Case Neg – Backdoors – CT
Notes
This aff doesn’t link to anything, go for the K.
T-domestic: tech companies may be from foreign countries
Probably does not link to politics
The secure data act come up for vote this year and was very popular across party lines
Terror DA
The FBI/NSA maintains that backdoors are important to solve terrorism, but no one agrees.
It is worth making this argument as a cyber-terror turn on that advantage.
Backdoors Aff Brief explanation
Advantage 1 – Econ
I/L 1: Consumer distrust – backdoors create consumer distrust for the tech companies (including
foreign) reducing their business profit, these businesses are key to the economy
I/L 2: Data localization – Somehow backdoors cause data localization, which the warrants of the
card doesn’t explain. Data localization causes protectionism that limits businesses’ trade.
Slowdown of growth = extinction.
I/L 3: IP Theft – Government mandated backdoors cause cyber-espionage, attacks, and
intellectual property theft, theft wreaks econ and innovation and tech
I/L 4: Vulnerability – Basically i/l explanation of a cyberattack
I/L 5: Internet Governance – NSA surveillance increases internet partitioning which leads to
decreased U.S internet credibility
Advantage 2 – Cloud Computing
Backdoors hurt the cloud industry and tech leadership, cloud key to climate adaptation, no
adaptation = extinction, tech leadership key to heg, no heg = great power wars
Advantage 3 – Privacy
Backdoors disrupt privacy
Advantage 4 – Cyberterror
Only a couple cards in the file. This program (CAREA) that the plan repeals creates insecurities
in the grid that are bad. May have other impacts but as of now are not in the file.
Advantage 5 – Internet Freedom
Removing backdoors sends an international signal that the US is committed to its internet
freedom agenda. The impact in the starter pack is authoritarianism, but there is none in the
backdoors aff.
Advantage 6 – Rights
Rights is technically advantage 6 but it does not exist.
Go. Fight. Win.
Duncan (talk to for adv 4-6) and Angelo (talk to for adv 1-3)
T
T Domestic
Interpretation:
Domestic surveillance is surveillance done on US persons in US territory
Jordan 6 DAVID ALAN JORDAN, LL.M., New York University School of Law (2006); J.D., cum
laude, Washington and Lee University School of Law (2003). Member of the District of Columbia Bar.
Boston College Law Review May, 2006 47 B.C. L. Rev 505 ARTICLE: DECRYPTING THE
FOURTH AMENDMENT: WARRANTLESS NSA SURVEILLANCE AND THE ENHANCED
EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY PROVIDED BY ENCRYPTED VOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL
lexis
n100 See FISA, 50 U.S.C. § 1801(f). Section 1801(f) of FISA defines four types of conduct that
are considered "electronic surveillance" under FISA. Signals collection operations that
target U.S. persons outside the United States do not fit within any of these four
definitions. The first three definitions require the targeted individual to be located inside
of the United States to be considered "electronic surveillance." The fourth definition
applies only to the use of surveillance devices within the United States. Therefore, the NSA's
signals monitoring stations in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are not
regulated by FISA. U.S. personnel located at these foreign stations presumably may monitor U.S.
persons who are outside the United States, and that conduct technically would not be considered
electronic surveillance under FISA's definitions. This highlights the fact that FISA was meant to
govern only domestic surveillance taking place within U.S. borders. Although such efforts
would not fall under FISA's definition of "electronic surveillance," USSID 18's minimization
procedures still would apply and offer some protection to the rights of U.S. persons abroad. See
generally USSID 18, supra note 13.
The NSA can collect data from backdoors on foreign companies
Mathis-Lilley 14 (Ben editor for Slatest 6/12/14“NSA Reportedly Intercepts, Bugs, Repackages
Network Equipment Being Sold Abroad”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/05/12/nsa_router_bugging_glenn_greenwald.html)
An excerpt of investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald's new book No Place to
Hide published today in The Guardian asserts that the National Security Agency
"routinely" bugs computer network equipment made in the United States and
sent to customers abroad:¶ A June 2010 report from the head of the NSA's
Access and Target Development department is shockingly explicit. The NSA
routinely receives – or intercepts – routers, servers, and other computer
network devices being exported from the US before they are delivered to the
international customers.¶ The agency then implants backdoor surveillance
tools, repackages the devices with a factory seal, and sends them on. The NSA
thus gains access to entire networks and all their users. The document gleefully
observes that some "SIGINT tradecraft … is very hands-on (literally!)".
2 Violations:
1. The NSA surveils foreign people in and out of United States territory
2. The plan eliminates the use of backdoors—that means that applies to the
NSA’s usage of backdoors in countries not located in the US
Standards:
1. Limits: They make the domestic limit meaningless. All surveillance becomes
topical by their standards which gives them access to a huge number of
international impacts that aren’t feasible under the resolution.
2. Ground: We lose core negative arguments like circumvention which are core
neg ground because the aff could just argue foreign countries don’t have the
ability to circumvent.
3. The aff is extra T, the aff gets rid of backdoors in foreign airports
D. T IS A VOTER for fairness and education
T Curtail Surveillance
A. Interpretation
The topic requires the affirmative to reduce surveillance itself, not to just limit
the methods of surveillance
1. CURTAIL MEANS DECREASE
Burton's 7 Burton's Legal Thesaurus, 4E. Copyright © 2007 by William C. Burton. Used with
permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. http://legaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/curtail
curtail verb abate, abbreviate, abridge, clip, coartare, cut, cut down, cut short, decrease, diminish,
halt, lessen, lop, make smaller, minuere, pare, pare down, retrench, shorten, subtract, trim See also:
abate, abridge, allay, arrest, attenuate, bowdlerize, commute, condense, decrease, diminish, discount,
lessen, minimize, palliate, reduce, restrain, retrench, stop
2. SURVEILLANCE IS PROCESS OF GATHERING INFORMATION, AS
DISTINGUISHED FROM THE TECHNIQUES OF GATHERING
Webster's New World Law 10 Webster's New World Law Dictionary Copyright © 2010
by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons,
Inc. http://www.yourdictionary.com/surveillance
surveillance - Legal Definition n
A legal investigative process entailing a close observing or listening to a person in effort
to gather evidentiary information about the commission of a crime, or lesser improper
behavior (as with surveillance of wayward spouse in domestic relations proceedings). Wiretapping,
eavesdropping, shadowing, tailing, and electronic observation are all examples of this
law-enforcement technique.
B. Violation
Getting rid of backdoors gets rid of a technique for surveillance, but not the
process itself. Nothing under the plan stops gathering information in other
ways
C. Standards
1. Limits are necessary for negative preparation and clash, and their
interpretation makes the topic too big. Permitting limits on methods of
surveillance, but not surveillance itself, permits the affirmative to avoid the
issues of less surveillance and forces the negative to debate a huge number of
different techniques
Constitution Committee 9 Constitution Committee, House of Lords, Parliament, UK 2009,
Session 2008-09 Publications on the internet, Constitution Committee - Second Report, Surveillance:
Citizens and the State Chapter 2
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldselect/ldconst/18/1804.htm
18. The term "surveillance" is used in different ways. A literal definition of surveillance as "watching
over" indicates monitoring the behaviour of persons, objects, or systems. However surveillance is not
only a visual process which involves looking at people and things. Surveillance can be undertaken
in a wide range of ways involving a variety of technologies. The instruments of
surveillance include closed-circuit television (CCTV), the interception of
telecommunications ("wiretapping"), covert activities by human agents, heat-seeking and
other sensing devices, body scans, technology for tracking movement, and many others.
2. Ground—only getting rid of surveillance mechanisms allows the aff to spike
out all Ks, CPs and disads that are predicated on a reduction of surveillance.
That takes away almost all negative ground
3. Effects T - At best the aff is effects T because getting rid of a method of
surveillance might lead to a decrease of surveillance in the future but not
directly
D. T IS A VOTER for fairness and education
Cybersecurity Adv CP
1NC
Text: The United States federal government should implement
regulation to ensure that companies comply with the Cybersecurity
Framework
Enforcement of the Cybersecurity Framework is key to allow communication
and pracices that builds cyber resilience
De Looper 1/21 (Christian, writes for Tech Times, “Feds Need to Do More than Talk to Boost
Cybersecurity,” Tech Times, 1/21/2015,
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/27970/20150121/obama-talks-cyber-security-sotu-addresstalk.htm)//duncan
"The first step in strengthening the U.S. cybersecurity initiative is to ensure that all
businesses that store sensitive information have taken the necessary precautions in securing
their networks,"
Kevin Watson, CEO of VendorSafe Technologies, tells Tech Times. " The most
effective method
would be to provide a framework that imposes an appropriate level of regulation on
noncompliant companies."¶ Enterprises big and small are proving to be extremely vulnerable
and last year's hacks and data break-ins are expected to increase this year.¶ While Obama's intentions
are certainly good, many aren't supporting some of his administration's initial solutions and
strategies, such as enforcing a federal mandate that companies disclose hacks and data
breaches within 30 days of discovering a hack.¶ "[The government should not] provide
immunity through hastened communications of breaches...doing so could lead to confusion
and fear to the consumer if the details and implications for the breach are not fully known,"
Steve Lowing, director of product development at Promisec, tells Tech Times.¶ "Clear and accurate communications
is something that should happen, but this comes about through following an incidentresponse plan," Lowing advises. "So rather than putting a time limit of [within] 30 days of breach
to communicate that a company has been hacked, the government could mandate that every
institution should have an incident-response plan that is followed when they are hacked."
2NC - Solvency
The Framework resolves cyber security – but it’s voluntary
Gross 13 (Grant, technology and telecom policy for The IDG News Service, “NIST tells
businesses how to boost cybersecurity,” Computer World, 10/22/2013,
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2486468/security0/nist-tells-businesses-how-to-boostcybersecurity.html)//duncan
Businesses that want to improve their cybersecurity posture can take a number of steps,
including conducting a risk assessment and prioritizing ways to address gaps in their security , a
U.S. agency said in recommendations released Tuesday.¶ The U.S. National Institute of Standards and
Technology's Preliminary Cybersecurity Framework calls on businesses to assess their current
cybersecurity practices and aim for a higher level of sophistication in defending against
cyberattacks.¶ Compliance with the framework is voluntary for U.S. businesses , and many of the
ideas in the document are drawn from existing best practices. But most businesses should be able to improve
their cybersecurity efforts by adopting some of the recommendations, said NIST Director Patrick Gallagher.¶ "There is
absolutely no question that cyberthreats are increasing to critical infrastructure businesses and, indeed, the entire business
community clearly needs strong, tested ways to officially protect their data and their assets,"
Gallagher said during a press briefing. "We believe cybersecurity is good business."¶ The framework can help
businesses that work together to hold each other accountable, help businesses "gauge the
maturity" of their cybersecurity efforts and help them set security goals , he said. The
framework should help businesses improve both their security and their "bottom line,"
Gallagher said.¶ "What the framework does not do is provide threat-proofing," Gallagher said. "There is not
a magic bullet here. This is not about eliminating cyber-risk. The framework is about managing [risks]
effectively."¶ Many of the recommendations may seem nonspecific in nature in an effort to
keep them flexible enough for adoption by a variety of businesses, but the document
references a number of standards from NIST, the I nternational S ociety of A utomation, the International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) and other organizations, Gallagher noted. Those standards cover "almost every
aspect of information security management," he said.¶ "The real objective here was not to add something brand new, but it was
designed to provide something that was useable, adaptable and scalable," he said.¶ U.S. President Barack Obama
directed
NIST to create the set of voluntary cybersecurity standards in the framework in an executive
order released in February. The NIST guidelines released Tuesday are an update to a document released last August, and the
agency is scheduled to release an official version of the framework next February.¶ The framework includes
recommendations for the steps businesses should take to implement a cybersecurity program
or improve an existing one. The document also defines four tiers of cybersecurity readiness ,
with the lowest tier defined as a business with risk management practices that are "not formalized."¶ In the lowest tier,
"risk is managed in an ad hoc and sometimes reactive manner," the framework said.
"Prioritization of cybersecurity activities may not be directly informed by organizational risk
objectives, the threat environment, or business/mission requirements."¶ At the other end of the
cybersecurity spectrum, businesses with adaptive cybersecurity practices base their efforts on "lessons learned and predictive
indicators derived from previous cybersecurity activities," the framework said. "Through a process of continuous improvement, the
organization actively adapts to a changing cybersecurity landscape."¶ More
than 3,000 people have engaged with
NIST during the creation of the framework, Gallagher said. NIST will host a workshop on the framework Nov. 14
and 15 at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, and Gallagher expects the framework to evolve even after the official release
next February.
Adoption of the Cybersecurity Framework is key to resolve threats
Daniel 14 (Michael, Special Assistant to the President and the Cybersecurity Coordinator,
“Launch of the Cybersecurity Framework -- What’s Next?” Whitehouse.gov, 2/18/2014,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/02/18/launch-cybersecurity-framework-what-snext)//duncan
Twelve months ago, the President laid out an exceptional challenge for the federal government: to develop a framework of best
practices and standards to help the critical infrastructure sector improve its cybersecurity, while protecting privacy and civil liberties,
based on the thinking of the best minds in industry, academia, and advocacy groups.¶ Twelve months may seem like a long time, but
for an issue as complex as cybersecurity that touches, well, everybody, this was an extraordinary goal. But there was no question
that we had to rise to this challenge, because near-term
action was critical to shoring up our collective
defenses against increasing cyber-based threats to our critical infrastructure, our economy, our personal information, and indeed
the way we operate on the internet every day. And we have had continued reminders of the urgent need to increase our cyber
protections over the course of the past year, as news reports of data breaches and denial of service attacks have become more
frequent.¶ Well, I’m proud to say that we – collectively – have done it. After a year-long sprint, the Department of Commerce’s
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published
the finalized version of the first Framework
for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity on February 12. And we are seeing very positive responses
just a week after the release. Businesses, state government, advocacy groups, and even foreign partners have come out to support
the Framework and recognize the importance of this initial step on the road to improved cybersecurity. Companies have begun to
use the framework to aid in communication with their Boards and C-suites and have told us that it can provide a valuable tool to
communicate security requirements with their supply chain. And we are gratified that others are enthusiastic as well.¶ I’m not going
to go into too many details of what’s in the Framework; you can read about that on NIST’s website and you can read about our
program to support voluntary adoption on DHS’s website. And of course, you can read the President’s statement about the
Cybersecurity Framework, and the White House press release to find out more.¶ Instead, what I want to emphasize here are four
key points:¶ The
Framework is exactly that – a framework. It provides a common language and
systematic methodology for managing cyber risk. It does not tell a company how much cyber
risk is tolerable, nor does it claim to provide “the one and only” formula for cybersecurity. No
single document could try to do that and be useful across all 16 critical infrastructure sectors, all sizes and types of organizations,
and all in operating environments. But we
should not underestimate the power of a common lexicon to
enable action across a very diverse set of stakeholders. That’s what will enable the best
practices of elite companies to become the standard practices for everyone.¶ The Framework
is a first step. Although we have released the first version, we expect more in the future as our cybersecurity improves. The
Framework is intended to be a living document that the stakeholder community updates over time as we learn from
implementation, and as technology and risks change. That’s another reason why the Framework focuses on the questions an
organization needs to ask to manage its cyber risk. The practices, technology, and standards will change over time – the questions
won’t.¶ We
are encouraging voluntary adoption of the Framework. The Framework is a flexible,
highly adaptable document, and its adoption will be market-driven. As a nation, we need to improve cyber
protections across the broadest set of stakeholders possible to achieve the collective benefit
of security for all. The fastest way to do this is through relentlessly encouraging, helping and,
where possible, incentivizing , voluntary adoption.¶ This is a strong public-private partnership.
Cyber is a team sport, and we need everyone on the field playing their part. In fact, no single
organization or sector or group can solve these challenges. The open and collaborative process that we used
to develop the Framework represents a good, repeatable process for developing public policy
on complex, pervasive technical issues.¶
As with all things involving security, we will never be “done” working to
make improvements. But there are some key next steps where DHS and NIST need your help:¶ We need you to kick the tires. We
need organizations to begin using the Framework and see how well it can work for different
sizes and types of organizations.
CSF is key to solve collaboration and build resilience
Sann 14 (Wallace, CTO for Forescout, former Communications Electronics Chief in the United
States Marine Corps, B.S. in Information Assurance from the University of Maryland University
College, “Solving for 4 of 5 NIST Cybersecurity Framework Core Elements,” Fore Scout,
2/20/2014, http://www.forescout.com/solving-for-4-of-5-nist-cybersecurity-framework-coreelements/)//duncan
It’s been a year since the Executive Order (EO) 13636, “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity,” was issued on
Feb. 12, 2013, and I’m happy to say it has finally arrived. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released the
Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 1.0 on February 12, 2014 along with the associated NIST Roadmap for Improving Critical
Infrastructure Cybersecurity.¶ Whether
you believe the NIST CSF will truly “enhance the security and
resilience of the Nation’s critical infrastructure…” (EO 13636) or not, there is something to be said
about the ongoing discussion and collaboration within the public and private sectors.
This
national conversation makes it a great time to be a part of a company that develops its technology from the ground up with
continuous monitoring (CM) and a solid cybersecurity framework in mind. As an information security practitioner, I am sure you are
also following along with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Continuous Diagnostic & Mitigation (CDM) initiative that is
very similar in nature but rather more technical than the NIST CSF.¶ The NIST CSF 1.0 and DHS CDM
efforts are great for
instituting best practices and solving for the basic “low hanging fruit” issues, but what about solving
for the more advance problems such as lack of visibility, collaboration, automation and control? Frameworks are helpful
and best practices are a must, but there are plenty of studies and evidence that proves the bad guys are exploiting the
security “gaps” and “dependencies” of our best practices and frameworks. The key to today’s layered security
approach is instituting technologies designed to catch the outliers and close the gaps in a way
that has minimal dependencies while fostering interoperability and information sharing.
2NC - Politics NB
The framework is bipartisan and backed by business interests
Power News 13 (From Power Magazine, Business and Technology for the Global Generation
Industry, “Industry-Backed Bipartisan Cybersecurity Bill Passes Senate Committee,” Power Mag,
08/01/2013, http://www.powermag.com/industry-backed-bipartisan-cybersecurity-bill-passessenate-committee/)//duncan
The Senate Committee
on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Tuesday unanimously
approved a
bipartisan bill that bolsters efforts by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to craft a
cybersecurity framework.¶ The Cybersecurity Act of 2013 (S. 1353) introduced last week by Committee Chair Jay
Rockefeller IV (D-W.V.) and Ranking Member John Thune (R-S.D.) would give NIST authority to facilitate and
support the development of voluntary, industry-led cyber standards and best practices for
critical infrastructure. The bill would also ensure that the federal government supports cutting-edge research, raises public
awareness of cyber risks, and improves the nation’s workforce to better address cyber threats.¶ The committee adopted five
amendments to the bill during Tuesday’s markup, including one that requires the Government Accountability Office to gauge NIST’s
progress every two years and another that would establish research centers for cybersecurity.¶
A bipartisan
cybersecurity bill was twice blocked by filibuster in the Senate last year, even though sponsors
watered down the legislation to make minimum security standards voluntary. The
2013 version is backed by
industry .¶ The Electric Edison Institute (EEI), an association that represents all investor-owned electric
companies in the nation, applauded the committee’s passage of the bill on Tuesday. EEI President Tom
Kuhn said the bill acknowledged "important roles of industry and government to secure cyber assets, and respects the existing
mandatory and enforceable cybersecurity standards that currently govern the electric and nuclear sectors." The bill passed on
Tuesday also builds on existing regulatory structures and leverages progress being made under the Improving Critical Infrastructure
Cybersecurity Executive Order, Kuhn noted.¶ President
Obama in February signed that executive order
after Congress failed to pass cybersecurity legislation. The order directs federal agencies to use their existing
authorities to provide better cybersecurity for the nation through increased collaboration with the private sector. As well as
requiring federal agencies to produce unclassified reports of threats to U.S. companies and requiring the reports to be shared in a
timely manner, the
order directs NIST, in collaboration with industry, to lead the development of a
framework of cybersecurity practices to reduce cyber risks to critical infrastructure. The framework is due in October.
Politics and Terror Links
Both
Obama hates plan/Backdoors stop terrorists
Will Oremus, Slate's senior technology writer, 01-19-15
“Obama Wants Tech Companies to Install Backdoors for Government Spying” Online:
“http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/01/19/obama_wants_backdoors_in_encrypte
d_messaging_to_allow_government_spying.html”
Last week, British Prime Minister David Cameron incensed the Internet by proposing to ban secure messaging applications, like
WhatsApp and Snapchat, unless they install backdoors to allow government spying. Plenty of other services, including Apple’s
iMessage and FaceTime, might also run afoul of such a law, the Independent pointed out. Cameron’s call for mandatory backdoors
offended online privacy advocates, but it couldn’t have shocked them. This is the same leader who ignored censorship cries and
installed porn filters on the country’s Internet services, with some rather predictable unintended consequences. In a press
conference with Cameron on Friday, however, President
Obama agreed with his British counterpart that
the absence of backdoors is “a problem.” As reported by The Hill, he said: Social media and
the Internet is the primary way in which these terrorist organizations are communicating.
That’s not different from anybody else, but they’re good at it. And when we have the ability to
track that in a way that is legal, conforms with due process, rule of law and presents oversight,
then that’s a capability that we have to preserve. More specifically, he added, according to the
Wall Street Journal: If we find evidence of a terrorist plot … and despite having a phone
number, despite having a social media address or email address, we can’t penetrate that,
that’s a problem. Obama stopped short of joining Cameron in an explicit call for legislation that would ban services that don’t
build in a way for the government to spy on their users. Instead he said: The laws that might have been designed
for the traditional wiretap have to be updated. How we do that needs to be debated both
here in the United States and in the U.K. On its face, it’s not absurd that the government
should have a way to intercept electronic communications in rare cases to stop suspected
terrorists. As the Economist points out in an editorial supporting backdoors, “every previous form of communication—from the
conversation to the letter to the phone—has been open to some form of eavesdropping.” On the other hand, privacy and security
experts argue that backdoors are bound to be exploited for nefarious purposes. That could happen through government abuse of its
surveillance powers. Or the backdoors might inadvertently make it easier for nongovernment hackers to compromise people’s
privacy. “There’s no back door that only lets good guys go through it,” Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow argues. As Brian Duggan
explained in Slate in 2013: Creating a back door in software is like creating a lock to which multiple people hold the keys. The more
people who have a key, the higher the likelihood that one will get lost. Legislation like what Cameron has proposed would
undermine encryption at just the time when the tech industry is beginning to embrace it. In September, Apple and Google
announced plans to strengthen encryption of data stored on smartphones that use their operating systems. The move was cheered
by a public shaken by the recent iCloud celebrity photo hack. But it was harshly criticized by FBI director James Comey. Now, in the
wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, it seems Obama is in Comey’s camp. The
president says he understands
the need to balance security with privacy. The problem is that, as we’ve seen with the
Snowden leaks, the government officials, intelligence officers, and contractors entrusted with
finding that balance tend to be far more concerned with one than the other.
Links
Obama hates data localization
Grant Gross, covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for the IDG News
Service, and is based in Washington, D.C., 12-17-14
“Obama pushes for net neutrality, opposes data localization in trade pact” Online:
“http://www.computerworld.com/article/2860746/obama-pushes-for-net-neutrality-opposesdata-localization-in-trade-pact.html”
President Barack Obama's administration is pushing two potentially controversial Internet
policies in a secretive trade pact, with trade negotiators calling for other countries to adopt
net neutrality provisions while rejecting policies requiring local storage of data in a secretive 50country trade pact now being negotiated. A leaked U.S. proposal from April would prohibit countries
signing on to the Trade in Services Agreement [TISA] to reject policies requiring that data held
by Internet companies and other service suppliers be held within a member country's borders.
