effects.18 Even so, commodity price shocks are highly influential in income and should
provide a rich source of identifiable variation in instability. It is difficult to find a better-measured, more abundant, and plausibly

Moreover, other time-varying variables, like

rainfall and foreign aid, exhibit robust correlations with conflict in spite of
suffering similar empirical drawbacks and generally smaller sample sizes
(Miguel et al. 2004; Nielsen et al. 2011). Thus we take the absence of evidence seriously . Do
exogenous independent variable than price volatility.

resource revenues drive state capacity?State prize models assume that rising revenues raise the value of the capturing the state,
but have ignored or downplayed the effect of revenues on self-defense. We saw that a growing empirical political science literature
takes just such a revenue-centered approach, illustrating that resource boom times permit both payoffs and repression, and that
stocks of lootable or extractive resources can bring political order and stability. This countervailing effect is most likely with
transitory shocks, as current revenues are affected while long term value is not. Our findings are partly consistent with this state
capacity effect. For example, conflict intensity is most sensitive to changes in the extractive commodities rather than the annual
agricultural crops that affect household incomes more directly. The relationship only holds for conflict intensity, however, and is
somewhat fragile. We do not see a large, consistent or robust decline in conflict or coup risk when prices fall. A reasonable
interpretation is that the state prize and state capacity effects are either small or tend to cancel one another out. Opportunity cost:
Victory by default?Finally, the inverse relationship between prices and war intensity is consistent with opportunity cost accounts,
but not exclusively so. As we noted above, the relationship between intensity and extractive commodity prices is more consistent
with the state capacity view. Moreover, we shouldnt mistake an inverse relation between individual aggression and incomes as
evidence for the opportunity cost mechanism. The same correlation is consistent with psychological theories of stress and
aggression (Berkowitz 1993) and sociological and political theories of relative deprivation and anomie (Merton 1938; Gurr 1971).
Microempirical work will be needed to distinguish between these mechanisms. Other reasons for a null result. Ultimately,
however, the fact that commodity

price shocks have no discernible effect on new conflict

onsets , but some effect on ongoing conflict, suggests that political stability might be less
sensitive to income or temporary shocks than generally believed. One possibility
is that successfully mounting an insurgency is no easy task. It comes with considerable risk, costs, and coordination challenges.
Another possibility is that the counterfactual is still conflict onset. In poor and fragile nations, income shocks of one type or another
are ubiquitous.

If a nation is so fragile that a change in prices could lead to war,

then other shocks may trigger war even in the absence of a price shock.
The same argument has been made in debunking the myth that price shocks led to fiscal collapse and low growth in developing

these findings should

heighten our concern with publication bias in the conflict literature. Our
results run against a number of published results on commodity shocks and
conflict, mainly because of select samples, misspecification, and
sensitivity to model assumptions, and, most importantly, alternative
measures of instability. Across the social and hard sciences, there is a concern that the majority of published
research findings are false (e.g. Gerber et al. 2001). Ioannidis (2005) demonstrates that a published finding is
less likely to be true when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; there is greater flexibility in designs,
definitions, outcomes, and models; and when more teams are involved in
the chase of statistical significance. The cross-national study of conflict is
an extreme case of all these. Most worryingly, almost no paper looks at alternative
dependent variables or publishes systematic robustness checks . Hegre and
nations in the 1980s.19 B. A general problem of publication bias? More generally,

Sambanis (2006) have shown that the majority of published conflict results are fragile, though they focus on timeinvariant
regressors and not the time-varying shocks that have grown in popularity. We are also concerned there is a file drawer problem
(Rosenthal 1979). Consider this decision rule: scholars that discover robust results that fit a theoretical intuition pursue the results;
but if results are not robust the scholar (or referees) worry about problems with the data or empirical strategy, and identify
additional work to be done. If further analysis produces a robust result, it is published. If not, back to the file drawer. In the

the consequences are dire: a lower threshold of evidence for

initially significant results than ambiguous ones.20
aggregate,

2AC Disease
Disease doesnt cause species extinction- alt causes
Michael Hood and Amanda Gibson, 10, Associate Professor of Biology; Chair of
Biology @Amherst and PhD candidate at Indiana University's Evolution, Ecology and
Behavior Program, Disease Likely Not a Common Cause of Species Extinction, New
Amherst Study Finds,
https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/news/faculty/node/222637
Challenging the widespread belief that rare and endangered plants and animals
are unhealthy, a new study has found they in fact harbor a lower number and
diversity of disease-causing parasites than non-threatened, close relatives
of the same family, according to Amherst College biology professor Michael Hood
and his research team. We still have much more to study to fully understand this
discovery, but this certainly contradicts the widely held notion that disease is a
major accelerant of species decline, said Hood of the groups findings, which were
published by the journal Oikos on its website. Combined with the loss of
habitat, it is probably other extinction vortex factorssuch as loss of
genetic diversity or disruption of reproduction processesthat cause
many species to die out, not disease. Using information from the collections in
natural history museums around the world, the U.S. Department of Agriculture
databases and their own field work, Hood, former student Amanda K. Gibson 08
and postdoctoral fellow Jorge Mena-Ali analyzed data from more than 42,000
flowering plants in the Silene genus for the destructive anther smut fungus.
Anther smut, said Hood, is a model disease to study, because it is easy to seeit
replaces the plants pollen with dark fungal sporesand because it is widely
distributed in natural plant communities. In addition, it is harmless to humans and
agriculture and safe for Hood and his team to handle. The groups major finding was
surprising: Naturally occurring anther smut disease was significantly less
frequent in threatened species than in non-threatened species of Silene.
Whats more, looking across all endangered U.S. plant species, the team
found fewer pathogens and parasites, making endangered species as a
group less diseased overall. Hood hypothesizes that this could be because
endangered species tend to have smaller, fragmented, physically isolated
populations that make the maintenance and transmission of diseases
more difficult.

