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posted by on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the name-rank-and-serial-number dept.

Microsoft's President Brad Smith is calling for a Digital Geneva Convention:

Microsoft is calling for a Digital Geneva Convention, as global tensions over digital attacks continue to rise. The tech giant wants to see civilian use of the internet protected as part of an international set of accords, Brad Smith, the company's president and chief legal officer, said in a blog post.

The manifesto, published alongside his keynote address at the RSA conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, argued for codifying recent international norms around cyberwarfare and for establishing an independent agency to respond to and analyze cyberattacks.

From the blog post:

Just as the Fourth Geneva Convention has long protected civilians in times of war, we now need a Digital Geneva Convention that will commit governments to protecting civilians from nation-state attacks in times of peace. And just as the Fourth Geneva Convention recognized that the protection of civilians required the active involvement of the Red Cross, protection against nation-state cyberattacks requires the active assistance of technology companies. The tech sector plays a unique role as the internet's first responders, and we therefore should commit ourselves to collective action that will make the internet a safer place, affirming a role as a neutral Digital Switzerland that assists customers everywhere and retains the world's trust.

Also at The Seattle Times and USA Today.


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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Justin Case on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:25PM

    by Justin Case (4239) on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:25PM (#467436) Journal

    I have an idea. Let's establish an international precedent that "I was just doing my job" is not an admissible excuse for creating crappy software.

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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:41PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:41PM (#467443) Journal

    By "crappy software", it is unclear whether you mean:

    1. Software for hacking, penetration, espionage, and cyber warfare.

    or

    2. Microsoft products. (Based on the context of the article)

    or something else?

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Justin Case on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:45PM

      by Justin Case (4239) on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:45PM (#467447) Journal

      Software is a tool. What you do with it is on you.

      By crappy software I meant software that is badly designed, sloppily coded, or deliberately malicious toward the user. If you choose to infer that MS creates a lot of that, I can't argue.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by q.kontinuum on Wednesday February 15 2017, @10:25PM

        by q.kontinuum (532) on Wednesday February 15 2017, @10:25PM (#467627) Journal

        Actually, computer ethics is a field where it is attempted to develop ethical rules for system administrators, software developers and related professions. I think it is justified to expect from professionals zo think about the consequences of their developments.

        --
        Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
      • (Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday February 16 2017, @04:49AM

        by anubi (2828) on Thursday February 16 2017, @04:49AM (#467718) Journal

        Vapors coming back home to roost?

        He who smelt it dealt it. [wiktionary.org]

        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
      • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Thursday February 16 2017, @12:04PM

        by Wootery (2341) on Thursday February 16 2017, @12:04PM (#467757)

        Software is a tool. What you do with it is on you.

        Morally speaking, that's hardly the whole story.

        Not all software-development is morally neutral. Neither are all arms-sales.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @12:39PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @12:39PM (#467763)

        "Software is a tool. What you do with it is on you.

        By crappy software I meant software that is badly designed, sloppily coded, or deliberately malicious toward the user. If you choose to infer that MS creates a lot of that, I can't argue."

        Don't forget hardware...

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:04PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:04PM (#467452)

    Most software is created by teams of people, not lone coders. Teams of people require management, both to coordinate their actions, and to decide on what to do. Individual developers at a company have no real freedom to decide what to code, or how to do it. One module can be excellent, but if the overall architecture is crap, the product is going to be crap, and the individual developer who wrote the good module isn't to blame, it's the software architect. In other cases, there's not nearly enough time allocated, and that's clearly the fault of management, leading to products rushed out the door far too early.

    Ultimately, the responsibility for crappy software lies with management, at all layers in a company.

    Worse, at least 99% of software out there is "crappy", so it's not like punishing individual developers is going to improve things.