A handful of nations have moved to require their own residents' data to be stored within their own borders in response to recent
revelations about widespread U.S. National Security Agency surveillance. Microsoft building Windows revenue takes another bad
beating Microsoft's Windows revenue again declined by double digits, the third straight such quarter, with READ NOW The
U.S.
proposal would also require member countries to give consumers some net neutrality
protections, by allowing them to access the Web services and applications of their choice,
subject to "reasonable network management." The Obama administration's push for tech policy items in the secretly negotiated
TISA raises questions about transparency and public involvement in the democratic process, said Public Citizen, a government
watchdog group. "This leak reveals a dangerous trend where policies unrelated to trade are being diplomatically legislated through
closed-door international 'trade' negotiations to which industry interests have privileged access while the public and policy experts
promoting consumer interests are shut out," Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, said in a statement.
"Given the raging domestic debate over net neutrality, the growing demands for more data privacy and the constantly changing
technology, a pact negotiated in secret that is not subject to changes absent consensus of all signatories seems like a very bad place
to be setting U.S. Internet governance policies," Wallach added. TISA, being negotiated in Geneva, Switzerland, would cover 50
countries, representing 70 percent of the world's trade in services. Participants include the U.S., European Union, Australia, Canada,
Taiwan, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Hong Kong and South Korea. The trade deal may be signed as early as next year. The
U.S.
proposal on net neutrality could be controversial because it would fall short of calls by Obama
and some advocates for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to reclassify broadband as a regulated public utility. The net
neutrality provisions reflect an FCC policy statement dating back to 2005. Advocates of strong net neutrality rules in the U.S.
protested when Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed new regulations earlier this year that would
have allowed "commercially reasonable" network management. Reasonable network management would allow Internet slow lanes,
some advocates have said. The trade pact's net neutrality provision would also allow residents of member countries to connect the
devices of their choosing to the Internet and to have access to information about ISP network management practices. A spokesman
for the Office of U.S. Trade Representative didn't immediately return a message seeking comment on the leaked text, posted on the
website of Associated Whistleblowing Press, a nonprofit group focused on publishing leaked documents.
Obama will use his PC to fight the plan
Christi Parsons, White House correspondent since 2008. She has covered three presidential
elections and previously wrote about Illinois politics for the Chicago Tribune. She is a native of
Alabama and holds degrees from the University of Alabama and Yale Law School, 05-26-15
“Obama urges Senate to work to preserve NSA access to phone data” Online:
“http://www.latimes.com/local/la-na-obama-senate-nsa-data-20150526-story.html”
President Obama urged the Senate on Tuesday to work during its recess to renew the
government’s authority to track terrorists through phone data before it expires at midnight Sunday. Obama
urged the chamber’s Republican leaders to pass a House-approved measure that would let the
National Security Agency retain access to the phone records, but with changes that end the more controversial
practice of bulk data collection by the government. “This needs to get done,” Obama told reporters in the
Oval Office. “I strongly urge the Senate to work through this recess and make sure that they
identify a way to get this done,” he added, calling it “necessary to keep the American people
safe and secure.” The Senate rejected two bills last week that would have continued the program, including the one passed
by the House and backed by the White House to renew but limit the government’s access to phone data. As lawmakers left the
Capitol for their week-long Memorial Day break, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned that the Senate “better be
ready next Sunday afternoon to prevent the country from being endangered by the total expiration of the program.” Sen. Rand Paul
of Kentucky, a Republican who has long opposed the NSA program and used procedural moves last week to keep senators from
reaching a deal to extend it, said Tuesday that the phone data collection is itself a breach of the 4th Amendment’s protection against
unreasonable searches. “The abuse of the 4th Amendment is the actual bulk collection of records; there’s the potential for abuse,”
he said, warning against a possible chilling effect on the right to dissent. But in preparation for the possibility that the powers will
expire altogether, the NSA began shutting down over the weekend its program for tracking terrorists in the U.S. through phone
records. The
program gives the government access to records that show the number dialed, duration, date and
government searches the information for connections to
the phone numbers of known terrorists or terrorism suspects. Last year the government conducted an
time for most telephone calls made in the U.S. The
estimated 300 searches as part of the program. Intelligence officials warn that if Congress doesn’t come up with a partial renewal,
there will be a significant gap in the data that goes uncollected but might be needed in future searches. Obama
said the
House measure would be effective. “The House of Representatives did its work and came up with what they’ve called
the USA Freedom Act, which strikes an appropriate balance,” Obama said. “Our intelligence communities are confident that they can
work with the authorities that are provided in that act.”
Solvency
The Aff can’t undo the overwhelming perception of US surveillance
Fontaine 14 (President of the Center for a New American Security)
(Richard, Bringing Liberty Online: Reenergizing the Internet Freedom Agenda in a Post-Snowden Era,
SEPTEMBER 2014, Center for New American Security)
Such moves are destined to have only a modest effect on foreign reactions. U.S.
surveillance will inevitably continue under any reasonably likely scenario (indeed, despite
the expressions of outrage, not a single country has said that it would cease its surveillance
activities). Many of the demands – such as for greater transparency – will not be met, simply
due to the clandestine nature of electronic espionage. Any limits on surveillance that a
govern- ment might announce will not be publicly verifiable and thus perhaps not fully
credible. Nor will there be an international “no-spying” convention to reassure foreign citizens
that their communications are unmonitored. As it has for centuries, state- sponsored espionage
activities are likely to remain accepted international practice, unconstrained by international
law. The one major possible shift in policy following the Snowden affair – a stop to the bulk
collection of telecommunications metadata in the United States – will not constrain the activity most disturbing to foreigners; that is, America’s surveillance of them. At the same
time, U.S. offi- cials are highly unlikely to articulate a global “right to privacy” (as have the U.N.
High Commissioner for Human Rights and some foreign officials), akin to that derived from the
U.S. Constitution’s fourth amendment, that would permit foreigners to sue in U.S. courts to
enforce such a right.39 The Obama administration’s January 2014 presidential directive on
signals intelligence refers, notably, to the “legiti- mate privacy interests” of all persons,
regardless of nationality, and not to a privacy “right.”40
Loopholes
EFF, 14
(Electronic Freedom Foundation, “Security Backdoors are Bad News—But Some Lawmakers Are
Taking Action to Close Them,” 12-9-14, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/securitybackdoors-are-bad-news-some-lawmakers-are-taking-action-close-them, BC)
The legislation isn’t comprehensive, of course. As some have pointed out, it only prohibits agencies from
requiring a company to build a backdoor. The NSA can still do its best to convince companies
to do so voluntarily. And sometimes, the NSA’s “best convincing” is a $10 million contract
with a security firm like RSA.∂ The legislation also doesn’t change the C ommunications
A ssistance for L aw E nforcement Act (CALEA.) CALEA, passed in 1994, is a law that forced telephone
companies to redesign their network architectures to make it easier for law enforcement to wiretap
telephone calls. In 2006, the D.C. Circuit upheld the FCC's reinterpretation of CALEA to also include facilities-based broadband
Internet access and VoIP service, although it doesn't apply to cell phone manufacturers.
Advantage 1 – Econ
1NC – Economy Frontline
The numbers in parentheses represent the internal link each arg is answering.
Cybervulnerability is on the other advantage
No impact—statistics prove
Drezner 12 – Daniel is a professor in the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts. (“The Irony
of
Global
Economic
Governance:
The
System
Worked”,
October
2012,
http://www.globaleconomicgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/IR-Colloquium-MT12-Week-5_The-Ironyof-Global-Economic-Governance.pdf)
The final outcome addresses a dog that hasn’t barked: the effect of the Great Recession on
cross-border conflict and violence. During the initial stages of the crisis, multiple analysts asserted
that the financial crisis would lead states to increase their use of force as a tool for staying in
power.37 Whether through greater internal repression, diversionary wars, arms races, or a
ratcheting up of great power conflict, there were genuine concerns that the global economic downturn
would lead to an increase in conflict. Violence in the Middle East, border disputes in the South China Sea,
and even the disruptions of the Occupy movement fuel impressions of surge in global public disorder. ¶ The
aggregate data suggests otherwise, however. The Institute for Economics and Peace has
constructed a “Global Peace Index” annually since 2007. A key conclusion they draw from the 2012 report
is that “The average level of peacefulness in 2012 is approximately the same as it was in
2007.”38 Interstate violence in particular has declined since the start of the financial crisis –
as have military expenditures in most sampled countries. Other studies confirm that the Great
Recession has not triggered any increase in violent conflict; the secular decline in violence
that started with the end of the Cold War has not been reversed.39 Rogers Brubaker concludes, “the crisis
has not to date generated the surge in protectionist nationalism or ethnic exclusion that might
have been expected.”40¶ None of these data suggest that the global economy is operating swimmingly.
Growth remains unbalanced and fragile, and has clearly slowed in 2012. Transnational capital flows remain
depressed compared to pre-crisis levels, primarily due to a drying up of cross-border interbank lending in
Europe. Currency volatility remains an ongoing concern. Compared to the aftermath of other postwar
recessions, growth in output, investment, and employment in the developed world have all lagged behind.
But the Great Recession is not like other postwar recessions in either scope or kind; expecting a standard
“V”-shaped recovery was unreasonable. One financial analyst characterized the post-2008 global economy
as in a state of “contained depression.”41 The key word is “contained,” however. Given the severity,
reach and depth of the 2008 financial crisis, the proper comparison is with Great
Depression. And by that standard, the outcome variables look impressive. As Carmen
Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff concluded in This Time is Different: “that its macroeconomic outcome has
been only the most severe global recession since World War II – and not even worse – must be regarded as
fortunate.”42
Backdoors 1 thing.
(1) Won’t flee – path dependence
Kehl et al 14 (Danielle Kehl is a Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI).
Kevin Bankston is the Policy Director at OTI, Robyn Greene is a Policy Counsel at OTI, and Robert
Morgus is a Research Associate at OTI)
(New America’s Open Technology Institute Policy Paper, Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the
Economy, Internet Freedom & Cybersecurity, July 2014)
Outside of the cloud computing industry, it is still too early to tell which of these shifts may be
temporary and which will have a more lasting impact. Despite an interest in finding alternatives, foreign companies and governments are also discovering the challenges of
avoiding U.S. businesses altogether—either because of path dependence, because
switching costs are too high, or because there simply are not enough alternative
providers in certain markets that offer comparable products at the same prices.77 This is
particularly true for large government deals and enterprise solutions, markets that
many American businesses dominate, because of the amount of time, money, and
effort it would take to move away from U.S. companies. Some have cynically argued
that the biggest “winners” in the long run will be Chinese companies like Huawei, which are
also vulnerable to state eavesdrop- ping but may be cheaper than the American alternatives.78
(1) Alt cause - Foreign backdoors create international consumer
distrust
Trevor 1AC Timm 15, Trevor Timm is a Guardian US columnist and executive director of
the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non-profit that supports and defends journalism
dedicated to transparency and accountability. 3-4-2015, "Building backdoors into
encryption isn't only bad for China, Mr President," Guardian,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/04/backdoors-encryption-chinaapple-google-nsa)//GV
Want to know why forcing tech companies to build backdoors into encryption is a terrible idea? Look no further than President
Obama’s stark criticism of China’s plan to do exactly that on Tuesday. If only he would tell the FBI and NSA the same thing. In a
stunningly short-sighted move, the FBI - and more recently the NSA - have been pushing for a new US law that would force tech
companies like Apple and Google to hand over the encryption keys or build backdoors into their products and tools so the
government would always have access to our communications. It was only a matter of time before other governments jumped on
the bandwagon, and China wasted no time
in demanding the same from tech companies a
few weeks ago. As President Obama himself described to Reuters, China has proposed an expansive new
“anti-terrorism” bill that “would essentially force all foreign companies, including US
companies, to turn over to the Chinese government mechanisms where they can
snoop and keep track of all the users of those services.” Obama continued: “Those kinds of restrictive
practices I think would ironically hurt the Chinese economy over the long term because I don’t think there is any US or European
firm, any international firm, that could credibly get away with that wholesale turning over of data, personal data, over to a
government.” Bravo! Of course these are the exact arguments for why it would be a disaster for US government to force tech
companies to do the same. (Somehow Obama left that part out.) As Yahoo’s top security executive Alex Stamos told NSA director
Mike Rogers in a public confrontation last week, building backdoors into encryption is like “drilling a hole into a windshield.” Even if
it’s technically possible to produce the flaw - and we, for some reason, trust the US government never to abuse it - other countries
will inevitably demand access for themselves. Companies will no longer be in a position to say no, and even if they did, intelligence
services would find the backdoor unilaterally - or just steal the keys outright. For an example on how this works, look no further than
last week’s Snowden revelation that the UK’s intelligence service and the NSA stole the encryption keys for millions of Sim cards
used by many of the world’s most popular cell phone providers. It’s happened many times before too. Security expert Bruce
Schneier has documented with numerous examples, “Back-door access built for the good guys is routinely used by the bad guys.”
Stamos repeatedly (and commendably) pushed the NSA director for an answer on what happens when China or Russia also demand
backdoors from tech companies, but Rogers didn’t have an answer prepared at all. He just kept repeating “I think we can work
through this”. As Stamos insinuated, maybe Rogers should ask his own staff why we actually can’t work through this, because
virtually every technologist agrees backdoors just cannot be secure in practice. (If you want to further understand the details behind
the encryption vs. backdoor debate and how what the NSA director is asking for is quite literally impossible, read this excellent piece
by surveillance expert Julian Sanchez.) It’s downright bizarre that the US government has been warning of the grave cybersecurity
risks the country faces while, at the very same time, arguing that we should pass a law that would weaken cybersecurity and put
every single citizen at more risk of having their private information stolen by criminals, foreign governments, and our own. Forcing
backdoors will also be disastrous for the US economy as it would be for China’s. US tech companies - which already have suffered
billions of dollars of losses overseas because of consumer distrust over their relationships with the NSA - would lose all credibility
with users around the world if the FBI and NSA succeed with their plan. The White House is supposedly coming out with an official
policy on encryption sometime this month, according to the New York Times – but the President can save himself a lot of time and
just apply his comments about China to the US government. If he knows backdoors in encryption are bad for cybersecurity, privacy,
and the economy, why is there even a debate?
(2) Surveillance is a drop in the bucket – too many reasons why countries want
data localization
Business Roundtable 12 (group of chief executive officers of major U.S. corporations formed to
promote pro-business public policy)
(Promoting Economic Growth through Smart Global Information Technology Policy The Growing Threat
of
Local
Data
Server
Requirements,
http://businessroundtable.org/sites/default/files/Global_IT_Policy_Paper_final.pdf)
Several justifications have been offered for imposing local data server requirements. In some
cases, local data server requirements are viewed as necessary to advance national industrial
policy and support national service providers. In other cases, the stated justification is to
ensure that regulatory, law enforcement or national security personnel can access data
residing on the servers. In still other cases, governments assert that they are protecting personal
privacy or restricting access to banned or unlawful content. Although some of these various
objectives may be legitimate if they are narrowly tailored to address the genuine harm, the blanket
imposition of local data server requirements can unnecessarily damage service providers and consumers
alike and slow economic growth. To avoid such disruption, governments should seek to narrowly tailor
their regulatory requirements to meet essential needs and should avoid ill-advised, blanket local data server
requirements. Governments should also ensure that their reviews, if any, of the national security
implications of foreign investments focus exclusively on genuine national security risks.
(3) IP has no effect on innovation
Pollock 8 (Rufus, Associate of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the
University of Cambridge, held the Mead Research Fellowship in economics at Emmanuel
College, Cambridge, “Innovation And Imitation With And Without Intellectual Property Rights,”
University of Cambridge, 1/2008, pg. 2, pdf)//duncan
Repeated surveys, such as Levin et al. (1987), Mansfield (1985), Cohen, Nelson, and Walsh (2000), and Arundel (2001),
show that firms appropriate returns from innovation using a variety of methods including
secrecy, lead time, marketing and sales, learning curve advantages and patents. Furthermore, they
also suggest that for most industries (with a few notable exceptions) patent protection is of low
importance.
As Hall (2003) summarizes (p. 9): ‘In
both the U nited S tates and Europe, firms rate superior
sales and service, lead time, and secrecy as far more important than patents in securing the
returns to innovation. Patents are usually reported to be important primarily for blocking and defensive purposes.’
(5) Internet Governance and NSA surveillance are inevitable and impossible to
detach – aff can’t solve the i/l
MILTON MUELLER, editor of the internet governance project, 02-19-14
“DO THE NSA REVELATIONS HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH INTERNET GOVERNANCE?” Online:
“http://www.internetgovernance.org/2014/02/19/do-the-nsa-revelations-have-anything-to-dowith-internet-governance/”
IG and the NSA revelations. So it’s not surprising that the revelations sent ripples through the
world of Internet governance. Although there seemed to be no direct connection between the
controversies, the native internet institutions – already worried about their alleged competition
with the ITU – seem to have felt as if they might be tarred with the NSA brush.. On October 7,
2013, we got the Montevideo statement. In it, the ICANN President, all 5 RIR Directors, the IAB
Chair, the IETF Chair, the Internet Society President, and the W3C Chief Executive Officer made
two key points: They expressed strong concern over the undermining of the trust and
confidence of Internet users globally due to recent revelations of pervasive monitoring and
surveillance. They called for accelerating the globalization of ICANN and IANA functions,
towards an environment in which all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on an
equal footing. Only a few days later, the President of ICANN met with the President of Brazil.
This led directly to President Rousseff’s call for a Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future
of Internet Governance, April 23-24, 2013. As Ben Wagner and I have noted in another paper,
the Brazil meeting represents a political realignment of sorts in the Internet governance space.
Brazil, once an advocate of an intergovernmental model, is promoting a multistakeholder
approach to moving forward. ICANN, a private corporation tied to the US government, is
engaging in private diplomacy on its own and promising states that they can achieve an “equal
footing” in global governance of the Internet. The Brazil meeting presents us with an
opportunity to make progress on de-nationalization of IANA, and with an opportunity to reach
some kind of an accommodation between advocates of a state-sovereignty model and the
multistakeholder model (MSM – enhanced cooperation at last?). It is also clear that the US
government is willing to play along with this process as long as it stays within the confines of the
MSM. But in an interesting twist, we have been told that surveillance has been ruled out as a
topic at the meeting. New sovereignty? Let’s turn now to the more fundamental issue at stake,
regarding the nature of the state. Philip Bobbitt has written at the right level of analysis. He has
already written off the traditional nation-state as all but dead and proclaims the existence of a
new kind of state, the market state, and a new kind of sovereignty, which he calls transparent
sovereignty. The old form of sovereignty, opaque sovereignty, renders each state as an
autonomous individual in the international system, with equal rights to all other states. What
happens inside one state is none of the business of any other state. According to Bobbitt, the
growing interdependence of the world kills the old concept of opaque sovereignty. Terrorism,
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), global environmental issues and
human rights violations in failed states requires pre-emptive interventions by the leading
market states. These new kinds of security threats obliterate the distinction between external
and internal threats, and make old security concepts like deterrence and retaliation obsolete.
“If you can’t retaliate against a target, you can’t deter, and then you have to move to
something like pre-emption,” he claims. But pre-emption – of terrorism, WMD proliferation
and use – requires comprehensive surveillance and information sharing among the big market
states. And so, according to Bobbitt, the US and the European Union should form a new G2,
committed to a post-Westphalian notion of sovereignty, yet assuring that their interventions are
governed by a new instrument of international law. Miriam Dunn-Cavelty (2008) offers similar
insights into the new threat model as it applies more specifically to cybersecurity. She notes that
“the introduction of numerous non-state enemies as threat subjects dissolves the distinction
between internal and external threats. The threatened system was broadened from government
networks and computers to the entire society.” She concludes: “Thus, the prevailing threat
frame is very vague, both in terms of what or who is seen as the threat, and of what or who is
being seen as threatened.” “Due to their very diffuse nature, these threats defy traditional
security institutions and make it difficult to rely on a counterstrategy based on retaliation.
Further, because the ownership, operation and supply of the critical [information] systems are
largely in the hands of the private sector, the distinction between the private and public spheres
of action is dissolved.” (p. 132) Here again, we see modes of analysis which suggest a need to
ramp up surveillance. Unstated but tacit in this analysis is an interesting and rather scary
polarity: either the information infrastructure becomes militarized or at least fully securitized,
ICTs are regulated as if they were weapons, and we live in a 24/7 national security state; or
unspecified innovations take place in the institutionalized production of security. The NSA’s
methods perfectly exemplify Bobbitt’s argument about transparent sovereignty and change in
the nature of the state, and Dunn-Cavelty’s dissection of the cybersecurity threat frame that has
been emerging since the 1980s. In short, the NSA revelations do intersect with issues of global
governance, not only with respect to privacy and the Internet, but also concerning the nature
of political authority and the geopolitical balance of power. Yet none of the NSA reform
proposals in the US, as far as I know, link the NSA problem to the broader context of the
changing nature of sovereignty or the need for new forms of global governance. They remain
stuck in a simple dichotomy: civil libertarians reassert the classical due process & privacy
protections associated with the democratic nation-state; defenders of NSA claim that the
practical exigencies of the new world conditions require indiscriminate data collection and
pre-emptive action. Likewise, few if any discussions of Internet governance engage with this
problem. They do not explain how global Internet governance might deal with problems such
as the NSA, nor do they forge a conceptual link between Internet governance and strategic
and national security concerns. Indeed, It has become commonplace among those involved in
the Brazil meeting to deny that the Snowden revelations have anything to do with Internet
governance. In some sense this is true: the NSA’s spying capabilities did not rely in any way on
US oversight of ICANN, for example. But in another sense we are deluding ourselves if we think
that the way the global internet is governed can be detached from the game of power politics
among states, and that the openness and freedom of the Internet’s information flows will not
be powerfully affected by other countries, and other citizens’, trust (or lack thereof) of the
world’s biggest and most powerful state. Domestic institutional reform in the US may not be
enough.
The economy is resilient—global economic governance worked
Drezner 12 – Daniel is a professor in the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts. (“The
Irony of Global Economic Governance: The System Worked”, October 2012,
http://www.globaleconomicgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/IR-Colloquium-MT12-Week5_The-Irony-of-Global-Economic-Governance.pdf)
It is equally possible, however, that a renewed crisis would trigger a renewed
surge in policy coordination. As John Ikenberry has observed, “the complex
interdependence that is unleashed in an open and loosely rule-based order generates
some expanding realms of exchange and investment that result in a growing array
of firms, interest groups and other sorts of political stakeholders who seek to preserve
the stability and openness of the system.”103 The post-2008 economic order
has remained open, entrenching these interests even more across the globe.
Despite uncertain times, the open economic system that has been in operation since 1945
does not appear to be closing anytime soon.
4. Reject internet doomsaying – no chance of collapse or a ton of other stuff
would cause it
Bernal 14 (Lecturer in Information Technology, Intellectual Property and Media Law at the University
of East Anglia Law School)
(Paul,
So
who’s
breaking
the
internet
this
time?,
November
http://paulbernal.wordpress.com/2014/11/11/so-whos-breaking-the-internet-this-time/)
11,
2014,
I’m not sure how many times I’ve been told that the internet is under dire threat over the last few years. It
sometimes seems as though there’s an apocalypse just around the corner pretty much all the time.