AT: CPs

Cyber Transparency

2AC Curtailing Surveillance Key

Curtailing surveillance is key to closing cyber-vulnerabilities
having a more transparent cyber policy only gives hackers
more tools to work with
Brewster, reporter @ The Guardian, 14
Tom, "The NSA Is Screwing Up The Fight Against Cybercrime", March 7 2014,
Business Insider, www.businessinsider.com/nsa-screwing-up-fight-againstcybercrime-2014-3
Criminals learning from NSA Intelligence agency hacking techniques will
also be adopted by criminals, according to security luminaries speaking with The Guardian. This
has been seen in other nations in recent history. The spear-phishing tricks we saw the

Chinese secret police using against the Dalai Lama in 2008 were being used by Russian crooks to steal money from
US companies by 2010. We predicted as much in 2009, said Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at

Cryptography
expert and author Bruce Schneier said some of the techniques the NSA
used to hack routers are starting to be seen in criminal cases, amongst
other attack types. Indeed, from compromises of much used but vulnerable
mobile applications, to spying on people through their web cams, dark
web dealers were already using the same methods as the NSA. Todays
the University of Cambridge. A lot more people have become aware of what can be done.

secret NSA programs are tomorrows PHD theses and the next days
hacker tools, he added. The US has done an enormous amount of damage
here. There is a basic level of trust that has been lost There is a lot of
international mistrust right now because the US was supposed to be a
trusted keeper of everything, but it turned out they were subverting it
with every chance they got. And the NSA keeps saying its not as bad as you think, but who the hell
believes that? The zero-day race Purposeful backdoors in security products another revelation from leaked security agency documents - benefit all
hackers. If firms have allowed for weaknesses in their product sets, they
dont just open up holes for agents to exploit, but criminals too. Organized
crime groups are pumping money into hunting for such vulnerabilities,
placing the everyday user at ever greater risk. Those crooks and the NSA
are racing to uncover and use zero-day flaws - previously-unknown,
unpatched weaknesses in software and hardware. After governments buy,
discover or use these vulnerabilities, they often filter down into the wider
criminal community, says Jason Steer, director of technology strategy at FireEye. We know that
governments purchase undisclosed zero-day vulnerabilities, and the
providers of such zero-days such as Vupen openly acknowledge that
government are big buyers of their research in text on their website, Steer
said. All exploits have an inevitable lifecycle - from highly targeted usage to APT [advanced persistent threat]

Once an exploit is used in the

wild, its effectiveness will drop as researchers in both the black hat and
white hat communities discover it and learn about it. Once its
effectiveness is weakened, any zero-day is picked up by the broader
attacker community as this gives them an opportunity to monetize their
window for a time, until the targeted software or hardware fixes the
usage, then to broader cyber criminals and finally hacktivists.

vulnerability - its quite simply a race. Government malware = criminal

malware But the NSA isnt the only official body that is spurring on digital
crime, whether willingly or unwittingly. In using offensive digital tools against one
another, governments have brought about a degradation of co-operation
on dealing with cybercrime, according to RSA chief Art Coviello. The only ones deriving
advantage from governments trying to gain advantage over one another
on the internet are the criminals. Our lack of immediate, consistent and
sustained cooperation, globally, gives them the equivalent of safe
havens, Coviello said during his keynote. And the introduction of government-owned
malware on global networks only gives criminals yet more tools to play
with. The genie is out the bottle on the use of cyber weaponry and unlike
nuclear weapons, cyber weapons are easily propagated and can be turned
on the developer, Coviello added. Anderson has concerns around organized
criminals taking advantage. If governments keep on giving millions of
people access to this stuff, its only a matter of time before serious
organized crime gets in there. Its long been believed governments
across the world are paying cyber criminals to help them attack foreign
entities too. While this has never been detailed, Coviello and numerous others in the
security industry have claimed knowledge of it happening. This has all
combined to create a chaotic, dangerous environment, where attack
numbers continue to rise and aggressive, sophisticated techniques have
been given a sense of legitimacy, whether the targets are governmental
data or individuals money. Paraphrasing a famous quote, those who seek military
advantage riding the back of the tiger will end up inside, Coviello said during his
keynote. Many are now calling for the NSA and other government bodies
contributing to the rise in digital crime to get off that tiger.