    • (Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:34PM

      by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:34PM (#467471)

      Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob) advocates for a professional association that can discipline coders "just following orders".
      VW [8thlight.com]

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 15 2017, @08:52PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday February 15 2017, @08:52PM (#467593)

        "Uncle Bob" is an idiot. He's trying to make software engineering out to be a profession akin to doctors. We're not. Get over it: we are NOT like doctors. We do not have the same level of responsibility, nor do we have the same levels of education or pay. Most importantly, we do not have the same level of autonomy. Doctors basically work for themselves. So do many other "professionals" that Uncle Bob and people like him compare software engineers to. Those civil engineers who are liable for their bridge designs? They're not low-level monkey workers at some MegaCorp, they're very high-level people at professional engineering firms, and they're licensed by the state as Professional Engineers. They really do answer to a higher authority. We do not. We are nothing more than low-level grunts, who happen to make a pretty good living these days because of the newness of the industry. We follow orders, or we get fired; it's that simple. We don't get vindication if we blow the whistle; this has been seen over and over again throughout our society: whistleblowers end up never working in their industry again, and become pariahs, while their bosses go scot-free and continue running their businesses badly until someone dies, and even then nothing happens except maybe a lawsuit.

        So spare me the "professional" BS. We are not doctors, and we're not Professional Engineers. We have no more responsibility for our actions, unless it's plainly obvious someone will get killed (and emissions don't count here, otherwise engineers who work at lawn equipment makers should all be going to prison, as typical 2-cycle lawn equipment is FAR more polluting than any VW diesel engine), than some salesman who sells crappy products.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:30PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:30PM (#467467)

    I'm not disagreeing. However that seems pretty off topic.

    People love to argue about stuff that doesn't matter, but in a general sense the whole point of the Geneva Convention was to make war more humane. So no bayoneting prisoner, no medical experiments on prisoners, no torture, no intentionally attacking medics or wounded or hospitals although war being hell accidents will happen, etc. So these guys going on and on about Geneva Conventions this and that imply to me we'll put all the hospitals and nuclear power plants and delicious targets in general into maybe one big /8 of ip space and have a gentlemans agreement that national governments won't attack hospital networks but go ahead wipe every server facebook has or whatever. The problem is most internet attacks are like nuts and gangs and what amounts to pirates, so this is pretty useless. Hey all you people currently causing trouble, we put all the delicate high value stuff over here so we'd really appreciate it if you'd be nice and oh shit you just DDOSed the nuclear missile launch system resulting in an auto-launch, you bastards...

    They also have the weird idea that tech companies are first responders and somehow responsible, which is pretty much like saying bicyclists who get run over by cars driven by illegal immigrants being pursued by police on the streets should work a little harder at treating their resulting medical problems because after all they are the first people on the scene of a car-bike accident and if they were smart enough to bicycle in plate mail at least some damage would be negated oh and by the way everyone else washes their hands of responsibility so I hope you got good medical coverage because the ER is gonna be expensive.

    Finally the concept of a digital neutral Switzerland sounds weird as hell, did he post that on 4chan or IRC? Or he means swiss as in their legendary (now faded into legend) banking system in which case he means bitcoin should be centralized and controlled (by you know who to the sole advantage of you know who) or maybe he's just an idiot and is thinking of digital Switzerland as in chocolate and swiss army knives. In which case I think an e-store for selling chocolates is less important than a nuclear power plant SCADA system, and we already have a swiss army knife of the internet its called Perl, although some call it a swiss army chainsaw. Switzerland isn't neutral anyway, they are soundly on the establishment side and love getting involved in economic wars, they just don't have much of a military and their terrain is crap place to live, kinda like NYC in many ways if you think about it.

    What I'm sayin is you're talking about what you'd like to see in international relations and I can't disagree much. But they're talking (mostly out of their ass, comedically) about what they would want to see in international internet relations and much as it relates to, well, everything else, what the 1% want is usually not all that nice for the 99%.

  • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday February 15 2017, @07:13PM

    by krishnoid (1156) on Wednesday February 15 2017, @07:13PM (#467543)

    Legitimate question -- that's what a 'professional engineer' certification is, right?