Something’s going to ‘break’ the internet unless we do something about it right away. These last
few weeks there seem to have been a particularly rich crop of apocalyptic warnings – Obama’s proposal
about net neutrality yesterday being the most recent. The internet as we know it seems as though it’s always
about to end.¶ Net neutrality will destroy us all…¶ If we are to believe the US cable companies, Obama’s proposals
will pretty much break the internet, putting development back 20 years. How many of us remember what the internet was like in
1994? Conversely, many have been saying that if we don’t have net neutrality – and Obama’s proposals are pretty close to what most
people I know would understand by net neutrality – then the cable companies will break the internet. It’s apocalypse one way, and
apocalypse the other: no half measures here.¶ The cable companies are raising the spectre of government control of the net, something
that has been a terror of internet freedom activists for a very long time – in our internet law courses we start by looking at John Perry
Barlow’s 1996 ‘Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’, with its memorable opening:¶ “Governments of the Industrial World,
you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to
leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.” ¶ Another recent incarnation of this terror
the UN, through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
was about to take over the internet, crushing our freedom and ending the Internet as we know it.
has been the formerly much hyped fear that
Anyone with real experience of the way that UN bodies work would have realised this particular apocalypse had
next-to-no chance of every coming into fruition, and last week that must have become clear to most of even the more paranoid of
internet freedom fighters, as the ITU effectively resolved not to even try… Not that apocalypse, at least not now. ¶ More dire warnings
and apocalyptic worries have been circling about the notorious ‘right to be forgotten’ – either in its data protection reform
version or in the Google Spain ruling back in May. The right to be forgotten, we were told, is the biggest threat to freedom of speech
in the coming decade, and will change the internet as we know it. Another thing that’s going to break the internet. And yet, even
The deep,
dark, disturbing web…¶ At times we’re also told that a lack of privacy will break the net – or that privacy
though it’s now effectively in force in one particular way, there’s not much sign that the internet is broken yet… ¶
itself will break the net. Online behavioural advertisers have said that if they’re not allowed to track us, we’ll break the
economic model that sustains the net, so the net itself will break. We need to let ourselves be tracked, profiled and targeted or the net
itself will collapse. The authorities seem to have a similar view – recent pronouncements by Metropolitan Police Commissioner
Bernard Hogan-Howe and new head of GCHQ Robert Hannigan are decidedly apocalyptic, trying to terrify us with the nightmares of
what they seemingly interchangeably call the ‘dark’ web or the ‘deep’ web. Dark or deep, it’s designed to disturb and frighten us –
and warn us that if we keep on using encryption, claiming anonymity or pseudonymity or, in practice, any kind of privacy, we’ll turn
the internet into a paradise only for paedophiles, murderers, terrorists and criminals. It’s the end of the internet as we know it, once
more.¶ And of course there’s the converse view – that mass surveillance and intrusion by the NSA, GCHQ etc, as revealed by Edward
Snowden – is itself destroying the internet as we know it.¶ Money, money, money¶ Mind you, there are also dire threats from other
directions. Internet freedom fighters have fought against things like SOPA, PIPA and ACTA – ways in which the ‘copyright lobby’
sought to gain even more control over the internet. Again, the arguments go both ways. The content industry suggest that uncontrolled
piracy is breaking the net – while those who fought against SOPA etc think that the iron fist of copyright enforcement is doing the
same. And for those that have read Zittrain’s ‘The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It’, it’s something else that’s breaking the
net – ‘appliancization’ and ‘tethering’. To outrageously oversimplify, it’s the iPhone that’s breaking the net, turning it from a place of
freedom and creativity into a place for consumerist sheep.¶ It’s the end of the internet as we know it…..…or as we think we know it.
We all have different visions of the internet, some historical, some pretty much entirely imaginary, mowith elements of history and
elements of wishful thinking. It’s easy to become nostalgic about what we imagine was some golden age, and fearful about the future,
The internet was never a ‘wild west’ – and
even the ‘wild west’ itself was mostly mythical – and ‘freedom of speech’ has never been as
absolute as its most ardent advocates seem to believe. We’ve always had some control and some
without taking a step back and wondering whether we’re really right.
freedom – but the thing about the internet is that, in reality, it’s pretty robust . We, as an internet
community, are stronger and more wilful than some of those who wish to control it might think. Attempts
to rein it in often fail – either they’re opposed or they’re side-stepped, or they’re just absorbed into
the new shape of the internet, because the internet is always changing, and we need to understand that.
The internet as we know it is always ending – and the internet as we don’t know it is always beginning.
2NC – No impact to economic decline
No impact to economic decline – the Great Recession proves no correlation
between decline and violence – that’s Drezner – aggregate data supports our
argument
Economic decline doesn’t cause war.
Jervis 11 [Robert, Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political
Science, and a Member of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia
University. Force in Our Times
Saltzman Working Paper No. 15
July 2011
http://www.siwps.com/news.attachment/saltzmanworkingpaper15-842/SaltzmanWorkingPaper15.PDF]
Even if war is still seen as evil, the security community could be dissolved if severe conflicts of
interest were to arise. Could the more peaceful world generate new interests that would bring
the members of the community into sharp disputes? 45 A zero-sum sense of status would be
one example, perhaps linked to a steep rise in nationalism. More likely would be a worsening
of the current economic difficulties, which could itself produce greater nationalism, undermine
democracy, and bring back old-fashioned beggar-thy-neighbor economic policies. While these
dangers are real, it is hard to believe that the conflicts could be great enough to lead the
members of the community to contemplate fighting each other. It is not so much that economic
interdependence has proceeded to the point where it could not be reversed – states that were
more internally interdependent than anything seen internationally have fought bloody civil wars.
Rather it is that even if the more extreme versions of free trade and economic liberalism become
discredited, it is hard to see how without building on a pre-existing high level of political
conflict leaders and mass opinion would come to believe that their countries could
prosper by impoverishing or even attacking others. Is it possible that problems will not
only become severe, but that people will entertain the thought that they have to be solved by
war? While a pessimist could note that this argument does not appear as outlandish as it did
before the financial crisis, an optimist could reply (correctly, in my view) that the very fact
that we have seen such a sharp economic down-turn without anyone suggesting
that force of arms is the solution shows that even if bad times bring about greater
economic conflict, it will not make war thinkable.
No impact to another recession.
Keystone Research 11 [Main Street Newsletter, “3 Ways the Next Recession Will Be Different”,
http://keystoneresearch.org/media-center/media-coverage/3-ways-next-recession-will-be-different]
All of this has only renewed concerns among analysts and average Americans that the U.S.
would suffer a dreaded double-dip recession, but according to several economists MainStreet
spoke with, even if we do enter into another recession later this year or in early 2012, it
won’t be nearly as damaging as the Great Recession of 2008.“If there is another
recession, I think it wouldn’t be as severe and it would also be shorter,” says Gus
Faucher, senior economist at Moody’s Analytics. “And the reason for that is a lot of the
imbalances that drove the previous recession have been corrected.” As Faucher
and others point out, banks are better capitalized now, the housing market has shed
(however painfully) many delinquent homeowners who signed up forsubprime mortgages
before the recession and U.S. corporations have trimmed their payrolls and are sitting on
ample cash reserves to help weather another storm. At the same time, consumers have
gradually improved their own balance sheets by spending less and paying off more of their debt.
No causal relationship between the economy and war.
Ferguson 6 [Niall, MA, D.Phil., is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and
William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a Senior
Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution,
Stanford University, Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct, “The Next War of the World”]
Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed. What may be the most familiar causal
chain in modern historiography links the Great Depression to the rise of fascism and the
outbreak of World War II. But that simple story leaves too much out. Nazi Germany started
the war in Europe only after its economy had recovered. Not all the countries affected by
the Great Depression were taken over by fascist regimes, nor did all such regimes start wars of
aggression. In fact, no general relationship between economics and conflict is
discernible for the century as a whole. Some wars came after periods of growth, others
were the causes rather than the consequences of economic catastrophe, and some
severe economic crises were not followed by wars.
Comprehensive study proves no relationship.
Miller 2K [Morris, Adjunct Professor at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Administration,
Interdisciplinary Science Review, v 25 n4]
The question may be reformulated. Do wars spring from a popular reaction to a sudden
economic crisis that exacerbates poverty and growing disparities in wealth and incomes?
Perhaps one could argue, as some scholars do, that it is some dramatic event or sequence of such
events leading to the exacerbation of poverty that, in turn, leads to this deplorable denouement.
This exogenous factor might act as a catalyst for a violent reaction on the part of the people or
on the part of the political leadership who would then possibly be tempted to seek a diversion by
finding or, if need be, fabricating an enemy and setting in train the process leading to war.
According to a study under- taken by Minxin Pei and Ariel Adesnik of the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, there would not appear to be any merit in this hypothesis. After
studying ninety-three episodes of economic crisis in twenty-two countries in Latin
America and Asia in the years since the Second World War they concluded that:19
Much of the conventional wisdom about the political impact of economic crises may be
wrong ... The severity of economic crisis – as measured in terms of inflation and
negative growth – bore no relationship to the collapse of regimes ... (or, in
democratic states, rarely) to an outbreak of violence ... In the cases of dictatorships and
semi-democracies, the ruling elites responded to crises by increasing repression
(thereby using one form of violence to abort another).
No war from economic collapse
Barnett ’09
(Thomas P.M. Barnett, Thomas P.M. Barnett is an American military geostrategist and Chief Analyst at
Wikistrat, 24 Aug 2009, “ The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis”,
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/4213/the-new-rules-security-remains-stable-amid-financialcrisis) SRK
When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was
ablaze with all sorts of scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing
conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as
global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets
-- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize
how globalization's first truly worldwide recession has had virtually no impact
whatsoever on the international security landscape. None of the more than three-
dozen ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly attributed to the
global recession. Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in
the Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a year, and three quarters of the
chronic struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity
conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in
2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most
accounts the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most important external trigger
(followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost two-decade long
struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the various databases,
then, we see a most familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies,
and liberation-themed terrorist movements. Besides the recent Russia-Georgia dust-up,
the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are both tied to
one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global
economic trends. And with the United States effectively tied down by its two
ongoing major interventions (Iraq and Afghanistan-bleeding-into-Pakistan), our
involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest, both leading up to
and following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin
America, the usual military exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off
Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious instability we pretty much let it burn,
occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa
Command, for example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising and training local forces. So,
to sum up: *No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the
smattering of urban riots last year in places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); *The usual
frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places); *Not a single state-on-state war
directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); *No great
improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear
powers (despite all that diplomacy); *A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by
the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain); and *No serious
efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst
things we can cite are Moscow's occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western
hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but
the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.)
Sure, we've finally seen global defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late
1980s, but even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this
unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such stimulus
packaging was the most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis. Can we say that the
world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis?
Indeed, no. The world's major economies remain governed by center-left or
center-right political factions that remain decidedly friendly to both markets and
trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate economies from
immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but
there was no great slide into "trade wars." Instead, the World Trade Organization is functioning
as it was designed to function, and regional efforts toward free-trade agreements have not
slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? If it was, that shift
was clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality
displayed by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And looking forward, austere economic
times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting fundamentalism. At
the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke
major economies into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S.
dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty of experts and pundits have
attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and
the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world of globally integrated
production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests" hardly
constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's
fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -- please! Add it all up and it's fair to
say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's
post-World War II international liberal trade order. Do I expect to read any analyses
along those lines in the blogosphere any time soon? Absolutely not. I expect the fantastic fearmongering to proceed apace. That's what the Internet is for.
No link between economic decline or government instability and conflict initiation
Sirin 11 (Cigdem V. Sirin, , University of Texas at El Paso, Department of Political Science, “Is it
cohesion or diversion? Domestic instability and the use of force in international crises,”
International Political Science Review 2011 32: 303, 5/12/11) DOI: 10.1177/0192512110380554
Specifically, when a country suffers from increased mass violence, a leader may
choose to use external force with the anticipation that such foreign policy action
will increase national solidarity and consequently (although indirectly) solve the problem of mass violence.4 By
comparison, an economic downturn or government instability will not
necessarily generate incentives for the cohesionary use of force, since increasing
national solidarity does not typically constitute a possible solution for dealing
with such domestic problems. In sum, exploring the cohesionary incentives of
political leaders and examining mass violence as a causal factor presents a more
plausible route to untangling the relationship between domestic instability and
the use of force
in international crises (see DeRouen and Goldfinch, 2005). These considerations lead to my baseline hypothesis: Hypothesis 1: A country’s likelihood of using external force in an international crisis increases in the presence of an increased level of mass
violence within its borders. There exists a consensus among scholars that external conflict increases internal cohesion and political centralization. That said, most scholars note that the level of cohesion in a group achieved by an external conflict also depends on certain conditions pertaining to the nature of the group and
Downloaded from ips.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on October 5, 2014 308 International Political Science Review 32(3) the nature of the external conflict (see Coser, 1956; Stein, 1976). Among these necessary preconditions (which act as intervening variables), the most important factors that scholars propose are (1)
the presence of a degree of group consensus (solidarity) pre-dating the external conflict, and (2) a given group’s perception of the external conflict as a severe threat. Regarding the nature of the external conflict, Coser (1956) – who sought to systematize and qualify Simmel’s (1955) original in-group/out-group argument –
differentiates between violent and non-violent conflict by arguing that only violent conflict generates a sense of a serious threat to a given group and thereby increases cohesion. Taking into account this qualification, I focus on international crises that involve violent military acts. To capture the role of pre-existing group
solidarity, I take into consideration whether a given country is made up of a heterogeneous society with ethno-religious divisions. Many scholars suggest that civil violence seems to break out more frequently in countries with multiple ethnic, linguistic, or religious groups (e.g. Ellingsen, 2000; Vanhanen, 1999). I expect
that one’s attachment to the nation as a whole (rather than to his or her sub-national ethnic group) is likely to be weaker in a country that is composed of ethnically diverse groups compared with a country that is ethnically more homogenous. This is because sub-national group affiliations in an ethnically plural society may
inhibit the potential for developing strong overall group identity affiliations at the national level. Consequently, given an identity divided between national and ethnoreligious attachments, external conflict is less likely to elicit as much cohesionary power in a plural society as it is in a more homogenous one. In such cases,
the political leader of an ethnically divided country may have less incentives to resort to cohesionary external conflict and may thus choose to deal with ongoing mass violence through other policy means such as the suppression of violent groups or the co-opting of opposition groups (see Bueno de Mesquita, 1980: 361–98;
Richards et al., 1993). On the other hand, I expect that a political leader of a homogenous society has more incentives to engage in external conflict in the presence of increased social unrest. This occurs because the presence of minimum divisions beyond an existing group identity at the national level makes external
conflict a viable venture for increasing cohesion and, therefore, stopping ongoing mass violence. These considerations lead to the following hypothesis on the effect of mass violence, which is conditional upon the level of ethno-religious heterogeneity in a country: Hypothesis 2: Countries with lower levels of ethnoreligious heterogeneity are more likely to use external force in an international crisis in the presence of an increased level of mass violence within their borders. Nevertheless, even in the presence of ethnic and religious divisions in a country, a sense of national identity may persist, especially if the defining characteristics
and membership rules of such national identity go beyond ethno-religious attributes (as in the case of the United States). This brings us to the difference between civic and ethnic nationalism. Civic nationalism concerns one’s membership and loyalty to a state in terms of citizenship, common laws, and political participation
regardless of ethnicity and lineage (Brown, 2000; Ipperciel, 2007). Ethnic nationalism, in contrast, defines an individual’s membership in and loyalty to a nation-state in terms of ethnicity and lineage; hence, individuals belonging to different ethnicities, even if they reside in and are citizens of a state, cannot become part of
the dominant national group (Alter, 1994; Ignatieff, 1993; Smith, 1991). In the case of ethnic nationalism, there already exists a strong sense of cohesion among the dominant group and little interest in extending the cohesion to domestic out-groups (see Shulman, 2002). In such instances, options for dealing with ris ing
mass violence are likely to exclude cohesionary policy acts, since pre-existing ethnic nationalist group solidarity often produces a ‘ceiling Downloaded from ips.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on October 5, 2014 Sirin 309 effect’, which limits the cohesionary influence that the external use of force may have for curbing
mass violence. On the other hand, civic nationalism often fails to be the sole (or at least primary) basis for group identification and falls short of evoking strong emotional attachment to the nation. As Shulman (2002: 580) puts it: most civic components of nationhood are external to the individual, whereas ethnic and
cultural components are internal. Territory, political institutions and rights, and citizenship exist outside the individual, whereas ancestry, race, religion, language, and traditions are a part of a person’s physical and psychological makeup. As a result, the intensity of attachment to communities founded predominantly on the
latter will likely exceed those founded predominantly on the former. When one considers regime type differences from the theoretical framework of cohesionary incentives, democracies are more likely than autocracies to promote a civic (rather than ethnic) nationalist identity (Habermas, 1996; Ipperciel, 2007; Kymlicka,
2001). Under conditions of increased mass violence, therefore, the incentives for democratic leaders to attempt to increase national cohesion through external conflict should be stronger. Accordingly, in terms of regime differences on the cohesionary use of force, I hypothesize that: Hypothesis 3a: Democracies are likely to
use external force in an international crisis in the presence of an increased level of mass violence within their borders. Hypothesis 3b: In contrast to democracies, autocracies are unlikely to use external force in an international crisis in the presence of an increased level of mass violence within their borders. As a separate
note, a dominant perception in the diversionary literature is that different factors of domestic instability are interchangeable with one another such that selecting one of them is a matter of conceptual taste and analytical convenience (but see, e.g., Pickering and Kisangani, 2005; Russett, 1990, 123–40). However, if different
sources of domestic disturbance generate different policy incentives, the measures of domestic problems may not always act as proxies or alternatives to each other. In that sense, it would be better to incorporate these different measures simultaneously in an analytical model to control for and compare their distinctive
impact on the propensity for leaders to use external force. Data and research design For empirical testing of my hypotheses, I employ data from the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project that covers 139 countries from 1918 to 2005. The ICB dataset is unique in the sense that it provides data on international crises and
different forms of domestic problems (i.e. social, economic, and political) for a broad range of countries within a long time span. The ICB project allows one to examine the data on two different levels: actor level and system level. The variables that I use in my analyses are from the actor-level ICB dataset, with the
exception of the variable ‘contiguity’, which I adopt from the system-level dataset. I exclude all the intra-war crises within this period to avoid confounding the results, given that such crises have already escalated to violence and war (see Brecher and Wilkenfeld, 2000; DeRouen and Sprecher, 2004). I employ a monadic
analysis because the theoretical focus of this project centers on whether and how specific sources of instability in a country determine the incentives and utility of that country for using force in international crises. Specifically, I am testing whether particular sources of Downloaded from ips.sagepub.com at Harvard
Libraries on October 5, 2014 310 International Political Science Review 32(3) domestic strife have an independent effect on a state’s international crisis behavior rather than whether certain characteristics of the target state will influence the behavior of that state. Thus, the research question at hand requires a monadic test.