2AC Solvency DeficitTransparency Fails

Transparency exacerbates conflict by triggering arms races,
amplifying belligerent rhetoric, and creating public support for
war
Lord, President and CEO of International Research &
Exchanges Board, 06
Kristin M., "The Perils and Promise of Global Transparency", State University of New
York Press, 2006, cryptome.org/2013/01/aaron-swartz/Global-Transparency-PerilsPromise.pdf
The Complexity of Transparency and Conflict Greater transparency will not always

encourage peace and cooperation since the effects of transparency

depend on what transparency shows, how that information is interpreted,
and how states respond. Greater transparency does discourage conflicts
when states genuinely want peace and the costs of war are high. However,
greater transparency can also be ineffectual, exacerbate conflicts, or
encourage aggression. Transparency is a complex phenomenon and
provides no easy solution to the problem of international conflict. A key
reason why transparency will not always encourage peace is that, despite
the attention paid to unwanted wars, not all conflicts are caused by
misunderstandings.40 States sometimes have conflicting interests and
violence is an effective way to protect or advance them.41 When states
hold truly incompatible objectives, conflict and tension are predictable
side effects of world politics. Policy makers can influence whether those conflicts are resolved
peacefully, but they are unlikely to avoid violence altogether. Presumably, we can expect real conflicts of interest as
long as nations are not all converging toward an ideal model of politics or economicsif, as Martha Finnemore
argues, Weberian rationality is not marching relentlessly across the earth, leaving in its wake a marketized,

If the interests and values of countries

are not converging, transparency may only make conflicts more evident .43
Even when transparency helps governments to see that an opponents
intentions are peaceful, the risk that states intentions can change, may
undermine some of transparencys pacifying effects. 44 John Mearsheimers assertion
that states have little choice but to fear each other, is overly stark but contains a grain of truth.45 Superior
power is often threatening regardless of intentions because latent power
can always be mobilized. This fact is particularly important because
defense procurement must often be years, if not decades, ahead of
current needs, while governments and their intentions can change quickly .
As discussed earlier, however, preparations for possible future wars can ultimately
reduce security further since such preparations are usually observable
and encourage like actions by other states. Greater transparency also
makes states less secure if it shows that states are aggressive, greedy, or
seek to maximize their power.46 Just as transparency can illuminate
peaceful intentions, it can emphasize hostility and a willingness to fight.
In such cases, transparency acts as a megaphone that amplifies
bureaucratized world of increasingly similar forms.42

belligerent rhetoric and exacerbates conflicts.

When hostile rhetoric is widely heard,

rhetoric can build on itself and reduce the number of politically acceptable options short of the use of force.47 In
contrast to many liberal arguments, such rhetoric comes not just from leaders who will benefit from war, but also

from mass publics. War can be popular and several cases, such as the Spanish-American War, illustrate that the
general public can desire war even more than leaders and can pressure reluctant governments to fight.

When

domestic politics makes it difficult for politicians to defuse a crisis,

transparency may constrain the options of negotiators and limit the
political space available for peaceful conflict resolution. Transparency
exacerbates conflicts if it shows that there is public support for war and
may be particularly dangerous when it shows that there is widespread
animosity toward some other nation or out-group, which can heighten
perceived threats and exacerbate conflicts.48

1AR Solvency Deficit--Transparency Fails

Transparency can make conflicts worsetheir authors are too
optimistic
Lord, President and CEO of International Research &
Exchanges Board, 06
Kristin M., "The Perils and Promise of Global Transparency", State University of New
York Press, 2006, cryptome.org/2013/01/aaron-swartz/Global-Transparency-PerilsPromise.pdf

These possibilities have raised hopes that transparency will usher in an era of unprecedented justice and peace.12

Optimists predict that greater transparency will reduce the incidence of

conflicts caused by misunderstandings. It can facilitate international agreements and deter
cheating. It alerts the world to disturbing events and gives governments, NGOs, and international organizations the
opportunity to respond. Transparency also promises to improve governance and to make powerful organizations of
all stripes more accountable. As a result, groups across the political spectrum advocate greater transparency of
corporations, universities, police departments, local governments, national governments, and international
organizations like the European Union, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank.

Yet greater

transparency is not an unmitigated good . In all likelihood, the trend toward greater
More information about other societies
may reveal conflicting values and interests as well as shared ones. More
information about the military capabilities of other states may show
vulnerability and encourage aggression by the strong against the weak.
Greater transparency can highlight hostility and fuel vicious cycles of
belligerent words and deeds. It can highlight widespread prejudice and
hatred, encourage the victimization of out-groups and by showing broad
acceptance of such behavior without repercussions, legitimize it. Greater
transparency can undermine efforts at conflict resolution and, when
conflicts do break out, it can discourage intervention by third parties.
Transparency sometimes can make conflicts worse.
transparency will be at once positive and pernicious.

Even if the CP reduces uncertainty, that doesnt guarantee

peace
Lord, President and CEO of International Research &
Exchanges Board, 06

Kristin M., "The Perils and Promise of Global Transparency", State University of New
York Press, 2006, cryptome.org/2013/01/aaron-swartz/Global-Transparency-PerilsPromise.pdf
Unfortunately, transparency is a double-edged sword . Though transparency
does reduce uncertainty, less uncertainty will not always mean more
security or peace. Rather, the effects of greater transparency depend on
what it shows and how states react. We cannot assume that transparency
will show behavior that supports peace and cooperation or that states will
react to information in ways that will lead to a more just or peaceful
world. Greater transparency can indeed enhance international peace and security if it shows that other states

transparency can make conflicts worse if it

illuminates hostility, aggression, or arms buildups. By illuminating
weakness, transparency can undermine deterrence and encourage
aggression. It can alert states to closing windows of opportunities and
give them incentives to fight. By taking away strategic ambiguity,
transparency can encourage states to find less visible, more pernicious
means of defending their interests.
are genuinely peace-loving, but

