Cyber Law

Not long ago, I was reading about a high school in Oklahoma that was teaching kids computer skills so they could one day be 'good guy hackers' working for law enforcement, government, or even the military in our future cyber warfare command. Obviously, we need to start them when they are young, so they can be integrated into this technology as it evolves. Those that have learned computer programming skills in the past, may find themselves not up to speed in the present. Okay so let's talk about this shall we?

The other day, I was contacted by an individual working with a group of pre-military cadet students at the high school level also. They were learning all the skills necessary for cyber warfare, and they were in a town which was surrounded by military bases, therefore many of those kids might eventually end up in our military. These are good skills for good jobs and there will be an ever-increasing demand for them. Interestingly enough, this time we seem to be copying China because China is doing same thing in their schools.

In fact, China seems to be ahead of us when it comes to cyber-hackers. Perhaps that's because it is cool to be a cyber-hacker in China, which would account for all their patriot hackers, which the Chinese Communist Government claims that it does not approve of, but it certainly does nothing to stop, unless of course those same cyber-hackers try to disrupt the Chinese government.

Now then, there is a flip side to this, something that's quite challenging, and I'd like to discuss that with you. You see, just like Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid had explained; it isn't right for a master to teach fighting skills to someone who will abuse them. It takes a special person with the right level of integrity, someone that is a little more grown-up to not abuse this privilege. If we are teaching cyber warfare skills to high school students, allowing them to learn how to disrupt governments, companies, IT systems, cloud computing facilities, social networks, or hack into e-mail, twitter accounts, or Skype today, what are they going to try to hack into tomorrow.

Indeed, I hope they are offering ethics classes with all this, because there is a fine line between black, red, and white hat hackers in my observations and experience. It is my sincere hope that you will please consider all this at a philosophical level, along with all the ethical issues involved.