Accordingly, the analytical models used here are not designed to elucidate strategic interactions between crisis actors, such as whether democracies or autocracies tend to use force against states with similar or different political systems in international crises or whether likely targets may strategically avoid violent conflict
with states experiencing domestic instability. I do, however, introduce several control variables into my models to account for certain international environmental characteristics (such as power discrepancy) and crisis-specific factors (such as crisis trigger) that have been shown to affect a state’s likelihood of using force in
an international crisis.5 Dependent variable External use of force. The ICB ‘major response’ variable identifies the specific action a state takes after it perceives a threat from an event or act that triggers a crisis. This variable ranges across nine categories, from no action to violent military action. Since the focus of my
analysis is the use of force, I determine the cut-off criterion for the dependent variable as violent versus non-violent acts. I collapse the variable into a dichotomous measure by coding the events that involve violent military action where the crisis actor resorts to the use of force (ICB categories 8–9; e.g. invasion of air
space, border clash, etc.) as ‘1’ and ‘0’ otherwise (ICB categories 1–7; e.g. no response, verbal acts such as protest, economic acts such as embargo, etc.). Major independent variables Mass violence. This variable assesses the level of violence within the society of the crisis actor as evidenced by insurrections, civil war, and
revolution. The ICB dataset uses a code of ‘1’ if there is a significant increase in the level of domestic violence during the relevant period preceding the crisis, a code of ‘2’ if the level is normal, and a code of ‘3’ if there is a significant decrease. I collapse the ICB variable into a dichotomous variable and code it as ‘1’ if
there is a significant increase in the level of mass violence and ‘0’ otherwise. In this way, I obtain a more direct measure to test my hypotheses. Last, the ICB dataset uses a code of ‘4’ if the crisis actor is a newly independent state. I exclude the observations of this category from the analysis for this variable (as well as for
the measures of economic downturn and government instability), since such cases do not provide information on the level of the domestic problem under investigation. Economic downturn. This variable assesses the overall state of the economy for the crisis actor during the period preceding a crisis. I base this measure on
the ICB variable labeled ‘economic status of actor’, which provides a summary indicator of the cost of living, unemployment, food prices, labor disruption, and consumer goods shortages. Since there is a considerable amount of missing data for a number of individual economic indicators, this composite index takes
advantage of the available partial information, and thus enables a more parsimonious model. The data are examined from the year of the crisis to the fourth preceding year. The ICB dataset has the values coded as ‘1’ if there is an increase in economic problems, ‘2’ if the economic situation is normal, and ‘3’ if there is a
decrease in economic problems. For a more direct measure of worsening economic conditions, I generate a dichotomous variable and code the cases where there is a significant increase in economic problems as ‘1’ and ‘0’ otherwise. Downloaded from ips.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on October 5, 2014 Sirin 311
Government instability. The ICB actor-level dataset provides information on whether the crisis actor experiences government instability, which may include executive, constitutional, legal, and/ or administrative structure changes within the relevant period preceding an international crisis. For this measure, the ICB dataset
codes the observations as ‘1’ if there is a significant increase in government instability, ‘2’ if the government is stable, and ‘3’ if there is a significant decrease in government instability. For a more direct measure of escalating governmental instability, I create a dichotomous variable coding the cases where there is a
significant increase in the level of government instability as ‘1’ and ‘0’ otherwise. Ethno-religious heterogeneity. For the operationalization of this concept, I use two different measures that I adopt from the dataset of Fearon and Laitin’s (2003) study. The first measure is the number of distinct languages spoken by groups
exceeding 1 percent of the country’s population (see Grimes and Grimes, 1996). The second alternative measure captures the level of religious fractionalization, which Fearon and Laitin constructed using data from the CIA Factbook and other sources. In order to test my interactive hypothesis (H2), I generate two
alternative multiplicative variables by interacting mass violence separately with each of the two measures of ethno-religious heterogeneity. Regime type. The ICB dataset provides five different categories of this indicator including democratic regime, civil authoritarian regime, military-direct rule, military-indirect rule, and
military dual authority. I generate a dummy variable where ‘1’ denotes democratic regimes and ‘0’ denotes authoritarian regimes, mainly because the original variable does not differentiate between levels of democracy while providing dissimilar types of authoritarianism.6 Control variables Power discrepancy. Several
studies of state dyads have demonstrated that disparity in a dyad’s capabilities reduces the likelihood of violence initiation (see, e.g., Bremer, 1992). On the other hand, some scholars argue that states that possess a power advantage over an adversary are much more likely to take military action in crisis situations (see, e.g.,
Prins, 2005). My model controls for this external determinant of interstate conflict by including the ICB variable ‘power discrepancy’. The ICB dataset assigns a power score for each crisis actor and its principal adversary based on six separate scores measuring population size, GNP, territorial size, alliance capability,
military expenditure, and nuclear capability at the onset of a crisis. The power that a crisis actor possesses and has at its disposal from alliance partners (i.e. those countries that are connected to the crisis actor through some type of collective security agreement) immediately prior to an international crisis is then compared
with that of the actor’s principal adversary (or adversaries) to create a final power discrepancy score, which ranges from −179 to +179. Negative values indicate a power discrepancy that is to the disadvantage of a crisis actor whereas positive values demonstrate that a crisis actor is stronger than an adversary. To generate a
measure that indicates less power disparity as the score gets closer to zero (and vice versa), I take the square of the original ICB power discrepancy variable. This allows one to also capture the potential non-linear nature of this variable. Contiguity. On contiguity, Geller (2000: 413) presents two major perspectives. The first
is that geographic opportunity provides physical opportunity for wars and increases a nation’s Downloaded from ips.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on October 5, 2014 312 International Political Science Review 32(3) involvement in a foreign conflict. The second thesis suggests that proximity structures the ‘context of
interaction’, which increases the probability of conflictual relations and enhances the motivations for war. At the dyad level, proximity is the strongest predictor of war probability (see Henderson, 1997; Vasquez, 1993). Hence, I control for this factor with the expectation that when crisis actors share a border, there will be a
greater likelihood of the external use of force. The ICB system level data refers to this variable as the geographical proximity of principal adversaries. The coding values are ‘1’ distant, ‘2’ near neighbors, and ‘3’ contiguous. Gravity. This ICB variable identifies the ‘gravest’ threat a crisis actor faces during a crisis, which
ranges from 0 to 7. Most studies suggest that increases in this measure lead to increases in the likelihood of violence in an international crisis (see Hewitt and Wilkenfeld, 1999; Trumbore and Boyer, 2000). That said, DeRouen and Sprecher (2004) find that gravity – as a measure of domestic political loss – has a negative
impact on the use of force due to a tendency to reject violence as an initial policy option when the regime is threatened. Following DeRouen and Sprecher, I recode the original ICB variable as ‘1’ if there is a political threat and ‘0’ otherwise to capture any serious political risk a crisis actor faces during a crisis. Trigger
level. The trigger or precipitating cause of a foreign policy crisis refers to the specific act, event, or situational change that leads to (1) a crisis actor’s perception of the crisis as a threat to one’s basic values, (2) constrained time pressure for responding to the threat, and (3) heightened probability of involvement in military
hostilities (Brecher and Wilkenfeld, 2000). It is reasonable to expect that states will react to a crisis with the level of action (be it economic, diplomatic, or military) that matches the level of the trigger (see Trumbore and Boyer, 2000). More specifically, I expect that the likelihood of the use of force will increase in response
to more violent triggers. For this variable, I employ the original ICB indicator ‘trigger to foreign policy crisis’, which ranges from 1 (verbal act) to 9 (violent act) in line with the trigger’s level of intensity. Empirical results Some states are more likely than others to get involved in international crises, such as major powers
and enduring rivals. An attempt to identify possible factors that are specific to each crisis actor would be a strenuous and redundant task. Instead, I employ a panel-estimated approach – random effects probit – to control for country-specific effects likely to be present in the error term. In accordance with my theoretical
framework, I adopt the crisis actor as my unit of analysis. The baseline analytical model is as follows: Pr(Y ij = 1 | X ij , v i ) = f(b 0 + b 1 (mass violence) ij + b 2 (economic downturn) ij + b 3 (government instability) ij + b 4 (power discrepancy) ij + b 5 (contiguity) ij + b 6 (gravity) ij + b 7 (trigger level) ij + b 8 (regime
type) ij + v i ) where Pr(Y ij = 1 | X ij , v i ) denotes the probability of external use of force; vi represents unit-specific effects. For the analysis of the interactive effects of mass violence and ethno-religious heterogeneity, I add a multiplicative interaction variable to the baseline model, along with the constitutive terms of
that interaction. For the testing of my hypotheses regarding regime type differences, I run the baseline model (excluding the regime type variable) for the subsets of democracies and autocracies. As the Wald λ2 results of the analyses demonstrate (see Tables 2, 3 and 4), the fit of each model is good. Downloaded from
ips.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on October 5, 2014 Sirin 313 Table 1. Frequency of the Use of Force according to a Crisis Actor’s Experience of Domestic Problems Prior to an International Crisis, 1918–2005 Mass violence Economic downturn Government instability 0 1 0 1 0 1 No use of force Use of force 443 226
Table 1 provides descriptive statistics on the crosstabulations of the use of force in international crises with three different forms
of domestic problems (mass violence, economic downturn, and government
instability). Among crisis actors who experience increased mass violence prior to the crisis, 40 percent use force. By comparison, if
the country does not experience an increase in mass violence, only 33 percent resort to the use of force. I n cases of
economic decline, 30 percent of crisis actors use force, whereas cases of no
economic downturn demonstrate the use of force 36 percent of the time. Finally,
a change in the level of government instability indicates almost no variation across
76 52 317 178 151 67 403 212 117 64 Use of force % 33% 40% 36% 30% 34% 35%
the use of force and non-use of force options (34 percent for no government instability and 35 percent for increased government
instability). These preliminary results fall in line with my theoretical expectations that increased mass violence is more likely to lead to the
use of force rather than other forms of domestic problems.
No empirical support for economic decline causing conflict
O’Neal and Tir 6 (John R. O’Neal, University of Alabama, Jaroslav Tir, University of Georgia “Does
the Diversionary Use of Force Threaten the Democratic Peace? Assessing the Effect of Economic
Growth on Interstate Conflict, 1921–2001,” International Studies Quarterly (2006) 50, 755–779)
empirical evidence offered by Hess and Orphanides (1995) is not
compelling, however. Economic recessions are statistically related to forceful
action by an incumbent U.S. president in fewer than half of their tests. Economic
performance is important in their model because it affects the popularity of an
The
American leader, which is the direct measure of his prospects for reelection. Consequently, they
also correlate the conflictual behavior of the United States with the president’s public approval
rating. This association is statistically significant in only one of four tests, and
this is with the weakest possible standard of statistical significance (.10 with a one-tailed
test). Even the limited support they report for their diversionary theory must be treated
cautiously because they rely on bivariate tests of association. They do not evaluate
their theory within a general model of interstate conflict, so their findings may
be spurious, a result of the omission of important determinants of conflict.2 Indeed,
based on a large sample of countries in the post-World War I period for which the
probability of conflict is carefully modeled, Chiozza and Goemans (2003) report that
democratic leaders are unlikely to initiate a crisis when they risk losing office.
Some studies find that, contrary to diversionary theory, a president is more
likely to use force when his public approval rating is high (Morgan and Bickers
1992; Morgan and Anderson 1999).3 This is consistent with traditional analyses of U.S. foreign
policy (e.g., George 1971; Blechman and Kaplan 1978): presidential popularity increases the
president’s freedom of action because he can be confident that the public is behind him. In this
view, presidents are more apt to use force when they are popular, instead of using
force to become popular. A number of other empirical analyses, however, report no
relationship between America’s involvement in interstate conflict and a president’s approval
rating (Lindsay, Sayrs, and Steger 1992; Meernik 1994; 2004; Meernik and Waterman 1996;
Wang 1996; Fordham 1998a, 1998b; DeRouen 2000; Moore and Lanoue 2003). The evidence
regarding the influence of economic growth on the use of force by the United States is also
mixed. Fordham (1998a, 1998b) and DeRouen (1995) find no relation in the post-World
War II period. Gowa (1998) finds none over a longer temporal span, 1870–1992; but
Fordham (2002) has revised Gowa’s analyses to show some effect. Clark (2003) reports
evidence for Smith’s (1996) theory regarding the importance of strategic interaction, with the
United States responding to diversionary incentives but potential targets acting to limit this
opportunity. On the other hand, Meernik (2000) concludes that the state of the
American economy does not influence others’ initiation of crises with the
United States. DeRouen and Peake (2002) report that a use of force diverts the public’s
attention from a poor economy. In an early analysis of pooled data by Russett (1990a), slow
growth increased the likelihood that the United States would become involved in militarized
disputes, 1853–1976. Yet, slow growth did not affect the behavior of other
democracies, including Great Britain and France, or authoritarian countries. Miller’s
(1995, 1999) results are quite different: autocracies are significantly more likely than
democracies to use force when economic growth is slow, and the United States is particularly
unlikely to do so. Oneal and Russett (1997) reported that slow growth increased the incidence of
militarized disputes for all types of regimes; but with more complete data (Russett and Oneal
2001:152–153), they find no significant relationship. Leeds and Davis (1997) conclude
that the conflict-initiating behavior of 18 industrialized democracies is unrelated
to either economic conditions or the electoral cycle, and Pickering and Kisangani
(2005) report no connection for any type of regime even when countries are divided into
fine-grained political categories. 4
Economic decline doesn’t cause war
Apps ’10
( Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent for Reuters, Jun 8, 2010, “ Crisis fuels unrest, crime, but war
risk eases”, http://in.reuters.com/article/2010/06/08/idINIndia-49123220100608)
The global financial crisis has made the world less peaceful by fuelling crime and
civil unrest, a worldwide study showed on Tuesday, but the risk of outright armed
conflict appears to be falling. The 2010 Global Peace Index -- which examines
several dozen indicators from the crime rate to defence spending, conflicts with neighbouring
states and respect for human rights -- showed an overall reduction in the level of
peacefulness. The key drivers were a five percent rise in homicide, more violent
demonstrations and a perceived greater fear of crime. "We have seen what looks like a direct
impact from the crisis," Steve Killelea, the Australian entrepreneur behind the index, told
Reuters. "At least some unrest is probably unavoidable but the important thing is to target
measures to keep it to a minimum." That could mean ensuring any economic pain was equitably
shared across society, he said, to maintain social cohesion. Perhaps as a result of the more cashstrapped times, defence spending as a percentage of gross domestic product was
down to its lowest in four years with countries also showing generally better
relations with their neighbours. "In most areas of the world, war risk seems to be
declining," he said. "That is very important." The index is compiled by the Institute for
Economics and Peace based on data From the Economist Intelligence Unit. They estimate
violence costs the global economy $7 trillion a year. A 25 percent reduction in violence would
save about $1.7 trillion a year, enough to pay off Greece's debt, fund the United Nations
millennium development goals and pay for the European Union to reach its 2020 climate and
carbon targets. "There are such clear economic benefits to peace and it is something investors
are now looking at much more closely," he said, adding that some were using the index
alongside the World Bank governance indicators and other key rating systems to inform
investment decisions. NEW ZEALAND "MOST PEACEABLE" The struggling euro zone
economies of Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain showed a particular rise in unrest risks,
while Africa and the Middle East were the only two regions to have become safer since the
survey began in 2007. Africa had seen a drastic fall in the number of armed conflicts
and an improvement in relations between neighbours, he said, overshadowing the
impact of greater crime. Better ratings for the Middle East and North Africa came primarily from
improving relations between nations.
2NC - AT: Royal
Royal Concludes Neg, balancing solves
Royal 10 Jedediah, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of
Defense, 2010, Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic
Crises, in Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed.
Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 217)
There is, however, another trend at play. Economic crises tend to fragment regimes and divide
polities. A decrease in cohesion at the political leadership level and at the electorate level
reduces the ability of the state to coalesce a sufficiently strong political base required to
undertake costly balancing measures such as economic costly signals. Schweller (2006)builds
on earlier studies (sec, e.g., Christensen, 1996; Snyder, 2000) that link political fragmentation
with decisions not to balance against rising threats or to balance only in minimal and
ineffective ways to demonstrate a tendency for states to 'underbalance'. Where political and
social cohesion is strong, states are more likely to balance against rising threats in effective and
costly ways. However, 'unstable and fragmented regimes that rule over divided polities will be
significantly constrained in their ability to adapt to systemic incentives; they will be least likely
to enact bold and costly policies even when their nation's survival is at stake and they are
needed most' (Schweller, 2006, p. 130).
2NC - AT: WW2 Empirics
World war 2 empirics are wrong
Ferguson 6
(Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, September/October
2006, “ The Next War of the World”,http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61916/niall-ferguson/the-nextwar-of-the-world)
Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed. What may be the most familiar causal
chain in modern historiography links the Great Depression to the rise of fascism and the
outbreak of World War II. But that simple story leaves too much out. Nazi Germany started
the war in Europe only after its economy had recovered. Not all the countries
affected by the Great Depression were taken over by fascist regimes, nor did all
such regimes start wars of aggression. In fact, no general relationship between
economics and conflict is discernible for the century as a whole. Some wars came
after periods of growth, others were the causes rather than the consequences of economic
catastrophe, and some severe economic crises were not followed by wars.
2NC – (1) Alt Causes Consumer Distrust
Alt causes to distrust the aff can’t resolve – China conducts the exact same
policies and forces foreign tech companies to give the Chinese snooping access
– that’s 1AZ Timm
Plethora of Alt causes to consumer distrust and consumer distrust high already
Rana Foroohar, TIME's assistant managing editor in charge of economics and business, 01-2215
“How Technology Is Making All of Us Less Trusting” Online: “http://time.com/3678166/2015trust-barometer-survey/”
Davos Man, take note: the technology that has enriched you is moving too fast for the average Joe. That’s the takeaway from the
2015 Trust Barometer survey, released by public relations firm Edelman every year at the World Economic Forum in Davos. This
year’s survey, which came out Wednesday, looks at thousands of consumers in 27 countries to get a sense of public trust in
business, government, NGOs and media. This year, it’s falling across the board, with two-thirds
of nations’ citizens
being more distrustful than ever of all institutions, perhaps no surprise given that neither the
private nor the public sector seems to have answers to the big questions of the day —
geopolitical conflict, rising inequality, flat wages, market volatility, etc. What’s interesting is
how much people blame technology and the speed of technological change for the feeling of
unease in the world today. Two to one, consumers in all the countries surveyed felt that
technology was moving too quickly for them to cope with, and that governments and business
weren’t doing enough to assess the long-term impact of shifts like GMO foods, fracking,
disruptors like Uber or Apple Pay, or any of the myriad other digital services that affect
privacy and security of people and companies. That belies the conventional wisdom among tech gurus like, say,
Jeff Bezos, who once said that, “New inventions and things that customers like are usually good for society.” Maybe, but increasingly
people aren’t feeling that way. And it could have an impact on the regulatory environment facing tech companies. Expect more
pushback on sharing-economy companies that skirt local regulation, a greater focus on the monopoly power of mammoth tech
companies, and closer scrutiny of the personal wealth of tech titans themselves. Two of the most interesting pieces of journalism I
have read in recent years look at how the speed of digital change is affecting culture and public sentiment. Kurt Andersen’s
wonderful Vanity Fair story from January 2012, posited the idea that culture is stuck in retro mode — think fashion’s obsession with
past decades, and the nostalgia that’s rife in TV and film — because technology and globalization are moving so fast that people
simply can’t take any more change, cognitively at least. Likewise, Leon Wieseltier’s sharp essay on the cover of the New York Times
book review this past Sunday lamented how the fetishization of all things Big Tech has led us to focus on the speed, brevity and
monetization of everything, to the detriment of “deep thought” and a broader understanding of the human experience. I agree on
both counts. And I hope that some of the tech luminaries here at Davos, like Marissa Mayer, Eric Schmidt and Sheryl Sandberg, are
paying attention to this potential growing backlash, which I expect will heat up in the coming year.
Several studies confirm that the economic impact is low
Weise 15
(Elizabeth Weise, PRISM revelations didn't hit U.S. cloud computing as hard as expected, April 7, 2015
4:30
pm,
http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/2015/04/07/prism-revelations-didnt-hit-u-s-cloudcomputing-as-hard-as-expected/)
When Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM spying
program, there were concerns that American cloud, hosting and outsourcing businesses would
lose customers running to non-U.S.-based companies safe from NSA’s prying eyes. “The assertion was
that this would be a death blow to U.S. firms trying to operating in Europe and Asia,” said Forrester
Research analyst Ed Ferrara. But two recent reports from Forrester find it was less catastrophic
than expected. That’s good news for companies like Box (BOX), DropBox and others that make their
money by selling U.S.-based data storage. Forrester had originally predicted U.S. companies could lose as
much as $180 billion in sales. Instead, just 29% of technology decision-makers in Asia, Canada,
Europe and Latin America halted or reduced spending with U.S.-based firms offering Internetbased services due to the PRISM scandal, Forrester’s Business Technographics Global Infrastructure
Survey for 2014 found. “It’s a relatively small amount of data,” Ferrara said. That’s because most of the
companies didn’t need to move all their data, much of which was stored in-house. Instead, only 33% of the
data held by that 29% of companies was at a third-party data center or in a cloud system. Forrester believes
the overall loss to U.S. cloud providers for 2015 will be about $15 billion and in 2016, $12 billion,
a far cry from projections that were ten times that a year ago. Forrester also found that companies are
looking at other ways to protect the integrity of their data, not just from the NSA but also from surveillance
by other nations. Chief among them was encryption. Eighty-four percent of the companies said they’re
using various encryption methods to protect sensitive material. The survey’s definition of cloud providers
is broad, and includes both platform as a service, infrastructure as a service and software as a service
companies, said Ferrara.
2NC – (2) Alt Causes to Localization
Too many alt causes for why countries would want to localize – things like
national security and control are justifications for restriction that the aff can’t
resolve – that’s Business Roundtable
Surveillance is a drop in the bucket – too many reasons why countries want
data localization
Business Roundtable 12 (group of chief executive officers of major U.S. corporations formed to
promote pro-business public policy)
(Promoting Economic Growth through Smart Global Information Technology Policy The Growing Threat
of
Local
Data
Server
Requirements,
http://businessroundtable.org/sites/default/files/Global_IT_Policy_Paper_final.pdf)
Several justifications have been offered for imposing local data server requirements. In some
cases, local data server requirements are viewed as necessary to advance national industrial
policy and support national service providers. In other cases, the stated justification is to
ensure that regulatory, law enforcement or national security personnel can access data
residing on the servers. In still other cases, governments assert that they are protecting personal
privacy or restricting access to banned or unlawful content. Although some of these various
objectives may be legitimate if they are narrowly tailored to address the genuine harm, the blanket
imposition of local data server requirements can unnecessarily damage service providers and consumers
alike and slow economic growth. To avoid such disruption, governments should seek to narrowly tailor
their regulatory requirements to meet essential needs and should avoid ill-advised, blanket local data server
requirements. Governments should also ensure that their reviews, if any, of the national security
implications of foreign investments focus exclusively on genuine national security risks.
Data Localization inevitable
Bauer et al, 14 [Matthias Bauer is Senior Economist at ECIPE. His areas of research include
international trade as well as European fiscal and capital market policy. He studied business
administration at the University of Hull and economics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Jena.]
The Costs of Data Localisation: Friendly Fire on Economic Recovery, Pg. 3
Over the past few years, there has been a widespread proliferation of regulatory restrictions
of the internet, in particular for commercial use. Whereas governments’ earlier endeavours to
increase control over the internet had the implicit aim of keeping information outside state
borders, this new breed of regulation aims at keeping data in. With the pretext of increasing
online security and privacy, some governments are requiring mandatory storage of critical
data on servers physically located inside the country, i.e. data localisation. Also, some data
protection and security laws create barriers to cross-border data transfers to such an extent
that they are effectively data localisation requirements. The belief that forcing personal information, emails
and other forms of data from leaving the country would prevent foreign surveillance or protect citizens’ online privacy is flawed in
several ways. First, many of the recent legislative proposals pre-date the surveillance revelations, and are not designed for
addressing these issues. Second, information security is not a function of where data is physically stored or processed. Threats are
often domestic, while storing information in one physical location could increase vulnerability. Thirdly, data localisation is not only
ineffective against foreign surveillance, it enables governments to surveil on their own citizens. Moreover, users and business do not
access data across borders with the purpose of evading domestic laws, while legal obligations do not always depend on where a
server is physically placed.
Data Localization has happened for years, still no economic collapse
Chander and Le [Anupam Chander: Director, California International Law Center, Professor of
Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall Research scholar, University of California, Davis; A.B.,
Harvard College; J.D., Yale Law School][Uyen P. Le: Free Speech and Technology Fellow,
California International Law Center; A.B., Yale College; J.D., University of California, Davis School
of Law.] 03-12-14
Breaking the Web: Data Localization vs the Global Internet , Pg. 5
We review here data localization measures in sixteen states—Australia, Brazil, Canada, China,
France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, South Korea, Sweden,
Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam—as well as the European Union. The problem of data
localization is even more pervasive than the jurisdictions we identify. Furthermore, the
measures achieve data localization in a wide variety of ways. While some of the measures
explicitly force data to be located on home country servers, often the localizing effect is less
visible and more indirect. Kazakhstan's directive, for example, is explicit, requiring new
companies using the top level domain to operate from physical servers located within the
country. Malaysia, on the other hand, requires consent for international transfer of data, which
can prove a significant hurdle. Taiwan permits authorities to restrict transfers if they concern
"major national interests." other regulations focus on selected sectors. Australia prevents health
records from being transferred outside the country if they are personally identifiable. In sum,
our study reveals the astonishing array of countries that have enacted or are considering data
localization.
Alt Cause - Security
Business Roundtable 12 (group of chief executive officers of major U.S. corporations formed to
promote pro-business public policy)
(Promoting Economic Growth through Smart Global Information Technology Policy The Growing Threat
of
Local
Data
Server
Requirements,
http://businessroundtable.org/sites/default/files/Global_IT_Policy_Paper_final.pdf)
Several justifications have been offered for imposing local data server
requirements. In some cases, local data server requirements are viewed as
necessary to advance national industrial policy and support national service
providers. In other cases, the stated justification is to ensure that regulatory, law
enforcement or national security personnel can access data residing on the servers. In
still other cases, governments assert that they are protecting personal privacy or
restricting access to banned or unlawful content. Although some of these various
objectives may be legitimate if they are narrowly tailored to address the genuine harm, the
blanket imposition of local data server requirements can unnecessarily damage service providers
and consumers alike and slow economic growth. To avoid such disruption, governments should
seek to narrowly tailor their regulatory requirements to meet essential needs and should avoid illadvised, blanket local data server requirements. Governments should also ensure that their
reviews, if any, of the national security implications of foreign investments focus exclusively on
genuine national security risks.
Data Localization inevitable
Bauer et al, 14 [Matthias Bauer is Senior Economist at ECIPE. His areas of research include
international trade as well as European fiscal and capital market policy. He studied business
administration at the University of Hull and economics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Jena.]
The Costs of Data Localisation: Friendly Fire on Economic Recovery, Pg. 3
Over the past few years, there has been a widespread proliferation of regulatory restrictions
of the internet, in particular for commercial use. Whereas governments’ earlier endeavours to
increase control over the internet had the implicit aim of keeping information outside state
borders, this new breed of regulation aims at keeping data in. With the pretext of increasing
online security and privacy, some governments are requiring mandatory storage of critical
data on servers physically located inside the country, i.e. data localisation. Also, some data
protection and security laws create barriers to cross-border data transfers to such an extent
that they are effectively data localisation requirements. The belief that forcing personal information, emails
and other forms of data from leaving the country would prevent foreign surveillance or protect citizens’ online privacy is flawed in
several ways. First, many of the recent legislative proposals pre-date the surveillance revelations, and are not designed for
addressing these issues. Second, information security is not a function of where data is physically stored or processed. Threats are
often domestic, while storing information in one physical location could increase vulnerability. Thirdly, data localisation is not only
ineffective against foreign surveillance, it enables governments to surveil on their own citizens. Moreover, users and business do not
access data across borders with the purpose of evading domestic laws, while legal obligations do not always depend on where a
server is physically placed.