Gambling Internet

WTO Internet Wont Solve

The WTO wont be able to facilitate liberalization.
Beltz, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2013 Cynthia, Global
Telecommunications Rules: The Race with Technology 11/27/2013
http://issues.org/13-3/beltz/
In this chaotic environment of converging markets and complex
competition, the Internet phenomenon reflects the trends in technology
and user demand that are breaking down barriers between industries and nations at a
far faster than formal rulemaking institutions can react to. Competition in
international telecommunications will continue to intensify in the next few years
irrespective of what happens with the WTO rulemaking revolution . Quick
and full implementation of the WTO rules would provide a significant boost to
this trend, but increased competition is not dependent on it . Thats good news, because
pace

quick implementation will be difficult if not impossible. Even after the domestic rules have been changed to conform
with the WTO agreement, firms wanting to do business in other countries will still need to confront foreign
regulatory agencies that can be expected to be particularly creative in their tactics to delay or impede
interconnection. The telecommunication rules under the WTO include regulator rights-loopholes that permit
access conditions to be imposed to safeguard public service responsibilities such as universal service or to protect
the technical integrity of the public telecommunications system. When and how such restrictions could be
attacked as an illegitimate nontariff trade barrier will have to be resolved through the WTO dispute settlement
process. The settlement process itself will be time-consuming. Because of the government-to-government nature of
the WTO process, companies must first convince their own governments to champion their case. If the United
States accepts a case, it will need to prove that a foreign regulatory agency finding on an interconnection ruling, for
example, is inconsistent with the law and spirit of the WTO agreement. Even if the U.S. wins its case, the firm may
gain little. If the foreign government is unable or unwilling to change the offending practice, the United States may
choose to retaliate under the WTO by taking away benefits in an area unrelated to telecommunications, leaving the
original dispute unresolved. Technology push and consumer pull Given the institutional limits of the WTO, we should
not expect too much too soon from its rulemaking revolution, but this does not mean that consumers will not

The
savings from increased innovation and lower prices over the near term do
not hinge on the new WTO rules, lawyers, or even U.S. strong-arm negotiating tactics. The
most powerful forces pushing for liberalization did not even have seats at
receive any of the promised $1 trillion in benefits that is supposed to accompany restructuring of the industry.

the negotiating table. Excessive regulation and artificially high

international rates have created an engine of their own destruction.
Technological innovations are giving consumers the power to bypass
overpriced systems at the same time as bloated profit margins are attracting
competition from entrepreneurial firms. Even before the WTO agreement
was concluded, digital technologies and demanding consumers were
tearing down market barriers, undermining monopolies

once seen as unassailable,

and forcing governments to open up . The progress made towards

competition and open, private markets has been nothing less than
astonishing , remarked a former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) official. From Germany to
Guatemala,

competition is now being promoted in some shape on every

continent and in every region. ginated and terminated within a single

country.

WTO cant solve nations wont come collaborate and regulate

Aaronson, George Washington University, 2014, Susan, June, Can Trade Policy

Set Information Free

http://www.gwu.edu/~iiep/assets/docs/papers/2014WP/AaronsonIIEPWP20149.pdf
In theory, the WTO should be an appropriate venue for such discussions. WTO members
agreed not to place tariffs on data flows. However, the member states have not found
common ground on how to reduce new trade barriers to information
flows. In 2011, several nations nixed a US and EU proposal that members agree not to block Internet service
providers or impede the free flow of information online. Moreover, the members of the WTO have
made little progress on adding new regulatory issues such as privacy and
cyber security that challenge Internet policymakers. However, many new online
activities will require cooperative global regulation on issues that transcend market access -- the traditional turf of

These issues will require policymakers to think less about ensuring

that their model of regulation is adopted globally but more about
achieving interoperability among different governance approaches. Alas, policymakers
the WTO.

are not consistently collaborating to achieve interoperability The US, the

EU, and Canada use trade policies to govern the Internet at home and across borders. The three trade
giants use bilateral and regional trade agreements to encourage e-commerce ,
reduce online barriers to trade, and to develop shared policies in a world where technology is rapidly changing
and where governments compete to disseminate their regulatory
approaches . Policymakers also use export controls , trade bans or targeted
sanctions to protect Internet users in other countries or to prevent officials of other countries
from using Internet related technologies in ways that undermine the rights of individuals abroad. Finally,
policymakers may use trade agreements to challenge other governments
online rules and policies

as trade barriers.

2NC WTO Fails

WTO wont solve regulations lack of common ground on
privacy and cyber security ensure disputes between export
controls and sanctions are inevitable and the WTO wont be
able to resolve the disputes Thats Aaronson.
No push for WTO based regulation exists now and no authority.
Aaronson, Associate Research Professor Institute of International Economic Policy
(IIEP) Elliott School of International Affairs George Washington University, 2013
Susan Ariel, Internet Governance or Internet Control? How to Safeguard Internet
Freedom
http://www.cicerofoundation.org/lectures/Aaronson_Internet_Governance.pdf

The WTO is a set of rules delineating how firms can trade and how policymakers can protect producers and
consumers from injurious imports. But it is much more; it also serves as a forum for trade negotiations and settles
trade disputes through a binding system. In the internet arena, the WTO acts to promote market access, to preserve
open telecommunication networks, and to harmonize telecommunications policies that can affect international
trade. 19 Although the WTO does not explicitly regulate Internet services per se, it regulates trade in the goods and
services that comprise e-commerce.20 Some 74 members of the WTO have agreed to implement the Information
Technology Agreement. The signatories have eliminated tariffs on many of the products that make the Internet
possible such as semiconductors; set top boxes, digital printers, and computers.21 Since 1998, the members of the
WTO have agreed not to place tariffs on data flows. But members have also disagreed on how the WTO should

