Bill would give hackers letters of marque against US enemies (www.theregister.com)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by ExtremeDullard@sopuli.xyz to c/politics@lemmy.world

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The United States, stepping boldly into the 19th century...

What a contrast between the glorious race to the moon in the 60's, and medicine by leeches under RFK Jr's HHS and congresscritters wanting to bring back privateering in 2025... The Roman empire took centuries to collapse, and it only took the US 50 years. Quite stunning.

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[-] Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works 4 points 9 months ago

I can't say that I'm against this, if used appropriately (which of course Trump won't). For example against entities their respective juristictions do nothing against, like North Korean hackers or Russian bot farms. It's no secret that Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, to name a few, are actively directing hacker groups.

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

It is a bad idea. The problem is that counter-hacks don't work.

Any somewhat decent hacker knows the secret of backups and botnets. They don't attack using their own PCs but some random grandma's hacked bot PC. So when you counter-hack them, you just nuke random useless bot PCs, which doesn't harm the hacker at all. And if you manage to hack their own infrastructure, they just wipe it and upload the backup.

So what's more likely to happen under a scheme like this is that the US hacker will likely just hack russian infrastructure or companies, so doing the same thing we hate about russia.

Also, stuff like that tends to decrease security for everyone.

[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 1 points 9 months ago

US hacker will likely just hack russian infrastructure or companies, so doing the same thing we hate about russia.

I mean that's not a bad thing with the war in Ukraine unfolding.

[-] ExtremeDullard@sopuli.xyz 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

First of all, there are better ways to deal with anything than privateering. There's a reason why all countries in the world have abandoned it.

Secondly, everybody is operating under the assumption that cybercrime is something that happens and there's no way around it. I contend that if software vendors were penally responsible for vulnerabilities in their software, you'd see a dramatic reduction in hacks very, very quickly.

As in, if a piece of software is exploited, the engineers who worked on it, their managers and the CEO of their company had better come up with extensive documentation proving how they did their best to implement security before releasing the unfortunate piece of code, else one or all of that bunch gets to spend time in the slammer.

If this was implemented into law, I guarantee you software would become very secure across the board in no time flat.

But of course, in the age of tech monopolies and generalized corruption, it will never happen.

[-] okwhateverdude@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

My god, exactly this. Instead of AI slop features being slammed into every nook and cranny, we'd see software release rate slow to a crawl. Features would take way longer to produce and that would be a good thing. Software engineering licensing should also be a thing, just like with other engineering disciplines. Imagine if your building or bridge were treated like a typical software product. God damn terrifying. It is time for this discipline to grow up.

[-] Quokka@quokk.au 4 points 9 months ago

And software like Lemmy and PieFed would become nonexistent because they can’t afford to meet the regulatory capture.

This would be disastrous for us as users of software and would only benefit the big companies.

[-] Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

That's what I'm thinking as well. I'm sure you know the attached meme, modern software would collapse, if FOSS software had to be certified like that.

[-] okwhateverdude@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

As if we wouldn't have a voice/vote to prevent that regulatory capture? And as if social software in particular wouldn't be reshaped to avoid those regulations? So much of the world runs on FOSS already. It would be a monumental shift in the landscape and I sincerely doubt corpos would be successful in that regulatory capture without shooting themselves in the face. They need FOSS to be profitable.

[-] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 9 months ago

Most European powers banned letters of marquee in the 19th century, but the US never signed it because we didn't have the navy to compete with them otherwise. That's not true anymore.

It's technically still in the Constitution as something Congress is allowed to do. Every once in a while, a right wing Congress critter thinks that because Congress is allowed to, then therefore, it should. No thought as to why.

[-] ruuster13@lemmy.zip 2 points 9 months ago

The mistake we made was thinking they want to return to the 1950s.

this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025

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