Russian localization happening now
Kozlovsky 15
(Sergey, Are Google and eBay Bowing to the Kremlin's Data Localization Demands?, Posted 10 April
2015 20:47 GMT, http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/04/10/are-google-and-ebay-bowing-to-the-kremlinsdata-localization-demands/)
Google and online marketplace eBay may be caving to Russia's controversial new data
retention law that requires Internet companies to store Russian users’ data in Russia. Shifting
data centers into Russian territory could leave Google and eBay customers vulnerable to greater
levels of surveillance.
On April 10, RBC news agency reported that Google allegedly agreed to comply with the new
law and had already moved some of its user data storage facilities to data centers on
Russian soil.
RBC said the announcement was made at a conference hosted by the Communications Ministry
in late March, and noted that a representative of Rostelecom, one of Russia's leading
telecommunications providers, claimed they were hired by Google to store their data at a
“high-security data-server facility with close ties to the state” in Russia. Later, Rostelecom
refused to comment on the matter and said it does not disclose its clients’ information without
their
Data Localization has happened before, still no economic collapse
Chander and Le [Anupam Chander: Director, California International Law Center, Professor of
Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall Research scholar, University of California, Davis; A.B.,
Harvard College; J.D., Yale Law School][Uyen P. Le: Free Speech and Technology Fellow,
California International Law Center; A.B., Yale College; J.D., University of California, Davis School
of Law.] 03-12-14
Breaking the Web: Data Localization vs the Global Internet , Pg. 5
We review here data localization measures in sixteen states—Australia, Brazil, Canada, China,
France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, South Korea, Sweden,
Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam—as well as the European Union. The problem of data
localization is even more pervasive than the jurisdictions we identify. Furthermore, the
measures achieve data localization in a wide variety of ways. While some of the measures
explicitly force data to be located on home country servers, often the localizing effect is less
visible and more indirect. Kazakhstan's directive, for example, is explicit, requiring new
companies using the top level domain to operate from physical servers located within the
country. Malaysia, on the other hand, requires consent for international transfer of data, which
can prove a significant hurdle. Taiwan permits authorities to restrict transfers if they concern
"major national interests." other regulations focus on selected sectors. Australia prevents health
records from being transferred outside the country if they are personally identifiable. In sum,
our study reveals the astonishing array of countries that have enacted or are considering data
localization.
2NC – AT: Protectionism Impact
No impact from protectionism - alt causes to trade wars – immigration, capital,
and tech transfer
Freeman ’03 [Richard B. Freeman, Herbert Ascherman Professor of Economics at Harvard
University, Co-Director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, Senior
Research Fellow on Labour Markets at the Centre for Economic Performance “Trade Wars: The
exaggerated impact of trade in economic debate” Nationial Bureau of Economic Research
working paper 10,000]
3. An Alternative View¶ At
the heart of the trade wars is the belief that changes in
trade arrangements have huge impacts on economies and on labor markets and
worker Well-being. Adherents to WC style ¶ globalization believe that developing countries can
only grow through exports and openness. ¶ They fear that LDC trade with advanced countries is
so fragile that it must be protected from¶ global labor standards. Opponents believe that good
labor standards are so fragile that they must ¶ be protected from a race to the bottom. in which bad
standards drive out good standards.¶ While complete autarky or imposition of advanced
country standards on LDCs would¶ have huge effects on economies around the
world. the actual policies around which debate has¶ focused and observed changes in trade
patterns have not come close to having their ballyhooed¶ or feared effects on labor
markets or on economies writ large. Both the proponents and¶ opponents of globalization
WC style have exaggerated the importance of trade. Instead of¶ dominating economic
outcomes. changes in trade policy and trade have had modest impacts on¶ labour
market and economic outcomes beyond trade flows. Other aspects of globalization -¶
immigration. capital flows. and technology transfer - have greater impacts on the
labour market.¶ with volatile capital flows creating great risk for the Well-being
of workers. As for labour¶ standards. global standards do not threaten the comparative
advantage of developing countries¶ nor do poor labour standards create a "race to the bottom".
Globalization and standards are¶ complementary rather than competing
activities.
Alt causes to perceptions of protectionism – Chinese companies
Parker 12 – James Parker writes for The Diplomat. (“Playing the Protectionism Game”, The Diplomat,
October 22, 2012,
Callahan)
http://thediplomat.com/pacific-money/2012/10/22/chinas-protectionism-hypocrisy/,
Recent weeks have seen three leading Chinese companies run into political and
regulatory obstacles in their attempts to expand in the United States market. The
issue, associated partly of course with the U.S. political environment during a campaign year, has been developing
gradually but has recently burst into the media spotlight. The most striking case involves
Huawei and ZTE, both Chinese telecoms equipment giants. They found themselves on the wrong
side of a strongly negative report from the U.S. Senate House Intelligence Committee October 8th,
which expressed concern about their alleged ties to the Chinese government and
military, lack of openness and failure to assist the Congressional investigation
openly. The consequences for their U.S. operations will be significant and long running. Things became especially
heated after the report was released as Huawei labeled the report “Chinabashing” and “misguided protectionism.” The rhetoric was turned up this last
Thursday in a separate dispute by the Tycoon CEO of Sany Group, a company which has
ridden China’s real estate and infrastructure boom to become a leading producer and supplier of heavy construction equipment. Xiang
Wenbo, a Sany executive, labeled the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.
(CFIUS) and President Obama “petty scoundrels,” while also stating that U.S.
regulators “can’t be reasoned with.” Xiang was furious with Obama’s support of
CFIUS’s decision to block a Sany associated wind farm project in Oregon – on
grounds that it was too close to a military no-fly zone (where drones are allegedly tested). Ralls, the Sany affiliate suing
CFIUS over the decision, then added Obama’s name to the court case, making
Ralls the first Chinese company to sue a U.S. president. Xiang went on to tout the Ralls case as a
symbolic action to safeguard Chinese enterprises and set a precedent for future Chinese companies. The China National Offshore Oil
CNOOC), on the other hand, whose gigantic bid to acquire Canadian oil firm Nexen has raised some concern across
is also waiting on a decision from
CFIUS. In Washington, objections have been voiced about a Chinese state
enterprise owning U.S. strategic assets (oil) and about the possibility of Nexen’s
offshore drilling technology being used in the South China Sea to strengthen
China’s territorial claims vis-à-vis various its Southeast Asian neighbors, many of
whom are U.S. allies or strategic partners. Hence the overall impression is of Chinese firms being
“under siege” as they try to grow or gain access to the U.S. market. A sense of
discrimination is growing, and the electioneering and China rhetoric emerging
from the presidential campaign is only adding to this narrative.
Corporation (
the globe (Nexen has various international assets – including in the U.S.)
2NC – (3) No impact to IP Theft
No impact to loss of patent protection – data and firm surveys show that
innovation is adversely affected by IP theft, other things like sales, service, lead
time, and secrecy outweigh - Pollock
No impact to IP theft – imitation is too costly and data shows no effect on
innovation
Pollock 8 (Rufus, Associate of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the
University of Cambridge, held the Mead Research Fellowship in economics at Emmanuel
College, Cambridge, “Innovation And Imitation With And Without Intellectual Property Rights,”
University of Cambridge, 1/2008, pg. 2-4, pdf)//duncan
Of particular interest is the finding that imitation
is a costly process both in terms of time and money, and
one, furthermore, upon which the effect of a patent – if it has any effect at all – is to increase its
cost not to halt it entirely. Perhaps most striking in this respect are Tables 8 (p. 810) and 9 (p. 811) of Levin et al. (1987) which
summarize, respectively, reported cost of imitation (as a percentage of innovator’s R&D expenditure) and time to
imitate. For example, of the processes surveyed which were not protected by patents fully 88% had
an imitation cost which was more than 50% of the innovator’s initial outlay . For major products the
analogous figure was 86%. Imitation also takes time: 84% of unpatented processes took 1 year of longer
to imitate, while for products the analogous figure 82%.1¶ Such results indicate that for many innovations, even without
patent protection, imitation involves substantial cost and delay. 2 Given this, as well as the strong impact the
assumption of costless imitation has on our conclusions, it would seem important to investigate the consequences of weakening this presumption and,
in particular, the
possibilities of innovation without intellectual property rights.¶ However much of the
existing theoretical literature has tended to assume ‘perfect’ non- rivalry, that is, that an innovation (or
creative work) once made may be costlessly, and instantaneously, reproduced. The assumption is most often
evident in the claim, which follows directly from it, namely that without the provision of intellectual property rights such as patents and copyrights no
innovation would be possible.¶ For example, Nordhaus (1969) (and following him Scherer (1972)), in what is considered to be one of the founding
papers of the policy literature, implicitly assume that without a patent an innovator gains no remuneration. Similarly, Klemperer (1990) in his paper on
patent breadth makes clear his assumption of costless imitation3(p. 117): ‘For simplicity, I assume free entry into the industry subject to the
noninfringement of the patent and that knowledge of the innovation allows competitors’ products to be produced without fixed costs and at the same
constant marginal costs as the patentholder’s product. Without further loss of generality, I assume marginal costs to be zero.’ (Emphasis added).
Many similar examples can easily be supplied in which imitation without intellectual property
rights is implicitly, or explicitly, assumed to be ‘trivial’.4¶ This paper, by contrast, provides a simple
theoretical model in which costly imitation is central. Combined with first-mover advantage for the innovator we show
that a significant amount of innovation takes place in the absence of intellectual property
rights – even when imitation is cheaper than innovation. In addition we provide an easy and intuitive
way to conceptualize, and model, the overall space of innovations which allows us to compare
in a straightforward manner the relative performance of regimes with and without intellectual
property rights, both in terms of innovation and welfare. This approach supplies several novel insights. ¶ First, that as innovation
costs fall ‘allowable’ imitation costs (that is imitation costs that still result in innovation being made) fall even faster .
Thus, if the cost of innovation (relative to market size) differs between industries, then, even if relative imitation costs
are the same, there will be very substantial difference in the impact of intellectual property rights. In
particular, in the industry with lower innovation costs the gains for innovation and welfare with
intellectual property rights will be much lower (and for welfare could even be negative).5 As such, a main point of this
paper is to show how the impact (and benefits/costs) of intellectual property rights may vary in a systematic way across
industries. In particular there will be industries in which intellectual property rights are necessary – and industries where they are not – and this
paper presents one basis for a taxonomy to sort out which is which. ¶ Second, and relatedly, comparing regimes without and with
intellectual property rights we show that the welfare ratio is systematically higher than the
innovation ratio.6 More- over, this is not simply for the well-known reason that (conditional on the innovation occurring) without
intellectual property rights greater competition results in increased output and lower
deadweight losses. Rather, there is an additional factor, namely that the set of innovations occurring under an IP
regime are, on average, less socially valu- able because they have higher fixed costs of creation.
Specifically, the model allows us to clearly distinguish three sources of welfare differences between the two regimes: first, less innovation occurs
without intellectual property rights; second, the welfare of a given innovation is higher under competition that under monopoly; third, as just
mentioned, innovations which occur only under an intellectual property regime are less valuable.
2NC – Econ Resilient
The global economy is resilient – the complex inderdependence politically and
economically ensures that stakeholders and institutions work to create political
coordination and investment that resolves the crisis - Drezner
Global Economy is resilient
Zakaria, 9 — Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University and Editor of Newsweek
International (Fareed, “The Secrets of Stability”, Newsweek, 12/21/2009, lexis)
One year ago, the world seemed as if it might be coming apart. The global
financial system, which had fueled a great expansion of capitalism and trade across the
world, was crumbling. All the certainties of the age of -globalization--about the virtues of free
markets, trade, and technology--were being called into question. Faith in the American model
had collapsed. The financial industry had crumbled. Once-roaring emerging markets like China,
India, and Brazil were sinking. Worldwide trade was shrinking to a degree not seen since the
1930s. Pundits whose bearishness had been vindicated predicted we were doomed to a
long, painful bust, with cascading failures in sector after sector, country after
country. In a widely cited essay that appeared in The Atlantic this May, Simon Johnson, former
chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, wrote: "The conventional wisdom among
the elite is still that the current slump 'cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.' This view is
wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression." Others
predicted that these economic shocks would lead to political instability and violence in
the worst-hit countries. At his confirmation hearing in February, the new U.S. director of
national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, cautioned the Senate that "the financial crisis and
global recession are likely to produce a wave of economic crises in emerging-market nations
over the next year." Hillary Clinton endorsed this grim view. And she was hardly alone. Foreign
Policy ran a cover story predicting serious unrest in several emerging markets. Of one thing
everyone was sure: nothing would ever be the same again. Not the financial industry, not
capitalism, not globalization. One year later, how much has the world really
changed? Well, Wall Street is home to two fewer investment banks (three, if you count Merrill
Lynch). Some regional banks have gone bust. There was some turmoil in Moldova and (entirely
unrelated to the financial crisis) in Iran. Severe problems remain, like high unemployment in the
West, and we face new problems caused by responses to the crisis--soaring debt and fears of
inflation. But overall, things look nothing like they did in the 1930s. The
predictions of economic and political collapse have not materialized at all. A key
measure of fear and fragility is the ability of poor and unstable countries to borrow
money on the debt markets. So consider this: the sovereign bonds of tottering Pakistan
have returned 168 percent so far this year. All this doesn't add up to a recovery yet, but it
does reflect a return to some level of normalcy. And that rebound has been so rapid
that even the shrewdest observers remain puzzled. "The question I have at the back of my head
is 'Is that it?' " says Charles Kaye, the co-head of Warburg Pincus. "We had this huge crisis, and
now we're back to business as usual?" This revival did not happen because markets managed to
stabilize themselves on their own. Rather, governments, having learned the lessons of
the Great Depression, were determined not to repeat the same mistakes once this
crisis hit. By massively expanding state support for the economy--through central
banks and national treasuries--they buffered the worst of the damage. (Whether
they made new mistakes in the process remains to be seen.) The extensive social safety
nets that have been established across the industrialized world also cushioned the pain felt
by many. Times are still tough, but things are nowhere near as bad as in the 1930s,
when governments played a tiny role in national economies. It's true that the massive state
interventions of the past year may be fueling some new bubbles: the cheap cash and government
guarantees provided to banks, companies, and consumers have fueled some irrational
exuberance in stock and bond markets. Yet these rallies also demonstrate the return of
confidence, and confidence is a very powerful economic force. When John Maynard
Keynes described his own prescriptions for economic growth, he believed government action
could provide only a temporary fix until the real motor of the economy started cranking again-the animal spirits of investors, consumers, and companies seeking risk and profit. Beyond all
this, though, I believe there's a fundamental reason why we have not faced global
collapse in the last year. It is the same reason that we weathered the stockmarket crash of 1987, the recession of 1992, the Asian crisis of 1997, the Russian
default of 1998, and the tech-bubble collapse of 2000. The current global economic
system is inherently more resilient than we think. The world today is
characterized by three major forces for stability, each reinforcing the other and
each historical in nature.
Advantage 2 - Cloud Computing/heg
1NC – Frontline Cloud
US heg not key to global peace
Fettweis 14 (Christopher J., associate professor of political science at Tulane University, “Delusions of
Danger: Geopolitical Fear and Indispensability in U.S. Foreign Policy,” in A Dangerous World?: Threat
Perception and U.S. National Security, 2014)
According to what might be considered the indispensability fallacy , many Americans
believe that U.S. actions are primarily responsible for any stability that currently exists. “All
that stands between civility and genocide, order and mayhem,” explain Lawrence Kaplan and William Kristol, “is American
power.”37 That belief is an offshoot, witting or not, of what is known as “hegemonic stability theory,” which proposes that
international peace is possible only when one country is strong enough to make and enforce a set of rules.38 Were U.S. leaders to
abdicate their responsibilities, that reasoning goes, unchecked conflicts would at the very least bring humanitarian disaster and would
quite quickly threaten core U.S. interests.39 ¶ Brzezinski is typical in his belief that “outright chaos” and a string of specific horrors
could be expected to follow a loss of hegemony, from renewed attempts to build regional empires (by China, Turkey, Russia, and
Brazil) to the collapse of the U.S. relationship with Mexico as emboldened nationalists south of the border reassert 150-year-old
territorial claims. Overall, without U.S. dominance, today’s relatively peaceful world would turn “violent and bloodthirsty.”40 The
liberal world order that is so beneficial to all would come tumbling down. ¶ Like many believers,
proponents of
hegemonic stability theory base their view on faith alone .41 There is precious little evidence
to suggest that the United States is responsible for the pacific trends that have swept across
the system. In fact, the world remained equally peaceful, relatively speaking, while the
United States cut its forces throughout the 19 90 s, as well as while it doubled its military
spending in the first decade of the new century.42 Complex statistical methods should not be needed to
demonstrate that levels of U.S. military spending have been essentially unrelated to global
stability.¶ Hegemonic stability theory’s flaws go way beyond the absence of simple
correlations to support them, however. The theory’s supporters have never been able to explain adequately how
precisely 5 percent of the world’s population could force peace on the other 95 percent, unless, of course, the rest of the world was
Most states are quite free to go to war without U.S. involvement but
choose not to. The U nited S tates can be counted on, especially after Iraq, to steer well
clear of most civil wars and ethnic conflicts. It took years, hundreds of thousands of casualties, and the use of
simply not intent on fighting.
chemical weapons to spur even limited interest in the events in Syria, for example; surely internal violence in, say, most of Africa
would be unlikely to attract serious attention of the world’s policeman, much less intervention. The continent is, nevertheless, more
peaceful today than at any other time in its history, something for which U.S. hegemony cannot take credit.43 Stability exists today in
many such places to which U.S. hegemony simply does not extend. ¶ Overall, proponents of the stabilizing power of U.S. hegemony
should keep in mind one of the most basic observations from cognitive psychology: rarely are our actions as important to others’
calculations as we perceive them to be.44 The so-called egocentric bias, which is essentially ubiquitous in human interaction, suggests
that although it may be natural for U.S. policymakers to interpret their role as crucial in the maintenance of world peace, they are
Washington is probably not as central to the myriad
decisions in foreign capitals that help maintain international stability as it thinks it is.¶ The
almost certainly overestimating their own importance.
indispensability fallacy owes its existence to a couple of factors. First, although all people like to bask in the reflected glory of their
country’s (or culture’s) unique, nonpareil stature, Americans have long been exceptional in their exceptionalism.45 The short history
of the United States, which can easily be read as an almost uninterrupted and certainly unlikely story of success, has led to a (perhaps
natural) belief that it is morally, culturally, and politically superior to other, lesser countries. It is no coincidence that the exceptional
state would be called on by fate to maintain peace and justice in the world. ¶ Americans have always combined that feeling of divine
providence with a sense of mission to spread their ideals around the world and battle evil wherever it lurks. It is that sense of destiny,
of being the object of history’s call, that most obviously separates the United States from other countries. Only an American president
would claim that by entering World War I, “America had the infinite privilege of fulfilling her destiny and saving the world.”46 ¶
Although many states are motivated by humanitarian causes, no other seems to consider promoting its values to be a national duty in
quite the same way that Americans do. “I believe that God wants everybody to be free,” said George W. Bush in 2004. “That’s what I
believe. And that’s one part of my foreign policy.”47 When Madeleine Albright called the United States the “indispensable nation,”
she was reflecting a traditional, deeply held belief of the American people.48 Exceptional nations, like exceptional people, have an
obligation to assist the merely average.¶ Many of the factors that contribute to geopolitical fear—Manichaeism, religiosity, various
vested interests, and neoconservatism—also help explain American exceptionalism and the indispensability fallacy. And unipolarity
makes hegemonic delusions possible. With the great power of the United States comes a sense of great responsibility: to serve and
protect humanity, to drive history in positive directions. More than any other single factor, the people of the United States tend to
believe that they are indispensable because they are powerful, and power tends to blind states to their limitations. “Wealth shapes our
international behavior and our image,” observed Derek Leebaert. “It brings with it the freedom to make wide-ranging choices well
beyond common sense.”49¶
It is quite likely that the world does not need the U nited S tates to
enforce peace. In fact, if virtually any of the overlapping and mutually reinforcing explanations for the current stability are
correct, the trends in international security may well prove difficult to reverse. None of the contributing factors that
are commonly suggested (economic development, complex interdependence, nuclear
weapons, international institutions, democracy, shifting global norms on war) seem poised
to disappear any time soon.50 The world will probably continue its peaceful ways for the
near future, at the very least, no matter what the United States chooses to do or not do. As
Robert Jervis concluded while pondering the likely effects of U.S. restraint on decisions made in foreign capitals, “ It is very
unlikely that pulling off the American security blanket would lead to thoughts of war.” 51 The
United States will remain fundamentally safe no matter what it does—in other words, despite widespread beliefs in its inherent
indispensability to the contrary.
Adaptation fails
Stanley-Becker, 7/27—Contributor for Yale Daily News and the Pittsburgh Post-
Gazette (Isaac, July 27th, 2014, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “The politics of the climate change
debate: What does WWI have to do with,” http://www.postgazette.com/news/environment/2014/07/27/The-politics-of-the-climate-changedebate/stories/201407270151)//IK
It may not happen with a bang. No guns or bombs. No political assassinations or ultimatums borne of diplomatic alliances.
The world's next great conflagration will occur because of the slow and steady
warming of the climate, because of the concentration of greenhouse gases emitted by humans, argues a retired rear
navy admiral in a Friday editorial in Science magazine. David Titley, now director of Penn State's Center for Solutions to
Weather and Climate Risk, finds a parallel between the choices elected officials face regarding
climate change and the choices political leaders faced in 1914, as the First World War
loomed. Officials in Serbia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia and France could have quieted the bang from the gun that
killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria instead of fanning the flames of war if they had properly assessed risk and
prioritized collective well-being above "short-term gains" and "institutional hubris," Mr. Titley writes, citing the British
historian Max Hastings' "Catastrophe 1914." At the centennial of the war to end all wars, history
offers a sobering
lesson for those who deny human-caused global warming, Mr. Titley argues in his editorial, titled
"Ghosts From the Past." European leaders were similarly in denial, he writes; they refused to acknowledge imminent loss of
life. He
implores today's leaders to imagine what catastrophe would mean. Indications
of the worst-case scenario already lurk in rising sea levels and ocean acidification, he
said in a recent interview, moments after he had finished testifying before a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee about the national security implications of energy and climate issues. He's not a lobbyist, he insisted, just an expert
and a concerned citizen. "I don't see
this is a partisan issue. It's just physics," he said. "The ice
doesn't vote. It doesn't caucus. It doesn't watch Fox or MSNBC. It just melts." Whether it's
partisan, the problem is a political one, said Joseph Otis Minott, executive director of the Clean Air Council,
based in Philadelphia. He
laid blame on politicians who ignore the counsel of scientists ,
citing the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that said
human actions are "very likely" responsible for global warming. He hailed Mr. Titley's analogy
as "incredibly insightful," offering a historical example of his own: "It's like Nero fiddling while Rome burns." The
problem, Mr. Minott said, is that each actor is trying to extract the last benefit from the
environment, all at the cost of future well-being. Meanwhile, the impacts still seem
remote. "If you live next to a refinery, you can see it and smell it. You feel sick, and cause and effect are easier to talk
about," he said. "Otherwise it's hard for people to understand the urgency. It's hard to find the
political will." Understanding is indeed critical, said Tony Novosel, a historian of modern Europe at the University of
Pittsburgh. An unwillingness or inability on the part of many European leaders to
understand the motivations, fears and concerns of the other great powers was among
the factors that led these powers into war in 1914, he said. In the climate change debate, however, it
is not simply a clash of opinions but a dispute over facts, making it more difficult to
find common ground. Certainly among Pennsylvania legislators, global warming is
disputed. State Sen. Gene Yaw, R-Lycoming, chairman of the Senate Environmental Resources
and Energy Committee, said he isn't convinced greenhouse gases are to blame for
warming, asking how bodies of water, such as the Finger Lakes, formed 2 million years ago without such contaminants in
the atmosphere. "I'm not convinced that the underlying cause is anything but a normal
climate cycle of the world," he said. The issue of global warming has never come
before his committee, he added. He scoffed at Mr. Titley's recommendation that societies must take measures
to maintain basic infrastructure -- water, food and the coastline. "Let's build a wall around New York City -- I have no idea," he
said with a laugh. "This is not a burning issue." State Rep. Ron Miller, R-York, agreed, calling into question the veracity of global
warming: "I'm sitting on my porch near the end of July, and the temperature's in the 70s. Why is no one yelling about global
cooling?" He called Mr. Titley's editorial, which suggests pairing short-term measures with a shift to a no-carbon energy future,
a "scare tactic." Michael Mann, a colleague at Penn State who is meteorology professor and director of the Earth System
Science Center, came to Mr. Titley's defense, calling the science of climate change true whether state leaders believe it or not.