The WTOs dispute settlement body has already

settled two trade disputes related to Internet issues (Internet gambling and Chinas
state trading rights on audiovisual products and services).22 Alas, the member states have not
affect national internet policies.

found common ground on how to reduce new trade barriers to

information flows . 23 In 2011, several nations nixed a US and the EU proposal that members agree not to
block Internet service providers or impede the free flow of information online. 24 Moreover, the members of
the WTO have made little progress on adding new regulatory issues such
as privacy and cyber security that challenge Internet policymakers .2
Although trade policymakers can see the benefits of trade rules as a tool to
govern the Internet and encourage information flows, some individuals question whether the
WTO should address Internet openness issues. First, the WTO regulates
the behavior of states, not individuals or firms.26 As a result, individuals and
firms involved in online transactions have no way to directly represent
their interests at the WTO. Secondly, information is a global public good; access to information is a basic

human right under international human rights law, and hence governments have a responsibility to ensure that
their citizens have access to information through transparency mechanisms.27 The WTO does have clear rules on

the WTO does

not address human rights and it has no authority to prod member states
transparency, due process, and political participation related to trade rulemaking.28 But

to provide an enabling regulatory context for the protection of these rights

and other human rights fundamental to Internet freedom such as the right to privacy29 or the right to free
expression. 30 Thirdly,

the WTO moves slowly (as decisions are made by consensus), and thus

cannot keep up with the development of new technologies . Fourth, many new
online activities will require cooperative global regulation on issues that transcend market access -- the traditional
turf of the WTO. These issues will require policymakers to think less about ensuring that their model of regulation is

Because
members have made little progress in trade talks at the WTO , the US, EU, and
adopted globally but more about achieving interoperability among different governance approaches.3

other

countries have begun to use bilateral and regional free trade

agreements ( FTAs ) to address e- commerce and other Internet issues.

(These bilateral or regional agreements have many of the same problems mentioned above.) The US and
the EU also use their free trade agreements to prod other governments to
adopt a similar approach to regulation and enforcement . Thus, some
observers see these agreements as governance agreements.32

Domestic concerns outweigh

Aaronson, George Washington University, 2014, Susan, June, Can Trade Policy
Set Information Free
http://www.gwu.edu/~iiep/assets/docs/papers/2014WP/AaronsonIIEPWP20149.pdf
Finally

without deliberate intent, domestic and trade policies may gradually

fracture the one global Internet . Given that countries have different
priorities for privacy, free speech, national security etc, international
harmonization of strategies to advance the open Internet is unlikely . Thus, when they negotiate
bilateral, regional or multilateral trade agreements, policymakers should use language that encourages
interoperability among signatories privacy, online piracy, and security policies.

Governments wont risk giving up their sovereignty

Daniel Castro, Senior analyst with the Information Technology and Innovative
Foundation, and Robert Atkinson, President of the Information Technology and
Innovative Foundation, 2014 Beyond Internet Universalism: A Framework for

Addressing Cross-Border Internet Policy http://www2.itif.org/2014-crossborderinternet-policy.pdf

However, some policymakers believe that their national sovereignty gives them
the right to dictate policy for the entire Internet since it crosses their
countrys borders. To continue with the consumer product analogy, some nations might
say that since their citizens might travel to a foreign nation and buy a
product that is not in compliance with their consumer product safety laws,
then these foreign nations should be required to adopt the domestic
country regulation . When applied to the Internet, this notion has been
particularly distressing to Internet users in Western countries who fear that
government-led policymaking on the Internet will pervert the openness and
freedom that characterized the Internets earliest years

(although many of these

same users also oppose efforts by their own governments to regulate activity on the Internet).

WTO provisions are insufficient renegotiation of GATS is

necessary
Knapp, J.D., Cum Laude, Northwestern University School of Law, 2010 Kristen,
Internet Filtering: The Ineffectiveness of WTO Remedies and the Availability of
Alternative Tort Remedies http://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1689&context=jitpl
Other commentators, however, argue that the WTO legal agreements that would likely
govern any future Internet filtering case are in- complete and ill-suited

to

the task.13 The " GATS

is an incomplete system . It requires new negotiations to

extend it to newer sectors " and these negotiations have not been entirely
forthcoming.14 Moreover, real concerns remain regarding the ability of the WTO
to interpret the GATS Agreement , an Agreement drafted when the
Internet was in its infancy, in a consistent and meaningful manner given
the extensive technological change that has taken place since the mid90s.15 Hence, companies doing business on the Internet negatively
affected by Internet filtering practices may be better served by looking
beyond the WTO's d ispute s ettlement m echanism, to common law tort doctrines
for legal remedies.

Wont Solve Fast Enough

No short term impact implementation of new regulation rules
take decades to implement and the DSM wont resolve
disputes.
Beltz, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2013 Cynthia, Global
Telecommunications Rules: The Race with Technology 11/27/2013
http://issues.org/13-3/beltz/
It will also take many years, if not decades , to interpret and fully implement the new
rules. Getting countries to live up to their commitments is always hard,
and in telecommunications the transition path will be particularly difficult
because of the novel nature of the regulatory policy issues and the many key
If implementation of the U nited S tatess own rulemaking
revolution (the 1996 Telecommunications Act) is any model of what we can expect in this situation,
the process will be contentious and lengthy. And remember that whereas the U nited
details yet to be discussed.

S tates has been debating this step for more than two decades, most of the
other WTO members are just getting started . The lawyers will be busy. Even after
the domestic rules have been changed to conform with the WTO agreement,
firms wanting to do business in other countries will still need to confront
foreign regulatory agencies that can be expected to be particularly creative in
their tactics to delay or impede interconnection. The telecommunication
rules under the WTO include regulator rights- loopholes that permit access
conditions to be imposed

to safeguard public service responsibilities such as universal service or to

When and how such

restrictions could be attacked as an illegitimate nontariff trade barrier will
have to be resolved through the WTO d ispute s ettle m ent process. The settlement
protect the technical integrity of the public telecommunications system.

process itself will be time-consuming . Because of the government-togovernment nature of the WTO process, companies must first convince their own
governments to champion their case. If the United States accepts a case, it will need to prove

that a foreign regulatory agency finding on an interconnection ruling, for example, is inconsistent with the law and

Even if the U.S. wins its case, the firm may gain little . If the
foreign government is unable or unwilling to change the offending practice, the
U nited S tates may choose to retaliate under the WTO by taking away benefits in an area
spirit of the WTO agreement.

unrelated to telecommunications,

leaving the original dispute unresolved.

1NC No OG Precedent
Plan wont set a precedent for regulation doesnt address
classification issues means that restrictions can still in place.
McKinnon, former Head of Trade in Services at the United Kingdoms Department
for Trade and Industry, 2013 Malcom, mobilizing Business for trade in services
file:///C:/Users/UK%20Debate/Downloads/H-OEDPublic
%20InformationPublications2013%20books.pdf
An important and complex WTO dispute settlement case under the GATS, known as the United
States Gambling case (see also chapter 6, box 22), touched on this issue, albeit briefly .
The case concerned a dispute over United States restrictions on online gambling services. The WTO
Dispute Panel noted that the WTO Council for Trade in Services had reported
a particular difficulty in making a distinction between supply under Modes 1 and 2. Neither
the WTO Panel nor the subsequent Appellate Body report carried out an
analysis as this distinction was not at issue in the dispute .4 The
distinction therefore remains blurred.

From a business perspective, it may not seem to matter

it does matter if
trade restrictions apply to one mode and not another. In the case of
insurance services, it also matters to business if the law applicable to the
contract is different depending on the mode of supply . The important point is that
the trade rules are not always clear-cut, but it is in the interest of business
to have the rules made as clear and simple as possible. In the case of Internet-based
much after all, trade continues regardless of how other people try to classify it. But

services, business has argued for making market access conditions under both modes of supply the same.

2NC No OG Precedent
GATS was drafted before internet innovations cant be
utilized because its inconsistent and uncertain.
Knapp, J.D., Cum Laude, Northwestern University School of Law, 2010 Kristen,
Internet Filtering: The Ineffectiveness of WTO Remedies and the Availability of
Alternative Tort Remedies http://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1689&context=jitpl

The GATS Agreement, specifically Articles XIV and XVI in combination with an individual country's
Schedule of market access commitments, provides the basic legal text governing
commitments applicable to the Internet and e-commerce. When the WTO
Agreements were drafted there was no Internet as we know it today. Thus none
of the WTOs legal instruments, including

the

GATS

Agreement

were drafted

with the Internet in mind. As a result, it is quite challenging to stretch these

agreements to cover the Internet , while ensuring they are interpreted in a
consistent and meaningful fashion. The U.S.-Gambling Services case was
the first, and remains the only case, to attempt to apply the GATS
Agreement rules in the context of an Internet service. As a result,
predicting how the GATS Agreement will be interpreted to apply to
Internet filtering cases is challenging . Such interpretation raises questions of
whether products delivered via the Internet should be classified as goods
or services. If classified as services, what Mode (method of supplying the service) the service falls within must
also be determined as it has the potential to affect the national law governing the transaction. While the
U.S.-Gambling Services decision clarified many of these points, areas of
uncertainty remain.

The ruling wont be repeated isolated instance and doesnt

apply to US filtering
Knapp, J.D., Cum Laude, Northwestern University School of Law, 2010 Kristen,
Internet Filtering: The Ineffectiveness of WTO Remedies and the Availability of
Alternative Tort Remedies http://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1689&context=jitpl
This paper addresses two possible legal responses to the rise of Internet filtering. First, the paper argues that

U.S.

Internet filtering practices generally do not violate U.S. GATS

commitments . Rather, the WTO's decision in U.S.-Gambling Services was
unique and unlikely to be repeated because (1) the U.S. is predominately
an exporter of electronic services and not an importer, and (2) the U.S.Gambling Services decision resulted from a denial of market access . Instead,
those seeking to impose legal liability for U.S. filtering practices should pursue tort remedies, specifically for
tortious interference in contractual relations.

LEADS CP
LEADS Act fails- laundry list
Greg Nojeim, 14, Senior Counsel and Director of the Freedom, Security, and

Technology Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, LEADS Act Extends
Important Privacy Protections, Raises Concerns, https://cdt.org/blog/leads-actextends-important-privacy-protections-raises-concerns/
Also, we have to consider how foreign governments will react. Some adverse
consequences would be mitigated because the LEADS Act would make it clear that data stored in the U.S. could be disclosed only

Even if foreign governments copied the LEADS Acts

extraterritorial assertion of authority over data regarding their own
citizens, those governments could not unilaterally force U.S. companies to
disclose data stored in the U.S. ECPA already protects that data and requires compliance with the MLAT
process, and the LEADS Act enhances that protection. However, all stakeholders need to think
carefully about how the LEADS Act would affect the global balance of
privacy versus government power with respect to data U.S. providers
store outside the U.S. for account holders who are not Americans. There is also a
risk that the LEADS Act will increase the pressure for data localization
mandates. The bill includes language that puts the Senate on record as opposing data localization, but it may
not be enough. Finally, it is not clear how the bill would apply to providers who
move data to different data centers around the globe in order to balance
the burden on their network and better serve their users. If a loadbalancing provider stores a users data at one moment in India, the next
in the U.K., and the next in the U.S., will the U.S. warrant reach the data
because the data at some point comes to the U.S.?
with a warrant.