He said the
editorial makes a compelling case that climate change is a veritable national
security crisis, causing competition for diminishing food, water and land. He called
warming a "threat multiplier," pointing to water as a critical factor in the conflict in Syria. " We ignore what
scientists say at our peril," Mr. Mann said. "Sure, there's a debate to be had about how the
reductions should be made. That's what Sen. Yaw's committee should be talking about."
Backdoors aren’t sufficient - Their Zara evidence is in the context of the entirety
of the NSA spying program, which backdoors can’t resolve. Countries are still
concerned about “frontdoor” methods the NSA can take.
No impact to loss of tech leadership – your authors are biased and don’t
understand how innovation works
Bhidé ‘9
Amar Bhidé, Thomas Schmidheiny Professor in The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy @
Tufts, was Glaubinger Professor of Business at Columbia University. “Where innovation creates
value”. February 2009. http://whispersandshouts.typepad.com/files/where-innovation-createsvalue.pdf
Now, perhaps, more than ever, the fear of globalization haunts the U nited S tates. Many
manufacturing companies that once flourished there fell to overseas competition or relocated much of their work abroad. Then
services embarked on the same journey. Just as the manufacturing exodus started with low-wage, unskilled labor, the offshoring of
services at first involved data entry, routine software programming and testing, and the operation of phone banks. But today,
overseas workers analyze financial statements, test trading strategies, and design computer chips and software architectures for US
companies. It
is the offshoring of research and development—of innovation and the future—that
arouses the keenest anxiety. The economist Richard Freeman spoke for many Americans when he warned that the
United States could become significantly less competitive “as large developing countries like China and India harness their growing
scientific and engineering expertise to their enormous, low-wage labor forces.”1 What is the appropriate response? One, from the
Another, seemingly
more progressive, approach would be to spend more money to promote cutting-edge science
and technology. Much of the establishment, Democratic and Republican alike, has embraced
what the economists Sylvia Ostry and Richard Nelson call techno-nationalism and technofetishism, which both claim that US prosperity requires continued domination of these fields.
We’ve heard such fears and prescriptions before. In the 1980s, many people attributed the problems of the US
conservative pundit Pat Buchanan, the TV broadcaster Lou Dobbs, and their like, calls for protectionism.
economy to the proliferation of lawyers and managers and to a shortage of engineers and scientists; Germany and Japan were
praised as countries with a better occupational ratio. Yet in the 1990s, their economies slackened while the United States
prospered—and not because it heeded the warnings. Indeed, math and science education in US high schools didn’t improve much.
Enrollment in law schools remained high, and managers accounted for a growing proportion of the workforce. The US share of
scientific articles, science and engineering PhDs, and patents continued to decline, the service sector to expand, and manufacturing
employment to stagnate. Of course, the United States can’t count on the same happy ending to every episode of the “losing our
The integration of China and India into the global economy is a seminal and
unprecedented phenomenon. Could the outcome be different this time? Is the U nited S tates
on the verge of being pummeled by a technological hurricane? In my view, the answer is no.
Worries about the offshoring of R&D and the progress of science in China and India arise from
a failure to understand technological innovation and its relation to the global economy.
Innovation does play a major role in nurturing prosperity, but we must be careful to formulate
policies that sustain rather than undermine it—for instance, by favoring one form of
innovation over another.
lead” serial.
Spending cuts prevent tech competitiveness
Alivisatos et al 13 (Paul Alivisatos is director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Eric D.
Isaacs is director of Argonne National Laboratory. Thom Mason is director of Oak Ridge National
Laboratory)
(PAUL ALIVISATOS, ERIC D. ISAACS, AND THOM MASONMAR 12 2013, The Sequester Is Going
to Devastate U.S. Science Research for Decades, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/thesequester-is-going-to-devastate-us-science-research-for-decades/273925/)
Less than one percent of the federal budget goes to fund basic science research
By slashing that fraction even further
the
resulting gaps in the innovation pipeline could cost billions of dollars and hurt the national
economy for decades to come.¶
-- $30.2 billion out of the total of $3.8
trillion President Obama requested in fiscal year 2012.
, the government will achieve short-term savings in millions this year, but
As directors of the Department of Energy's National Laboratories, we have a responsibility both to taxpayers and to the thousands of talented and committed men and women who
work in our labs. We are doing everything we can to make sure our scientists and engineers can keep working on our nation's most pressing scientific problems despite the cuts. It's not yet clear how much funding the National Labs will lose, but it will total tens of
millions of dollars. Interrupting -- or worse,
halting -- basic research in the physical, biological, and computational
sciences would be devastating ,
¶
This sudden halt on new starts will freeze American science
in place while the rest of the world races forward
¶
both for science and for the many U.S. industries that rely on our national laboratory system to power their research and development efforts. Instead, this drop in funding will
force us to cancel all new programs and research initiatives, probably for at least two years.
, and it will knock a generation of young scientists off their stride, ultimately costing billions in missed future opportunities.
New ideas, new insights, new discoveries -- these are the lifeblood of science and the foundation of America's historic culture of innovation and ingenuity. The science community recognizes the importance of those new ideas, so we have systems in place to make sur e
great new ideas get a chance to thrive. Every ongoing federally funded science program is reviewed regularly to make sure it's on track and likely to yield results. Each year, stalled programs are terminated to make room for more promising lines of resear ch. Under
sequestration, we will continue to review and cull unsuccessful research efforts, but we won't be able to bring in new ideas to take their place. ¶ Every federal agency that supports basic scientific research is facing this impossible dilemma. The National Science
Foundation -- which funds 20 percent of all federally supported basic research at American colleges and universities -- just announced it is cutting back on 1,000 new research grants it had planned to award this year. The Department of Energy's Office of Science, the
nation's largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences, will have to shut the door on hundreds of new proposals as well. The impact will multiply as long-planned and overdue supercomputer upgrades and other necessary investments in our scientific
infrastructure are stretched out, delayed, or put on hold indefinitely. ¶ The National Laboratories aren't just crucial to America's scientific infrastructure. They are also powerful engines of economic development. Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow has
calculated that over the past half century, more than half of the growth in our nation's GDP has been rooted in scientific discoveries -- the kinds of fundamental, mission-driven research that we do at the labs. This early-stage research has led to extraordinary real-world
benefits, from nuclear power plants to compact fluorescent bulbs to blood cholesterol tests. Because the United States has historically valued scientific inspiration, our government has provided creative scientists and engineers with the support, facilities, and time they
Basing funding decisions solely on short-term fiscal goals risks the heart
of America's scientific enterprise and long-term economic growth -- diminishing our world
need to turn brilliant ideas into real-world solutions.¶
leadership in science , technology and in the creation of cutting-edge jobs.¶
as we choke off our ability to pursue promising
new ideas, we begin a slow but inexorable slide to stagnation
Sequestration won't have an immediate, visible
impact on American research. Laboratories will continue to open their doors, and scientists and engineers will go to work. But
. We can't afford to lose a generation of new ideas and forfeit our national future.
Companies won’t leave the cloud – profit trumps privacy
Linthicum 13 (David, consultant at Cloud Technology Partners and an internationally
recognized industry expert, has authored 13 books on computing, “Let the NSA spy on us -we're still moving to the cloud,” Info World, 10/10/2013,
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2609760/cloud-computing/let-the-nsa-spy-on-us----we-restill-moving-to-the-cloud.html)//duncan
Guess what? The
NSA scandal might have freaked out a few CIOs, but it isn't delaying their move
to cloud computing . I'm not surprised: They really have no choice in the shift to the cloud,
considering the alternatives are not as effective.¶ In an IDG News survey, 20 high-ranking IT
executives in North America and Europe were asked about the effect the NSA snooping
practices have had on their cloud computing strategy. They said they're a bit more cautious,
but not much has changed beyond seeking tighter security controls.¶ Although the NSA's
interception of Internet and telephone communications, plus its program to weaken encryption standards,
are a cause for concern, the economic and business benefits of cloud computing are too
compelling to ignore. Unless there is an obvious threat, most CIOs will ignore the fear of government
spying and follow through with their existing cloud computing projects, as well as start new
ones.¶ IT leaders understand that the NSA, as well as agencies of other governments, are snooping through their data. But
they don't seem to be as concerned as many analysts and the press would lead you to believe -myself included -- when the NSA story broke. I'm not sure if that reflects poorly or positively on IT leadership, but it's certainly good
news for the cloud.¶ Yes, many people within enterprises are pushing back on cloud computing in light of the NSA issues. But it'll
be very tough to sell that fear internally because of the cloud's hugely compelling benefits.
The lost efficiency and lost business agility from not using cloud-based platforms are a lot
higher than the loss of privacy and perhaps competitive information caused by government
snooping.¶ When businesses run the numbers, profits trump fear .
Other countries solve their impacts – it’s zero sum
Thompson 14 (Cadie, Technology Reporter for CNBC, “Foreign cloud companies will win big
from NSA spying revelations,” CNBC Cybersecurity, 4/31/2014,
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/31/foreign-cloud-companies-will-win-big-from-nsa-spyingrevelations.html)//duncan
American cloud companies stand to lose billions of dollars in business because of Edward Snowden's NSA
revelations, and non-U.S. companies are already preparing to pick up the slack.¶ "The leading
cloud companies have been U.S.-based companies, but now there's a real reason to invest in
these types of companies that are not in the U.S.," said James Staten, an analyst at Forrester.¶ The fear that the
U.S. government can pry into companies' systems at will and access sensitive data is causing a growing number of businesses to
either avoid big U.S. cloud providers--which include IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle--or abandon the cloud altogether.¶ Read
MoreWhite House eyes end to bulk NSA data collection¶ "A
lot of countries are going to fight to be the new
leader in this area," said Daniel Castro, a senior analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. "I think
that's where the U.S. could lose long term."
US hegemony is uncontested and inevitable – no shift in power balance for the
foreseeable future
Cohen 14 (Michael A., fellow at the Century Foundation, former columnist for Foreign Policy and the
New York Times, former senior fellow at the New America Foundation and the American Security Project,
master’s degree from Columbia University where he is also an adjunct lecturer in the School of
International and Public Affairs, “It’s Coming from Inside the House,” in A Dangerous World?: Threat
Perception and U.S. National Security, 2014)
Today, America’s military, economic, and diplomatic power is unparalleled, and its global
hegemony is uncontested.¶ The United States confronts no plausible existential security
threats, no great power rival, and no near-term military competitor. The U.S. military is far
and away the world’s most potent, and it is able to effectively project power to every corner
of the globe. America maintains a vast coterie of allies, friends, and like-minded nations
with similar values and political systems. Moreover, its position as the world’s preeminent
superpower is unlikely to change any time soon, because no country has the ability or
inclination to challenge it. China is its closest military rival—and China spends a fraction
on armaments compared with the United States. Even emerging from a sustained economic
downturn, the U.S. economy remains the largest in the world—with China, at best, two to
three decades away from surpassing it. Although the United States faces global challenges to its
interests, they pose little actual risk to the overwhelming majority of American citizens or to the country’s
security.¶ Quite simply, the United States is the world’s most dominant nation, unchallenged
and more secure than any other great power in history—and it will almost certainly remain
so for the foreseeable future.
US TECH LEADERSHIP IS STABLE NOW
MHTA 12, “Asian Countries Challenge U.S. Tech Leadership,” MHTA,
https://www.mhta.org/news-1/
The United State remains a global leader in supporting science and technology research and
development, but only by a slim margin that could soon be overtaken by other regions of
the world. That is a key finding in the Science report released recently by the National
Science Board. “The information clearly shows we must re-examine long-held
assumptions about the global dominance of the American science and technology
enterprise,” said NSF Director Subra Suresh. “And we must take seriously new strategies
for education, workforce development and innovation in order for the United States to
retain its international leadership position.” The report notes President Obama’s 2009
Strategy for American Innovation, which recognized the importance of science and
technology as drivers of innovation. Analysts reacting to the report noted there are factors
in play that could make the U.S. more competitive with China when it comes to
manufacturing. Wages in China are growing at a rapid pace would could lessen its
advantage. A report by the Boston Consulting Group found that within five years, the cost
gap between the United States and China will be virtually closed.
2NC - Heg Doesn’t Solve War – 2NC
US heg is not key to global peace – countries go to war or don’t go to war
because of greater policy concerns – empirics prove that US power has never
affected a war scenario – that’s Fettweis
No impact to hegemony
Friedman 10 (Ben Friedman, research fellow in defense and homeland security, Cato. PhD candidate in pol sci, MIT,
Military Restraint and Defense Savings, 20 July 2010, http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-bf-07202010.html)
Another argument for high military spending is that U.S. military hegemony underlies global stability. Our
forces and alliance commitments dampen conflict between potential rivals like China and Japan, we are told, preventing them from
fighting wars that would disrupt trade and cost us more than the military spending that would have prevented war. The
theoretical and empirical foundation for this claim is weak. It overestimates both the American
military's contribution to international stability and the danger that instability abroad poses to
Americans. In Western Europe, U.S. forces now contribute little to peace, at best making the tiny odds of
war among states there slightly more so.7 Even in Asia, where there is more tension, the history of international
relations suggests that without U.S. military deployments potential rivals, especially those separated
by sea like Japan and China, will generally achieve a stable balance of power rather than fight. In other
cases, as with our bases in Saudi Arabia between the Iraq wars, U.S. forces probably create more unrest than
they prevent. Our force deployments can also generate instability by prompting states to
develop nuclear weapons. Even when wars occur, their economic impact is likely to be limited
here.8 By linking markets, globalization provides supply alternatives for the goods we consume,
including oil. If political upheaval disrupts supply in one location, suppliers elsewhere will take our orders. Prices may increase, but
markets adjust. That
makes American consumers less dependent on any particular supply source,
undermining the claim that we need to use force to prevent unrest in supplier nations or
secure trade routes.9 Part of the confusion about the value of hegemony comes from misunderstanding the Cold War.
People tend to assume, falsely, that our activist foreign policy, with troops forward supporting allies, not
only caused the Soviet Union's collapse but is obviously a good thing even without such a
rival. Forgotten is the sensible notion that alliances are a necessary evil occasionally tolerated to balance a particularly threatening
enemy. The main justification for creating our Cold War alliances was the fear that Communist nations could conquer or capture by
insurrection the industrial centers in Western Europe and Japan and then harness enough of that wealth to threaten us — either
directly or by forcing us to become a garrison state at ruinous cost. We kept troops in South Korea after 1953 for fear that the North
would otherwise overrun it. But these alliances outlasted
the conditions that caused them. During the Cold
Western Europe and South Korea grew wealthy enough to defend themselves. We
should let them. These alliances heighten our force requirements and threaten to drag us into
wars, while providing no obvious benefit.
War, Japan,
No challengers – the only risk of war is from the US pursuing a primacy strategy
Green 14 (Brendan Rittenhouse Green, assistant professor of political science at the University
of Cincinnati who writes on international relations theory, national security policy, and military
behavior, PhD in political science from MIT, “Security Threats in Contemporary World Politics:
Potential Hegemons, Partnerships, and Primacy,” in A Dangerous World?: Threat Perception and
U.S. National Security, 2014)
The United States faces very few security threats from nation-states. The era of potential
hegemons has passed: no state is going to conquer a region and turn its power against the
Western Hemisphere. The contemporary balance of power, a geography of peace, very
difficult military tasks, and nuclear weapons make large-scale continental conquest
impossible. There will be no blockade of the Western Hemisphere and no corresponding
transformation of America into a garrison state. Hitler and Stalin still serve as the backdrop to
American grand strategy, yet we will never see their likes again.
Such threats as do exist from nation-states, Washington brings on itself. America’s primacy
strategy ties itself to regional politics in a way that helps little and could be quite dangerous.
Managing security relations abroad is either unnecessary, because of the high costs of war, or
unlikely to work in the case of highly dedicated revisionist states. But once committed to a
strategy of primacy, policymakers will probably not shy away from the wars they fail to
prevent. Primacy will only further stoke the longtime American obsession with credibility, as the
strategy hinges on widespread beliefs that America will protect the status quo. Political
relationships will tend to take on a value of their own, whether or not they are worth defending.
And a powerful America committed abroad will be prone to adventures that have little to do
with its security.
To put the point sharply: the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year —and
risks war—largely to stop other people from fighting among themselves. The common story
that reducing regional competition abroad makes America more secure at home is close to
being backwards. The United States is tremendously safe; ill-considered decisions to let its
alliances lead it into unnecessary foreign conflicts are the only threat Washington faces from
states. Politics among nations may well still have some danger, but it is dangerous to America
only by its own choice.
2NC – Adaptation Fails
Adaptation fails – Congress hates policies on climate change adaptation. The
worst case scenarios of climate change already exist but no political impetus
exists – Stanley Becker
Climate Adaptation is impossible
Laurie Goering, Laurie Goering edits AlertNet Climate, the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s
news website on the humanitarian and development impacts of climate change. Previously she
was a Chicago Tribune correspondent based in New Delhi, Johannesburg, Mexico City, Havana,
Rio de Janeiro and London, 04-30-15
“Adaptation will fail without emissions cuts, funding insufficient - UN climate chief” Online:
“http://www.trust.org/item/20140430112123-2bt63”
KATHMANDU (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The funds available to help poorer countries
adapt to the impacts of climate change are “pathetically insufficient”, and adaptation efforts
risk failing altogether if countries that produce most of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions
don’t agree to “very rapid” cuts, the United Nations’ climate chief warned on Wednesday.
Global emissions, which are still growing, need to peak within the next 10 years, with the world
rapidly moving to become “carbon neutral” in the second half of the century, said Christiana
Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The
alternative is that “the costs of adaptation will exponentially rise to the point where
adaptation is not only extremely difficult but virtually impossible,” she said at the close of a
week-long conference in Nepal on financing community-based climate adaptation. The price of
that failure could be a surge in poverty, hunger, migration and extreme weather, which would
hit those least equipped to cope hardest, experts said. “It is absolutely urgent we mitigate
(climate-changing emissions) rapidly at the same time (as) we invest in adaptation or we are
entering a world of much more instability,” warned Atiq Rahman, executive director of the
Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies. And it is not just the world’s poorest who will pay the
price, as British families affected by flooding this year have discovered, noted Camilla Toulmin,
director of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
During early spring floods, “we saw the limits of government support” for those hit by climate
change impacts, she said. “I hope this direct personal experience stays in people’s minds as our
government gets stuck into the negotiations” towards a 2015 global agreement to curb climate
change, she added.
2NC – No impact to tech decline
No impact to loss of tech leadership – the affirmative’s authors are driven by
techno fetishism and nationalism and fail to understand the globalized nature
of innovation – it helps all countries. That’s Bhide.
US rivals are not close to catching up – even if they can innovate tech they will
not be able to turn it into productivity to compete with the U.S. – Japan and
Taiwan prove.
Bhidé ‘9
Amar Bhidé, Thomas Schmidheiny Professor in The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy @
Tufts, was Glaubinger Professor of Business at Columbia University. “The Venturesome
Economy: How Innovation Sustains Prosperity in a More Connected World”. Winter 2009.
Journal of Applied Corporate Finance • Volume 21 Number 1.
http://bhide.net/venturesome_press/JACF_Venturesome_Economy_1_bhide.pdf
China and India aren’t anywhere close to catching up with the U.S. in their
capacity to develop and use technological innovations. Starting afresh may allow China and
India to leapfrog ahead in some fields, in building advanced mobile phone networks,
But
excelling in the overall innovation game requires a great and diverse team,
takes a
very long time to build. Consider Japan,
In a few decades, Japan had modernized its industry, its
military, and its educational system. Today Japan is a highly developed economy and makes
important contributions to advancing the technological frontier. But nearly a century and a
half after Japan started modernizing, its overall capacity to develop and use innovations, as
evidenced by the country’s average productivity, remains behind that of the U.S. Similarly,
Korea and Taiwan started industrializing
about a century ago
In several sectors of the electronics industry, Korean and Taiwanese companies are
technological leaders. Yet their overall productivity suggests they have less capacity than
Japan to develop and use innovations.
The world is a long way from being “flat”—
for example.
which, history suggests,
which began to “enter the world” after the Boshin War of 1868. In the subsequent Meiji Restoration, the country abolished its feudal system and
instituted a Western legal system and a quasi-parliamentary constitutional government.
(as it happens, under Japanese rule)
and enjoyed miraculous rates of growth after the 1960s.
Is it likely, then, that within any reader’s lifetime China and India will attain the parity with the U.S. that has eluded Japan, Korea, and Taiwan?
And the tech leadership thesis is bankrupt – no impact to other countries
catching up
Galama 2008 – PhD and M.Sc in Physics from the University of Amsterdam, MBA from INSEAD (Titus, “U.S. Competitiveness in
Science and Technology,” Prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense by the National Defense Research Institute of the
RAND Corporation, http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG674.pdf)
Another opposing view suggests that fears of a looming S&T crisis may result from a
misunderstanding of concepts driving the issue. The July 2006 Economist noted the “wide
range of potential remedies” being suggested to the purported S&T problem, which include
“getting more Americans to study science and engineering, bigger tax breaks for research
and development, and trade protection to prevent the innovative hordes from China and India
from storming America’s gates” (The Economist, 2006). The piece continues by citing a new
paper by Amar Bhide, of Columbia University’s business school, who¶ argues that these
supposed remedies, and the worries that lie behind them, are based on a misconception of
how innovation works and of how it contributes to economic growth. . . .This consists, first,
of paying too much attention to the upstream development of new inventions and
technologies by scientists and engineers, and too little to the downstream process of turning these inventions into products that tempt people to part with their money, and, second,
of the belief that national leadership in upstream activities is the same thing as leadership in
generating economic value from innovation. . . . Mr Bhide argues that this downstream
innovation . . . is the most valuable kind and what America is best at . . . that most of the value
of innovations accrues to their users not their creators – and stays in the country where
the innovation is consumed. So if China and India do more invention, so much the better
for American consumers. (The Economist, 2006)
Tech not key – companies don’t even fully make use of existing digital tech AND
manufacturing is an alt cause
Tom and Fosler 14 (Josh Tom, Senior Analyst for The GailFosler Group , Gail D Fosler,
president of The GailFosler Group, “How Important Is Digital Technology to Our Economic
Future?: An Interview With Rob Atkinson”, Rob Atkinson is an economist and the president of
the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Gailfosler.com,
http://www.gailfosler.com/important-digital-technology-economic-future-interview-robatkinson, DJE)
Q: In 1987, Robert Solow famously wrote, “You can see the computer age everywhere except in
the productivity numbers.” Today, it seems you can see the digital revolution everywhere but in
the economic numbers. Where is this new age of prosperity that all the “techno-optimists” are
talking about? Let’s begin with an important premise. Digital technology is an important
dimension in our economy, but it is by no means the only driver of economic activity or
opportunity. In contrast to the universal and almost magical properties that “technooptimists” attribute to digital technology, we need to make a critical distinction between the
promise of technology and the use of technology. People are blaming technology for not living
up to its promises because of poor economic performance in recent years when it is really its
use as manifest in the lack of basic investment in the economy that is limiting growth.