NCPAA CP

2AC
CP fails- doesnt stop agencies from imposing separate
requirements
Susan B. Cassidy,7/10, partner of the National Law Review and a member of the
Government Contracts Practice Group, Competing Bills Focus on Cybersecurity
Information Sharing But Final Language and Ultimate Passage Remain Unknown,
http://www.natlawreview.com/article/competing-bills-focus-cybersecurityinformation-sharing-final-language-and-ultimate-

Information sharing under these bills is intended as a voluntary process. All three bills contain an anti-tasking restriction, which
prevents the federal government from requiring private entities to share information about cybersecurity threats. The bills also
prohibit the government from conditioning the award of the contract on the provision of information about cyber threat indicators by

bills contain a clause protecting from any liability

connected to choosing not to share information pursuant to the bills .
Presumably, however, this does not prevent agencies, such as DOD and
the Intelligence Community from imposing separate reporting
requirements on a regulatory and contractual basis as currently exists for
certain defense related information. Nor do these bills appear to alter
existing voluntary information sharing relationships such as the Defense
Industrial Base voluntary sharing initiative.
the offeror. Furthermore, all three

CP doesnt close backdoors- means even if it increases

surveillance- hackers can still shutdown our critical
infrastructure
CP cant solve- info sharing in SQ but attacks still happened
Greg Nojeim, 2015, Senior Counsel and Director of the Freedom, Security, and

Technology Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, Cybersecurity

Information Sharing Bills Fall Short on Privacy Protections,https://cdt.org/blog/ecpareform-takes-a-giant-leap-forward/
https://cdt.org/insight/cybersecurity-information-sharing-bills-fall-short-on-privacyprotections/
Major cyber attacks represent an ongoing hazard to the financial and
commercial sectors, with potential to harm both important institutions and individual online users. 2014 saw major
attacks against companies such as Target, J.P. Morgan Chase, Home Depot, and Sony Pictures. In addition to direct harms which are

However, it is
unclear that the information sharing legislation would have stopped any of
these attacks. For example, the Target attack seemed to result from bad security practices, and most
successful attacks can be stopped by basic security measures , such as frequently
substantial these large scale and highly publicized attacks threaten to chill use of online services.

changing passwords, patching servers, detecting insider attacks, and educating employees about risks. Moreover, an influential

professionals have written that

they do not need any new legal authority to share information that helps
them protect their systems against attacks, and have come out in
opposition to the pending bills. Privacy groups have also registered their
opposition. Moreover, current law provides substantial authority to
communications service providers to monitor their own networks and to
share communications that traverse them for cybersecurity reasons. Under the
Wiretap Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, they can intercept, use, and disclose
group of technologists, academics, and computer and network security

communications content and metadata in order to protect their own rights

and property. However, they cannot intercept, use, nor disclose
communications to protect others. A narrow exception may be needed to fill this narrow gap. However,
the approach the bills take is not narrow. The bills operate by authorizing
companies to monitor information systems (or conduct network awareness) for
cybersecurity threats or for cybersecurity risks or incidents.
Information that qualifies as a cyber threat indicator can be shared with
the federal government or among private entities. The indicators are
defined using broad, functional language, rather than technical language, because of concerns that
technical language would become outdated quickly. To compensate, partially, for the breadth of the information that can be shared,
the bills impose some restrictions on the use of cyber-threat indicators and some obligations to strip out personal information before

All of this
conduct monitoring, information sharing, and countermeasures is
authorized notwithstanding any law, so if an existing privacy or security
law would prohibit a particular action, it wouldnt matter. Monitoring and
information sharing conduct is given strong liability protection, but
countermeasures because they can harm others are not given specific
liability protection. Proponents of the legislation argue that it is needed to respond to and prevent cyber attacks.
they are shared. The bills also authorize countermeasures against cybersecurity threats, risks, or incidents.

AT: Neolib (Perm)

Permutation do the aff and all non mutually exclusive parts of
the alternative
The Perm solves best the AFF is a prereq to any social
movement reducing internet surveillance is key to any
grassroots movement
Geraud de Ville 11/29/13 (PhD researcher on on indigenous issues, ICTs and
development at The Open University. Megaphone for social movements:
campaigning in the surveillance state http://www.theguardian.com/globaldevelopment-professionals-network/2013/nov/29/surveillance-online-campaigningtips BP
From the Arab revolutions to indigenous-led campaigns and, more
recently, the spontaneous social movements that burst in Turkey and
Brazil over the last three years, the internet seems to have turned into a
megaphone for social movements. The networked nature of web 2.0 applications, in
particular social media, and the explosion of users worldwide provide
citizens and activists with unprecedented tools to communicate their
ideas, mobilise supporters and take action outside established
hierarchical power structures . Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have become
privileged fields of action for professional campaigners as well as
grassroots movements. With their built-in feature allowing many-to-many communication, social media
have revolutionised the way information is produced and shared: everyone is encouraged to participate, share
opinions, pictures and videos on issues they care about or witness and instantly upload them from their smartphone
on the Internet. Institutions and individuals that represent public authority are now under constant citizen scrutiny.
They know that any abuse, any mistake can spark online retaliation and take proportions that may be hard to