Without increased capital investment in equipment and software, innovation and technology
have no way to spread throughout the economy. Long-run growth is lower as a consequence.
The slowdown in investment has little to do with technology. Rather it is due in part to an
increasing short-termism on the part of U.S. businesses, leading them to invest less for the
longer term. As a result, we are investing less in machines and equipment and structures than
we did a decade ago. The slowdown also appears to be caused by a decline in manufacturing.
Manufacturing is a very high-investment, high-productivity sector that pays good wages relative
to some of the service industries. But manufacturing’s decline is due in large part to
international competition, not to digital technology. Indeed, without digital manufacturing
equipment and robotics U.S. manufacturing would have become even less internationally
competitive. Advances in digital technology have created important new industries and new
jobs. Unfortunately, the decline in manufacturing has offset these gains to a great extent.
The U.S. is not locked into a “winner-take-all” race for science and tech
leadership. Increased innovation in China and India will increase production
and consumption in the U.S. service sector.
Bhidé ‘9
Amar Bhidé, Thomas Schmidheiny Professor in The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy @
Tufts, was Glaubinger Professor of Business at Columbia University. “The Venturesome
Economy: How Innovation Sustains Prosperity in a More Connected World”. Winter 2009.
Journal of Applied Corporate Finance • Volume 21 Number 1.
http://bhide.net/venturesome_press/JACF_Venturesome_Economy_1_bhide.pdf
My analysis of the multiplayer game and cross-border interactions suggests outcomes that
differ sharply from the dire predictions of the techno-nationalists. According to my
assessment, the United States is not locked into a “winner-take-all” race for scientific
and technological leadership, and the growth of research capabilities in China and
India—and thus their share of cutting-edge research—does not reduce U.S. prosperity.
Indeed my analysis suggests that advances abroad will improve living standards in
the U.S. Moreover, the benefits I identify are different from the conventional economist’s
account whereby prosperity abroad increases opportunities for U.S. exporters. Instead, I
show that cutting-edge research developed abroad benefits domestic production and
consumption in the service sector. And contrary to the policy prescriptions of technonationalists, I suggest that the U.S. embrace the expansion of research capabilities
abroad instead of devoting more resources to maintaining its lead in science and
cutting-edge technology.20
2NC – Tech Leadership Resilient
US TECH LEADER FOR NEXT 20 YEARS
Steve Minter 14, 3-17-2014, “US Positioned as Technology Leader for The Next 20 Years,”
Industry Week, http://www.industryweek.com/trade/us-positioned-technology-export-leadernext-20-years
The U.S. is expected to retain its position as a leading technology goods exporter for the next
two decades, according to trade research conducted by international bank HSBC. Optimism
about trade generally among U.S. business leaders is at its highest level since the bank began
conducting its semiannual trade survey. The U.S. HSBC Trade Confidence Index rose to 115
from 114 six months ago and was higher than the global average of 113. The index surveys
small and middle-market businesses, including 250 in the U.S. HSBC forecasts that U.S. trade
will grow 6% annually from 2014 to 2016. The bank expects global trade to grow 8% annually
to 2030. U.S. exports set a record in 2013, reaching $2.3 trillion. In 2013, the United States had
a trade surplus in services of $229 billion and a goods deficit of $703.9 billion for a total trade
deficit of $474.9 billion. That was nearly at $59.8 billion improvement from 2012.
2NC – No Corporate Flight
Companies will stay with the cloud – no alternatives exist. Not using cloud
platforms causes decreased efficiency and mobility – this outweighs in
corporate calculations – Linthicum.
Cloud industry is growing despite the NSA
Finley 14 (Klint, writes for Wired, “Amazon’s Cloud Keeps Growing Despite Fears of NSA
Spying,” Wired, 2/27/2014, http://www.wired.com/2014/02/amazon-cloud-size/)//duncan
WHEN FORMER GOVERNMENT contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was conducting digital
surveillance on a massive scale, many feared for the future of cloud computing. The Information
Technology and Innovation Foundation estimated that Snowden’s revelations could cost U.S. cloud companies $22 billion to $35
billion in foreign business over the next three years, and countless pundits predicted that American businesses would flee the cloud
as well. People would prefer to run software and store data on their own computers, the argument went, rather than host their
operations atop outside services potentially compromised by the NSA.¶
But it looks like the cloud industry is still
growing. And in very big way.¶ The world’s largest cloud computing services — services where you
can run software and store data without buying your own hardware — are run by Amazon, and according to a new study
from independent researcher Huan Liu, Amazon’s operation grew by a whopping 62 percent over the
past two years. What’s more, the study shows that growth has been steady since June 2013,
when the Snowden revelations first hit the news. In fact, there’s been a surge since December
of last year.¶ Liu’s research does not look at services from Amazon rivals such as Google, Microsoft, or Rackspace. But
Amazon is the best barometer for the market as a whole. Software running on Amazon Web
Services may account for as much as 1 percent of North American traffic, according to data collected by
DeepField Networks, and about one-third of all North American internet users visit at least one site
hosted in the Amazon cloud each day.
2NC – Tech DA – Cloud Industry growing
Cloud Computing industry spending is growing fast now
Paper Save, 05-30-15
“Cloud computing is growing rapidly, despite some misguided concerns” Online:
“http://www.papersave.com/blog/bid/209222/Cloud-computing-is-growing-rapidly-despitesome-misguided-concerns”
An IDC white paper, entitled "Successful Cloud Partners 2.0," surveyed over 700 Microsoft
partners worldwide and found that those with more than half of their revenue coming from
the cloud made 1.5 times the gross profit when compared to other partners. The study noted that on
average, the respondents make 26 percent of their income from cloud-related products and services, a number that is expected to
surpass 40 percent in 2016. While the North American and Western European economies have largely implemented cloud
computing over the past decade or so, in emerging markets like Latin America and Asia, the concept is still fairly new. The
IDC
study predicted that the cloud will grow in developing places 1.8 times faster than established
markets, and will close the gap on them. By 2017, the source projected that newcomers will
account for 21.3 percent of the public cloud market. "Spending on public IT cloud services will
grow to $108 billion in 2017." The source predicted that spending on public IT cloud services
will grow from $47.4 billion in 2013 to $108 billion in 2017. Software as a service is projected
to remain the highest-grossing cloud solution category through 2017, as it is expected to make
up 57.9 percent of the overall industry. However, IDC said that the platform-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-aservice sectors will grow faster than SaaS over the next five years. It appears as though fewer companies are viewing the cloud in a
skeptical manner with each passing year, and, eventually, the technology will become the standard for business practices
throughout the world. Developing nations are catching up to the traditional powerhouses in North America and Western Europe, so
it's only a matter of time before the world is predominantly run via cloud computing.
Cloud usage is growing
Kim Weins, 2-18-2015, "Cloud Computing Trends: 2015 State of the Cloud Survey," Rightscale,
http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-industry-insights/cloud-computing-trends-2015-statecloud-survey
The 2015 State of the Cloud Survey shows that cloud adoption is growing and most enterprises
are leveraging multiple cloud environments that combine both public and private cloud options. As a result,
central IT teams are stepping in to offer cloud infrastructure services to their organizations
while ensuring governance and control over costs. This shift of cloud adoption from shadow IT to a strategic
imperative is a critical step in the move to a cloud-centric future.
Exponential growth – consumers see opportunity in cloud computing
Brett Relander, 3-27-2015, "Cloud-Computing: An industry In Exponential Growth,"
Investopedia, http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/032715/cloudcomputingindustry-exponential-growth.asp#ixzz3fyT6NevZ
Investors today have far more options available than in the past. Among these options is the cloud. Nasdaq reported that
last year revenues for cloud services grew by 60 percent. Furthermore, cloud computing is
anticipated to continue growing at a robust rate over the course of the next five years. If you are
considering investing in a technology-based company, there are certainly many advantages. By owning stock in a company offering
cloud-based services, you will not only be able to follow the latest trends but also have the opportunity to make money from the
explosive growth of this industry. Before getting involved in cloud computing investing, however, it is important to understand what
is involved, what is driving the growth in this industry, and the best way to plan your cloud investments. What
Is Cloud
Computing? Before you consider investing in cloud computing, it is a good idea to have a basic understanding of exactly what it
is. While many of us enjoy the ability to upload photos, documents, and videos to "the cloud" and then retrieve them at our
convenience, the concept of cloud computing is somewhat abstract. The heart of cloud computing is fairly simple. Companies
providing cloud services make it possible to store data and applications remotely, and then
access those files via the Internet. (For a background on the Internet industry from which cloud computing has
emerged, see article: The Industry Handbook: The Internet Industry.) Cloud computing is primarily comprised of three
services: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS), and platform as a service (Paas). Software as a
service is expected to experience the fastest growth, followed by infrastructure as a service. According to research conducted by
Forrester, the
cloud computing market is anticipated to grow from $58 billion in 2013 to more
than $191 billion by the year 2020. Software as a Service (SaaS) Deployed online, SaaS involves the licensure of an
application to customers. Licenses are typically provided through a pay-as-you-go model or on-demand. This rapidly growing market
could provide an excellent investment opportunity, with Goldman Sachs reporting that SaaS software revenues are expected to
reach $106 billion by next year. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Infrastructure as a service involves a method for delivering
everything from operating systems to servers and storage through IP-based connectivity as part of an on-demand service. Clients
can avoid the need to purchase software or servers, and instead procure these resources in an outsourced on-demand service.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) Of the three layers of cloud-based computing, PaaS is considered the most complex. While PaaS shares
some similarities with SaaS, the primary difference is that instead of delivering software online, it is actually a platform for creating
software that is delivered via the Internet. Forrester research indicates that PaaS solutions are expected to generate $44 billion in
revenues by the year 2020. What Is Driving Growth in Cloud Computing The rise of cloud-based software has offered companies
from all sectors a number of benefits, including the ability to use software from any device, either via a native app or a browser. As a
result, users are able to carry over their files and settings to other devices in a completely seamless manner. Cloud
computing
is about far more than just accessing files on multiple devices, however. Thanks to cloud-computing services, users
can check their email on any computer and even store files using services such as Dropbox and Google Drive. Cloud-computing
services also make it possible for users to back up their music, files, and photos, ensuring that those files are immediately available
in the event of a hard drive crash.
Driving the growth in the cloud industry is the cost savings associated
with the ability to outsource the software and hardware necessary for tech services. According to
Nasdaq, investments in key strategic areas such as big data analytics, enterprise mobile, security and cloud technology, is expected
to increase to more than $40 million by 2018. With cloud-based
services expected to increase exponentially
in the future, there has never been a better time to invest, but it is important to make sure you do so
cautiously. (See article: A Primer On Investing In The Tech Industry.)
A2: Cloud computing fails – government may think that way, but the opposite is
reality
Steve Towns, 6-1-2011, "Preparing for Cloud Computing Failures," Governing the states and
localities, http://www.governing.com/columns/tech-talk/Preparing-for-Cloud-ComputingsFailure.html
Problems in April with Amazon’s cloud computing platform sparked media questions about
cloud computing’s readiness for prime time. The well publicized incident on April 21 brought down a number of
websites, including news aggregator Reddit and Q&A site Quora. Ultimately, though, the incident is unlikely to slow government’s
adoption of the new computing technique. Government CIOs
have been wary of moving their data and
software applications to Internet-based cloud services run by private companies, often citing concerns
about reliability and security of systems over which they hav[ing]e little control. But wide adoption of the
technology and the desire to control costs is gradually breaking down public-sector resistance.
Indeed, CIOs who gathered in Washington, D.C., for the National Association of State Chief Information Officers’ Midyear Conference
in May ranked cloud computing among their highest priorities in an onsite poll taken by the organization. The Amazon incident did
little to dampen their interest. “Did it give us pause for a minute? Probably,” says Michigan CIO David Behen. “But
quite
frankly, the whole idea about security around the cloud is something that we just need to
educate more people about. The private industry is using the cloud for everything, and
government needs to embrace that.” Behen’s recession-wracked state has been a leader in sharing computer systems
among state agencies and between state and local entities. Behen sees cloud computing as a tool for sharing technology resources
on an even broader scale. Behen and others may be ready to move forward on cloud computing initiatives, but they say that the
Amazon incident also holds lessons for public agencies moving data and computer applications to the cloud. The new computing
model puts a premium on choosing reliable cloud contractors, since agencies depend on them to host websites, store data and run
computer programs. It also demands more attention on contract terms that hold contractors accountable for outages and
performance problems.
2NC – Tech DA - Bubble
Turn: Tech bubble is coming soon, increasing growth is unstable
Jeff Reeves, editor of InvestorPlace.com, 03-27-14
“Is cloud computing the next tech bubble?” Online:
“http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cloud-computing-the-next-tech-bubble-2014-03-27”
Box Inc., the latest player to ride the wave of Wall Street optimism for cloud computing, just
filed its S-1 this week to go public. But while the media circus around “the cloud” continues and
another baby-faced 20-something CEO gets ready to ring the opening bell on Wall Street,
investors need to start getting real about the current bubble in tech stocks. Here’s a heaping
helping of reality to get you started, direct from Box’s filing with the SEC: “We have a history
of cumulative losses, and we do not expect to be profitable for the foreseeable future.” “We
have incurred significant losses in each period since our inception in 2005. We incurred net
losses of $50.3 million in our fiscal year ended December 31, 2011, $112.6 million in our fiscal
year ended January 31, 2013, and $168.6 million in our fiscal year ended January 31, 2014. As
of January 31, 2014, we had an accumulated deficit of $361.2 million.” If that’s not bad
enough, the company plans to raise just $250 million in its IPO — not even enough to cover two
years of losses at the current cash bleed. The kicker? Like many Silicon Valley firms, Box is
implementing a dual class structure where insiders with Class B stock get 10 votes per share
while the rabble who come in via IPO get just a single vote per share — ensuring that Box can
raise money without ceding any power. I mean, what could go wrong? For the record, I don’t
think Box CEO Aaron Levie is a poor leader with bad intentions. The bottom line is that rightly or
wrongly, Wall Street is salivating over companies like Box right now… and taking the cloud
storage player to market at a time the market is ready, willing and eager just makes sense. And
on some level, the Wall Street enthusiasm for “the cloud” is warranted. There is undoubtedly
growth in the sector; Research firm IHS recently estimated cloud-related business spending
will hit $235 billion by 2017 — up 60% double from 2013’s tally of $145 billion — and even a
modest piece of that market can add up to big revenue potential. Profits, on the other hand,
are much harder to come by. And that goes for every corner of the cloud computing space.
Take Workday WDAY, +0.20% , a stock that’s a different than Box because it offers cloudbased software for payroll and HR managers. But it still is part of the cloud zeitgeist. Anyway,
Workday reported earnings in February, and its sales and marketing expenses on the year that
ended Jan. 31 tallied $197 million — more than 55% of the $354 million in total revenue
brought in across the prior 12 months. Workday went public in 2012 operating at a deep loss,
and still isn’t projected to turn a profit this year or next. The same is true for rival NetSuite N, 0.63% , which reported big losses again in its latest earnings report, characterized by $210
million spent on marketing and sales over the year that ended Dec. 31, over $333 million in
revenue — a 63% spend rate. NetSuite has been public since the very end of 2007 and hasn’t
turned a profit either, however, as its need to land new customers trumps any desire to run a
profitable business. Of course, then there’s yet ANOTHER competitor to NetSuite and
Workday in Salesforce.com CRM, +1.46% . The company has a much bigger client list and is
more established, with total revenue of $3.8 billion… but recently has ramped up marketing
efforts to compete. Salesforce burned almost $2.2 billion in marketing and sales expenses in
the year that just ended Jan. 31, roughly 58% of total sales. But hey, at least Salesforce.com is
going to turn a profit this year … so long as you overlook conventional accounting practices
and stick to non-GAAP math. I hope you get the drift: Namely, that competition is fierce and
profits are hard to come by in this corner of the cloud computing market. The narrative that’s
spun about cloud computing is reductive: That the NetSuites and Workdays have easy pickings
since the target markets are huge, and because big guys like Oracle ORCL, -0.90% and SAP SAP,
-2.23% aren’t as agile and are beholden to their legacy technology businesses. But clearly the
battle for growth in cloud computing isn’t as easy as all that, considering the massive
marketing spending going on — and the utter lack of profits as a result. Bringing things back to
our latest cloud darling, Box, it’s easy to see this narrative playing out in cloud storage as well as
enterprise software and CRM applications. Box is deeply unprofitable, when key competitor
Dropbox files we can expect a similar story, and big guys like Google GOOG, -0.11% with its Drive
product, which recently saw a price cut, will continue to force Box and its ilk to aggressively
pursue new customers with no focus whatsoever on profitability. To say this unsustainable is an
understatement. Many observers have called this a bubble, and that’s not unreasonable.
Problems with cloud computing stocks Of course, lots of money can be made in a bubble if
you ride the inflation phase. Consider that Workday offered at $28 about 18 months ago and
is now pushing $100 a share. Also, NetSuite priced at $26 a share in December 2007 and is
trading around $100 a share currently. Clearly, investors have been willing to bid these players
up. But if the growth stalls, the valuations will plunge. And there are already cracks in cloud
computing stocks at the beginning of 2014. After a post-earnings pop, Workday has given up
17% from its February peak. And NetSuite is down about 20% in the last month, too. That hints
that sentiment may be cooling off. Another sign is that short interest in Workday has soared
lately, from under 3.6 million shares held short at the end of October to over 6 million shares
held short as of mid-March. There’s also a serious problem brought on by recent disclosures by
Edward Snowden about NSA spying tactics and concerns about privacy in the age of “big data.”
As the New York Times recently reported, Microsoft MSFT, -3.87% and IBM IBM, -5.86% have
already lost out on big contracts thanks to foreign customers fearing for their privacy. Then
there’s the practical hassle and up-front expense that big companies would shoulder if they
transition their platforms to the cloud. Despite all the hype about the advantages of cloud-based
enterprise products, corporations are struggling to squeeze more out of their workers with less.
The largest publicly traded companies have been reluctant to invest in any kind of IT products
over the last few years, and that means big customers could remain hard to come by… and
that the painful and expensive grind of chasing small customers at volume will persist for
some time. There’s nothing wrong with this game, of course, and Amazon AMZN, -0.82% is the
poster child for tech stocks that forgo profits in pursuit of scale. Bears who gripe about the
relative lack of profits have been beaten back at every turn. Still, it seems prudent for
investors to be skeptical about cloud computing right now. When will the bubble burst? Look,
I know that it’s hard to love old tech giants like Oracle and Cisco CSCO, -0.68% . In fact, Oracle
earnings just missed on the top line last week, rekindling the old criticism that Oracle is being
eaten alive by smaller cloud computing competitors. And at the same time, here’s Workday —
co-founded by the guy behind Peoplesoft, a company Oracle famously snatched up in a hostile
2004 takeover — and it’s on track to record over $725 million in revenue this fiscal year,
compared to just $134 million two years ago, a staggering 440% increase. You can see why
cloud stocks have soared. But once that growth slows? Well, all bets are off. Valuations in this
space are grossly overdone and leave no margin for error. Investors swallowing this narrative
may be oversimplifying both the challenges and the opportunities in enterprise technology
stocks right now. Call me a Grinch, but I can’t get excited about money-losing tech start ups that
win multi-billion-dollar valuations even if they happen to cater to whatever buzzword is used
the most in TED Talks or SXSW panels. There may be no signs of a cloud computing breakdown
in the markets just yet, but this will end badly for many cloud computing players. Swing trade
it if you want, and ride the momentum while it lasts… but just be honest with yourself about
these stocks and the risk they carry.
Tech bubble now- burn rates to start ups and high risk
John Cook 14, John Cook is GeekWire's co-founder and editor, a veteran reporter and the
longest-serving journalist on the Pacific Northwest tech startup beat., 9-15-14 "Venture
capitalist Bill Gurley: Tech sector is overheating, and the boom could end," GeekWire,
http://www.geekwire.com/2014/venture-capitalist-bill-gurley-says-things-overheating-techsector-current-boom-cycle-will-end/
All good things must come to an end. And Benchmark’s Bill Gurley — one of the most successful venture capitalists on the
planet — thinks the
current tech boom is starting to show signs of the dot-com boom (and
bust). What worries the backer of Zillow, Uber, NextDoor and Opentable? Burn rates are rising at startups,
and companies are feeling as if they need to raise huge piles of capital in order to
compete. “Every incremental day that goes past I have this feeling a little bit more,” Gurley tells the Wall Street Journal in a
wide-ranging interview. “I think that Silicon Valley as a whole or that the venture-capital
community or startup community is taking on an excessive amount of risk right now.
Unprecedented since ‘’99. In some ways less silly than ’99 and in other ways more silly than in ’99.” Gurley goes on to surmise
that burn
rates — the amount of money that a company is spending — at venturebacked companies are now at an all-time high. He also suggests that more people “are
working for money-losing companies than have been in 15 years,” and that many of the
entrepreneurs today don’t have the “muscle memory” of what happened in the late 90s. “So risk just keeps going higher, higher
and higher. The problem is that because you get there slowly the correcting is really hard and catastrophic. Right now, the cost
of capital is super low here. If the environment
were to change dramatically, the types of
gymnastics that it would require companies to readjust their spend is massive. So I
worry about it constantly.” Interestingly, when I interviewed Gurley at last year’s GeekWire Summit, which took place last
September, Gurley didn’t sound quite as cautious in his remarks. At one point, I asked him about Benchmark’s investment in
Webvan — perhaps the greatest example of 1990s dot-com hubris — and he noted that the firm likely would invest in the
concept again. “They
got too ambitious. They tried to do too much, too fast and then the
bubble happened,” he said. “If you have a high-capital business and you are being
overly aggressive and you surf over a financial reset, you are dead.” Just like Webvan’s crash,
Gurley predicts that we’ll see some high-profile failures in the next year or two, something he says will be healthy for the tech
ecosystem as a whole.