Many activists and academics see in digital networks a new source of

power that will eventually force the ruling elite around the world to
become more transparent, more accountable and protect human rights
and democracy. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a technological fix to a complex problem and, the
control.

solution itself has quite a few downsides. Indeed, while digital technologies have helped the success of social and
revolutionary movements, they also tremendously enhance the effectiveness of state surveillance. Due to the

governments are tempted to use digital

networks to control populations by monitoring communications, blocking access
supervision they exert on the physical infrastructure,

of certain users or even tracking and imprisoning dissidents, e.g. in China and Iran. Recent revelations by the

the surveillance system set up by the US National Security Agency

(NSA) and its British counterpart: the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have shown
that this is not an exclusive feature of authoritarian or non-democratic
regimes. The surveillance system deployed by these two western powers uses every single means at hand,
Guardian on

from tapping online communications and phone calls, to extorting user data from private companies such as
Google, Apple and Microsoft, and to archiving billions of bits of personal information into secret data centres, all in
the name of security. Let's be clear on one thing: it is still preferable to be a political dissident in the USA than it is
to be in a country like China. But the level of surveillance achieved by democratic governments, in clear violation of
their own constitutional provisions, privacy rules and without public debate is a matter of real concern. Similarly,
the pressure exerted against whistleblowers and journalists who stand up against it, is unsettling. Admittedly, these
practices seem more characteristic of those of Beijing or Tehran than those of Washington, DC or London. It would
be wrong to assume that digital technologies have some kind of built-in effect that will necessarily result in a more

technologies
are only as good as the use we make of them. As citizens and activists, we
must recognise this and act accordingly. Good practices include: Know what you publicise.
transparent and democratic society. History tells us that such assumptions are inaccurate;

There are no secrets on the internet. All digital information is accessible for those who really want it. Educate
yourself. Some organisations such as Mozilla, the Electronic Frontier Foundation or the Tactical Technology Collective
are working hard to keep the Internet open and secure for ordinary citizens and human rights activists. They
provide a lot of tools and information on how the Internet technology works and what it entails for our freedoms.
Encrypt, encrypt, encrypt. Get used to GPG software to encrypt and sign your data and communications. Support
anonymity and privacy online. Install the Onion Router for surfing the web and prefer search engines that protect
your privacy, e.g. Duck Duck Go. Be critical of official information channels and mainstream media when they try
to justify the maintenance of uncontrolled state surveillance to protect us from criminal behaviour .

Creeping
surveillance is not solely a threat to privacy; it has consequences on
human dignity, freedom of expression and information and freedom of
association. For these reasons, state surveillance practices need to be
framed by the adoption of a regulatory framework that is flexible enough
to respond to a fast-evolving sector and strong enough to keep us secure
from abuses . Over the past year, 300 organisations have come together to support the International
Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communication Surveillance. Today, citizens and
activists have an opportunity to join this global movement by endorsing
the Necessary and Proportionate Principles, and stand for the protection
of human rights in the information society. What are we waiting for?

AT: Ptx links

Plan Popular
ECPA popular- has bipartisan support in both the House and
Senate
Katie McAuliffe, 15, federal affairs manager and executive director of Digital

Liberty at Americans for Tax Reform, A bipartisan fix for our email privacy laws,
3/4/15, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865623379/A-bipartisan-fix-for-ouremail-privacy-laws.html?pg=all
In this era of gridlock, protecting our right to keep private the things we communicate and store online is one of the

Legislation to reform
ECPA, sponsored in the Senate by Sens. Mike Lee and Pat Leahy, and in the House by Reps. Kevin Yoder and
Jared Polis, could pass both chambers with overwhelming majorities . Their
reforms defy the usual partisan divisions and enjoy widespread support
from Republicans and Democrats, conservatives, moderates and
progressives, business and labor, former prosecutors and civil libertarians.
Even the White House has made encouraging statements about the need for reform. ECPA reform has
more than 240 co-sponsors in the House and 15 in the Senate. Congress
has a rare opportunity for a bipartisan accomplishment that would have a
profound impact on the prosperity and liberty of the American people . It
few issues that seems to unite people of all political leanings and interests.

should seize it as soon as possible.

Internet balkanization hurts economy- makes politicians urge

for reform
Derrick Harris, 13, Senior writer at Gigaom, In a cloud computing economy, the
NSA is bad for business, https://gigaom.com/2013/06/11/in-a-cloud-computingeconomy-the-nsa-is-bad-for-business/
Already, it appears Europeans are searching for ways to withdraw from
American service providers. Users in other arts of the world might, or
should, be even more hesitant to use American services . And even if some
Americans say theyre not creeped out by the government collecting their phone
records (and, presumably, the rest of their digital communications), many are. Its
hard to say how intensely the tech lobby will step up its privacy efforts in
light of the NSA scandal, but its hard to imagine it will stay quiet if its
constituents see potential users bailing on their services. And whats bad
for corporations in this situation is probably bad for the economy. A bad
economy is bad for politicians always looking toward the next election. It
seems crazy to think the NSA will willingly give up its surveillance powers
or that a court could come to a decision on this issue any time soon, but
some members of Congress could be swayed to act. In a debate between
privacy and the economy on one hand and national security on the other, youd
think something will have to give.