Valuations of tech companies are unreasonably high- we are in a tech bubble
Steve Tobak 14 Steve Tobak is a management consultant, columnist, former senior executive
and author, 3-11-2014, "It’s Official: We Are in a Tech Bubble," Fox Business,
http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2014/03/11/its-official-are-in-tech-bubble/
As a survivor of the first dot-com bubble, you might say I’m particularly sensitive to the suggestion that we may be heading
toward another. Maybe skeptical is a better word. I mean, how can an
industry full of so many brilliant
and innovative people – an industry I was once a proud part of – make the same eminently selfdestructive mistake twice? They can. And they are. Never mind what all the pundits say: Sure, there
are similarities, but it’s different this time. Back then we had companies getting funded on nothing but a concept. We had
startups running Super Bowl ads, going public, and quadrupling on the first day of trading without selling a single anything to
anybody. Well sure it’s different this time. It’s been 14 years, almost to the day, since the Nasdaq peaked at 5,132 before
plummeting back to earth. Fourteen long and eventful years. And remember what they used to say about Internet time, that it
accelerates everything? So that must be something like 210 years in Internet time, right? Or maybe that’s dog years. I always
get those two confused. Of course not everything’s the same as before. But the
underlying causes are, not to
mention some pretty impressive signs staring us right in the face. And perhaps the most telling
sign is how hard all those pundits are working to prove that, this time, it’s for real. That this time, we’re not in a bubble. Here’s
why I think they’re all wrong. Don’t overlook the obvious. The Nasdaq skyrocketed by more than 4,000 points over the fiveyear period leading up to its all-time high on March 10 of 2000. Fast forward to today. Over the
past five years,
the Nasdaq has risen more than 3,000 points. It’s less than 800 points shy of its lofty
peak in the dot-com bubble. And we only need an 18% gain to get there – about the
same rise we’ve seen in just the past six months. Public valuations for Internet and
related hot tech companies are, once again, unjustifiably sky high. LinkedIn’s (LNKD)
price-to-earnings ratio is 942. Guidewire Software’s (GWRE) P/E is 782. Amazon’s
(AMZN) is 632. Netflix’s (NFLX) is 245. Facebook’s (FB) is 116. Twitter (TWTR) has a $30 billion
market cap with no earnings and whopping price-to-sales multiple of 44. Not to mention the dozens of startups that went
public over the past year or two that, like Twitter, have never made money and boast otherworldly price-to-sales multiples in
the high double-digits. Valuations of private companies are even more pumped up. A few weeks
ago,Facebook bought 4-year-old WhatsApp for $19 billion – a record for a Silicon Valley company. And the messaging app has
just 55 employees and a few million dollars in revenue. Last November, Snapchat’s 23-year-old CEO Evan Spiegel turned down
a $3 billion all- cash offer from Mark Zuckerberg and company. Rumor has it that Google (GOOG) offered even more. Clearly,
the messaging startup’s VC backers – IVP, Benchmark, and Lightspeed – are expecting a far bigger return for their investment.
Tech IPOs are just beginning to heat up. According to CB Insights, 600 startups in the IPO pipeline have raised more than $55
billion – that’s nearly $100 million apiece. And 47 venture-backed companies – including Palantir, Pinterest, Box, Spotify, Fab,
and Square – are valued at more than a billion dollars. And those are just the obvious signs.
Unicorn companies, interest rates, and overvalued companies show there is a
bubble
Jim Edwards, Jim is the founding editor of Business Insider UK. The U.S. Supreme
Court cited his work on the death penalty in the concurrence to Baze v. Rees, on the
issue of whether lethal injection is cruel or unusual. 6-9-2015, "The CEO of a $1
billion 'unicorn' startup admits we're in a bubble," Business Insider,
http://www.businessinsider.com/1-billion-unicorn-ceo-yes-its-a-tech-bubble2015-6
I had drinks with one of the $1 billion "unicorn" CEOs last night, in a trendy Noho bar in London. He told me he thinks we're in a tech bubble, and
it's going to end badly for many companies.
Unicorn companies were so-named a few years ago
because it was exceedingly rare for a tech startup in private hands to be worth as
much as $1 billion. But now there are 102 "unicorn" companies. So finding a unicorn CEO to have
drinks with isn't as hard as it used to be. This fact wasn't lost on my unicorn CEO. He was very sure that all these unicorns lying
around means we're in a bubble. I was somewhat shocked to hear this because, normally, when tech founders take vast
sums of money from investors, they have a lengthy and convincing explanation of why their company is fundamentally different from everyone
else's and won't fail when / if the economy runs into trouble. But my guy thinks it's all coming to an end sooner rather than later. Here is the
context. In order to believe there is not a bubble , you have to believe the following narrative: Although tech stocks are at an all-time high, and
private tech startup valuations are hitting astonishing highs (Uber is valued at $41 billion!), this is not a bubble. It's a boom, for sure, and these
companies may be temporarily overvalued. But these companies have real revenues, and the economy is shifting in their direction regardless of
the underlying economic cycle. i.e., money is moving out of TV and newspapers and into apps regardless of whether there is a recession or
growth. When the recession comes, the "no bubble" people say, some companies will get hurt, just like in a regular recession. But we won't see
the kind of full-scale bonkers collapse that we saw in 2000 and 2008. Back in 2000, the tech sector deflated because companies had gone public
with no revenue whatsoever. In 2008, the economy tanked because banks had loaned mortgage money to millions of people who couldn't pay it
back. This time it's different, because these new tech companies are real businesses, the "no bubble" people say .
My unicorn,
however, has been worrying that it is a bubble for months. Here are the things he's really worrying
about: People have no memory of 2000 or 2008: The dotcom crash was 15 years ago. The mortgage crisis was eight
years ago. An entire generation of entrepreneurs under age 30 has no clue what it's like when
everyone runs out of money at once because they were children when it happened
last time. Interest rates: Central banks currently have interest rates set at zero percent.
That means any investment that returns more than zero looks good right now. When central banks raise those rates,
all the marginal business ideas that return just a few percent in profits will be wiped
off the map — because no one will fund them. Valuations: Look at Uber, the unicorn says. Its
market cap is now bigger than Delta Air Lines, Charles Schwab, Salesforce.com and
Kraft Foods. It's allegedly bigger than the value of the entire global taxi market is is
trying to replace. Sure, he says, Uber is a great business and a great company. But $41 billion? Now? Maybe in a
few years time. Private valuations not matching public ones: Some private tech
startups are now valued greater than those on the public markets, post IPO. This seems ... unusual.
Tech startups offering stock at a discount in order to juice their valuations. Box offered stock at a discount to late investors, a factor that
required its valuation to be written higher. About
one in six tech startups increases its valuation not
because the underlying business is believed to be capable of generating more value
but in order to accommodate protections given to preferred investors, The New York Times
reported. Burn rates: Some tech founders are walking around telling investors not to
worry about the fact that they haven't yet worked out their revenue models. They have a
long runway ahead of them while they perfect their products. These founders are banking on the notion that
after their current round of funding there will be another round of funding coming
along. When your current business model is to raise more funding ... that's bubble
talk. Too many business models are dependent on "one thing not happening": In an economy on the upswing, everyone can survive. A
rising tide lifts all boats. But some companies seem to be dependent on a certain single factor not happening, such as being unable to raise a new
round, being unable to become cash flow positive in the near-term, or being unable to stop competitors raiding your workforce in a downturn
(when there is no money to persuade them to stay). "Margin
compression": A lot of tech businesses sell
things, and because the market is good there isn't much price competition. My unicorn sees a
lot of companies that appear to be dependent on customers paying what they're told to
pay. These companies have yet to experience, or survive, a price war with their rivals. Of course, like all unicorn CEOs, my unicorn was pretty
confident that he's going to do just fine in a recession, or when the Fed and the ECB start raising interest rates. In fact, he's looking forward to it,
in part because it will wipe away a lot of not-great, second-rung companies who only exist because so many VCs are diversifying their portfolios
across so many tech sectors. But it won't be pretty, he says. Bubbles
burst, and we're in one.
Consensus agrees there is a tech bubble now
Steven Russolillo, He earned an undergraduate degree from the University of
Delaware and is currently enrolled in a part-time MBA program at Baruch College in
New York. Steven Russolillo is a markets reporter for the Wall Street Journal and
has worked in various roles for the Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. 4-22-2014,
"David Einhorn: ‘We Are Witnessing Our Second Tech Bubble in 15 Years’," WSJ,
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/04/22/david-einhorn-we-are-witnessingour-second-tech-bubble-in-15-years/
Hedge-fund manager David Einhorn just joined the growing list of market watcherswarning about a market bubble. “There
is a clear consensus that we are witnessing our second tech bubble in 15 years,” said Mr.
Einhorn of Greenlight Capital Inc. “What is uncertain is how much further the bubble can expand, and what might pop it.” He
described the current bubble as “an echo of the previous tech bubble, but with fewer large capitalization stocks and much less
public enthusiasm.” There are three
reasons he cited in an investor letter that back his
thesis: the rejection of “conventional valuation methods,” short sellers being forced
to cover positions and big first-day pops for newly minted public companies that
“have done little more than use the right buzzwords and attract the right venture
capital.” He didn’t specify which companies he felt met that criteria. Mr. Einhorn isn’t the first investor to warn of a bubble.
Pricey stock valuations, record high levels of margin debt and a near record number
of money-losing companies going public have made some investors nervous that the
market has rallied far beyond what the fundamentals dictate. Some of the market’s biggest
momentum plays, such as biotech, Internet and social-media stocks, have been hit hard since early March amid concerns that
they have gotten too pricey. Many of those names have recovered some of those losses over the past week and a half. Without
disclosing specific names, Mr. Einhorn said he has shorted a basket of so-called momentum stocks. He highlighted the risk of
such a move: “We have repeatedly noted that it is dangerous to short stocks that have disconnected from traditional valuation
methods,” Mr. Einhorn said. “After all, twice a silly price is not twice as silly; it’s still just silly. ” But now that there is “a
clear consensus” that tech stocks are in a bubble, he said he is more comfortable shorting a basket of
these high-flying stocks.
Tech bubble now
Steve Tobak, is a management consultant, columnist, former senior executive and
author, 10-16-2014, "We’re Definitely in a Tech Bubble," Fox Business,
http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2014/10/16/were-definitely-in-techbubble-now-what/
About a year ago I started seeing early signs of a tech bubble. We weren’t exactly partying like it was 1999, but valuations of
private startups and multiples of certain public sectors were definitely on the frothy side. Nevertheless, we
weren’t in
bubble territory. Not yet. By March of 2014, that ship had sailed. Facebook (FB) took a trip to
Crazytown and acquired WhatsApp for a staggering $19 billion, albeit a drop in the bucket of the social network’s $180 billion
market cap. Meanwhile public multiples and
private valuations of Internet, cloud, social
media and clean-tech companies were sky-high. And the Nasdaq was within spitting
distance of its all-time peak. It was official: We were in a tech bubble. Warren Buffett had a
different view, saying, “I don’t see it. We do not have a big bubble market now.” What does he know? Hedge-fund manager
David Einhornwas emphatic, saying, “Now there
is a clear consensus that we are witnessing our
second tech bubble in 15 years. What is uncertain is how much further the bubble can expand, and what might
pop it." Besides all the obvious signs that the market looked like a duck and quacked
like a duck, what sealed the deal for me was how creative everyone was getting in order to justify the unjustifiable.
Mostly they described a perfectly elastic market with infinite growth potential, the same
sort of loony assumption we used to hear back in 1999. "While some VCs might be young enough to
be subject to the muscle memory analogy, most were around to get burned during the first bubble. And therein lies the rub." Steve Tobak The flaw in the ointment is that
all these hundreds of companies would somehow
magically manage to monetize their ridiculously high valuations at some point in the
future. There was no comprehension that they were actually competing for the same
sets of eyeballs and limited disposal income. The other thing I kept hearing was how there’s no precedent
for this sort of thing. How, this time, it’s different; how fundamentals like revenues and profits don’t apply here. And as I said
back then, most of that crazy talk came “from people who were still in college when the dot-com bubble burst.” Six months
later, Benchmark Capital’s Bill Gurley -- one of the smartest VCs around -- sounded the alarm that
the tech industry
had indeed gotten way ahead of itself. In a Wall Street Journal interview, he said, "I think that Silicon
Valley as a whole … is taking on an excessive amount of risk right now -unprecedented since '99." He talked about how more people are working for money-losing
companies and average burn rates at venture-backed firms are at an all-time high
since the dot-com era -- maybe even higher. And he said, “No one's fearful, everyone's greedy, and it will
eventually end.” And so on. He also said more than half of today’s entrepreneurs weren’t around
for the first bubble, “so they have no muscle memory whatsoever.” As I always say, great minds think alike. Still, you
can’t lay this entirely at the founder’s feet. While some VCs might be young enough to be subject to the muscle memory
analogy, most were around to get burned during the first bubble.
Uber’s value extremely high- tech bubble now
Mark Gongloff, 6-6-2014, "Uber Worth $18 Billion Because Sure, Why Not?,"
Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/06/uber-18billion_n_5460748.html
Now do you believe we're in a new tech bubble? Uber, a controversial car-hiring app, just raised
$1.2 billion in fresh investor cash, giving it a total value of either $17 billion, according to the company,
or $18.2 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Really, though, what difference does a billion here or a billion
there make any more, when money no longer has meaning? Uber, the value of which has quadrupled in less than a year, is
now the most expensive member of the WSJ's "Billion Dollar Startup Club," made up
of companies being financed by venture capital that are worth more than $1 billion.
There are now more than 30 such companies, most of them in tech, including Airbnb ($10 billion),
Dropbox ($10 billion) and Pinterest ($5 billion). Would you like some dubious comparisons to help you put these outlandish
numbers in perspective? Of course you would. Uber is the
second most-valuable startup in history,
after Facebook, according to the WSJ. Uber is now worth more than half of the companies in
the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, including dozens of banks, oil companies and
technology companies. It is worth more than Chipotle or Whole Foods. It is worth more than
ancient-economy companies like Alcoa and Clorox. Uber is now worth
more than all the personal real
estate in the crowded Washington, D.C., suburb of Falls Church, Virginia, according to the
real-estate research firm Redfin. Uber is now worth more than two times the net worth of
billionaire/real-life-Iron-Man Elon Musk (as measured by Forbes). Uber is worth more than George
Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Donald Trump and H. Ross Perot combined. Anyway, you get the idea:
It's worth a lot of money. Whatever money is. We have warned you repeatedly of a tech bubble in
the past couple of years, and we continue to be correct.
Prominence of unicorns shows tech bubble now
Louis Emmerson, Editor-in-Chief | Public Relations Coordinator at Symbid, 7-142015, "Wave of $1 Billion "Unicorns" Sparks Fears of Tech Bubble," Symbid Blog |
Financial Democracy, http://blog.symbid.com/2015/trends/wave-of-1-billionunicorns-sparks-fears-of-tech-bubble/
When social media software firm Sprinklr unveiled its latest funding round earlier this year, it was catapulted into the elite
club of “unicorns,” or tech startups worth at least $1 billion. This came just days after Slack, the business software
collaboration tool, entered the group of well-known names like Uber and Snapchat that are leading the new wave of tech
giants. While unicorns are
supposed to be rare, mythical creatures, the proliferation of
these billion-dollar startups is beginning to cause concern in the very heart of the
fast-moving technology sector, Silicon valley. More than 80 tech firms can now be
called unicorns, according to a newForbes Magazine list. Venture capital research firm CB Insights lists 53 US-based
unicorns, saying the enormous valuations are fuelled by growing excitement among private equity investors seeking to get a
slice of the next tech superstar. The use of the term “unicorn” began with a blog from investor Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures
in late 2013, when there were just 39 of the creatures and an average of four “born”
each year. In 2014 the number rose to 48, according to CB Ventures. While some startup unicorns seem
destined for big things, unicorn fever has raised fears of a dot-com-like bubble. “Dead unicorns”
The unicorns include a handful of startups worth at least $10 billion, a group
sometimes called the “decacorns.” These include China’s Xiaomi, Airbnb, Pinterest and Dropbox, in addition to
Uber and Snapchat. Some equity investors are getting nervous over the trend. “I do think
you’ll see some dead startup unicorns this year,” said Bill Gurley, a partner at the Silicon Valley venture
firm Benchmark, at the South by Southwest festival in March. Gurley, who has been a leading voice of caution on unicorns, said
in a blog post that both investors and
startups are pushing too hard, ignoring traditional
standards of risk. “We are in a risk bubble,” he said. “Companies are taking on huge burn rates to justify spending the
capital they are raising in these enormous financings, putting their long-term viability in jeopardy.” In a running Twitter
conversation on the subject, Danielle Morrill of the research firm Mattermark said “I’ve narrowed it down to 61 potential dead
unicorns. This is the stuff everyone is talking about but no one will publish.” Highly prominent venture capitalist Marc
Andreessen, one of the founders of Netscape during the dot-com era, expressed similar concerns in a series of tweets last year,
saying too many
startups are “burning” cash too quickly. “When the market turns, and it
will turn, we will find out who has been swimming without trunks on: many high burn rate companies
will VAPORIZE,” he said. Mark Cuban, an early dot-com entrepreneur, said on his blog that the current
situation is “worse than the tech bubble of 2000″ because of “angel” investors
investing in apps and tech firms with little scrutiny. “I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that most
of these individual angels and crowd funders are currently under water in their investments,” he wrote. “Because there is
ZERO liquidity for any of those investments. None. Zero. Zip.” Heading for a fall Perhaps the market
shakedown has already begun. Online retail startup Fab.com, which raised $300 million and joined the unicorn club last year,
ended up selling most of its assets in March to the manufacturing firm PCH in a deal reported to be worth just $15 million.
Another former unicorn, the gaming service OnLive, was acquired recently by Sony for an undisclosed price. Many
startups have been able to raise cash from eager investors without heading to Wall
Street for a public share offering. This also means the firms are not subject to the
same scrutiny and publicly traded company for finances and governance. There’s a
growing sense in Silicon Valley – particularly among the investor community – of a
lack of transparency in the way these startups are being valued. Anant Sundaram, a professor
specialising in corporate valuations, said that while financial data on these unicorns is often limited he is nonetheless
surprised by how few have demonstrated an ability to grow revenues and establish a sustainable business. “ Based
on
historical data, I wouldn’t be surprised if a vast majority of these firms fail to live up
to their valuations,” Sundaram told AFP. Still, he said that these types of investments are part of the process of
innovation and “creative destruction” which fuel the economy. If this is beginning to sound like the dotcom boom all over again, Sundaram noted that while in the last cycle there many businesses with high valuations
going bust, this did produce some standout successes like Google and eBay.
Too many unicorns
Maria Aspan, Maria Aspan is a senior editor at Inc. magazine, where she runs the
Money section. She was previously a senior editor at American Banker, where she
won multiple "Best in Business" awards. 6-9-2015, "Why Uber's $50 Billion
Valuation Could Burst the Tech Bubble," Inc, http://www.inc.com/mariaaspan/kevin-kinsella-on-uber-and-unicorns.html
Veteran venture capitalist Kevin Kinsella has a message for fast-growing startups: Take the money and run--far away from
Uber. Kinsella, founder of Avalon Ventures and an investor in tech and life sciences companies, has been
sounding the alarm recently about the high valuations of tech companies. He's
particularly concerned about the rise of so-called "unicorns," or private companies valued at
more than $1 billion--though he says that as long as investors are showering some startups with cash, entrepreneurs should
embrace unicorn status. "If the bank window is open and they're giving away money on the cheap, I think entrepreneurs
should be backing their trucks up," the La Jolla, California-based investor said in an interview last week. "From an
entrepreneur's standpoint, it's a lovely day out there." That's particularly
true for Uber, the on-demand car
service now reportedly valued at an incredible $50 billion--more than the market
capitalization of many huge, public incumbents, including FedEx and Salesforce.com. Kinsella calls
himself a fan of Uber's service ("I use it; all my friends use it; it's providing a terrific experience"), but he worries that any
problems with the company or a similar-size market leader could burst the tech bubble. "If there was a serious
hiccup in Uber's valuation, since it's the lead unicorn--if it got a cold, I think the rest
of the unicorns would get pneumonia," he says. Uber did not immediately respond to a request for
comment. It's a familiar worry about the outsize influence that one dominant, successful company can have on its industry; if
Uber were in banking, it might be deemed "too big to fail." And Kinsella doesn't see many obvious ways for the company to
avoid eventually sparking a collapse in tech startup valuations, unless Uber can get similar buy-in from public investors in an
IPO. "Maybe one of these unicorns, maybe the leading one--maybe it should go public," he says. "If Uber or any
other
unicorn gets the public markets to agree that yeah, it's worth $50 billion, that could
avoid" bursting the tech valuation bubble. It's worth noting that a very small percentage of startups reach
unicorn status, though their numbers are growing at an accelerated rate. There are 110 unicorns, worth a collective
$402 billion, including 18 U.S. companies that have reached the $1 billion mark since the
start of 2015, according to CB Insights. That's far too many, according to Kinsella, whose most famous
investments include the game maker Zynga and the Broadway musical Jersey Boys . He blames his fellow investors for not
exercising more restraint when handing out those truckloads of money. "There's a serious imbalance
between capital available to invest and ideas that are worth investing in," he says. But for
entrepreneurs, "you should take the highest valuation you can," Kinsella says. "Your job is to conserve capital; you just need to
do that very diligently and with a great deal of caution. Now that may lead to you not needing to raise equity at all. But if you
have to raise money, take it at the highest valuation you can get."
Tech Bubble Now- Many similar warning signs from 2000
Bill Maris, Bill Maris is president and managing partner at Google Ventures. 3-242015, "Tech Bubble? Maybe, Maybe Not," TechCrunch,
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/24/tech-bubble-maybe-maybe-not/
The case for a bubble Our data analysis reveals more than sunshine and lollipops. Here are
six troubling signs
that suggest we may be in another tech bubble. 1. Investors are putting more money
into late-stage rounds If you believe late-stage financing is replacing IPOs for fundraising, this might not be a
worrisome sign. Still, it’s easy to see the similarity to 2000: 2. Private company valuations
are rising Until now, our data have shown an environment that is milder than 2000. Today’s valuations tell a different
story: 3. Valuations are increasing faster than venture fundraising Here’s another concerning
chart: 4. High-end IPO valuations are rising dramatically IPO valuations have increased across the
board, but the most successful companies are going public at much higher valuations (or
perhaps they’re just waiting longer). 5. Late-stage financing is displacing exits Both late-stage valuations
and acquisition price tags are going up. Meanwhile, IPO valuations are going down . Late-stage financing and
acquisitions are, in effect, replacing IPOs. 6. Exit ratios are dropping The data indicate that
IPO valuations are not growing as fast as late-stage private company valuations. In fact, if we look at the ratio of IPO
valuation to late-stage valuation, we can see that this ratio has been declining since
2009. This suggests that late-stage investors might expect lower returns than in the
past.
Unicorns causing fear over tech bubble
Louis Emmerson, Editor-in-Chief | Public Relations Coordinator at Symbid, 7-142015, "Wave of $1 Billion "Unicorns" Sparks Fears of Tech Bubble," Symbid Blog |
Financial Democracy, http://blog.symbid.com/2015/trends/wave-of-1-billionunicorns-sparks-fears-of-tech-bubble/
When social media software firm Sprinklr unveiled its latest funding round earlier this year, it was catapulted into the elite
club of “unicorns,” or tech startups worth at least $1 billion. This came just days after Slack, the business software
collaboration tool, entered the group of well-known names like Uber and Snapchat that are leading the new wave of tech
giants. While unicorns are
supposed to be rare, mythical creatures, the proliferation of these
billion-dollar startups is beginning to cause concern in the very heart of the fast-moving technology
sector, Silicon valley. More than 80 tech firms can now be called unicorns, according to a newForbes
Magazine list. Venture capital research firm CB Insights lists 53 US-based unicorns, saying the enormous
valuations are fuelled by growing excitement among private equity investors seeking
to get a slice of the next tech superstar. The use of the term “unicorn” began with a blog from investor Aileen
Lee of Cowboy Ventures in late 2013, when there were just 39 of the creatures and an average
of four “born” each year. In 2014 the number rose to 48, according to CB Ventures. While some
startup unicorns seem destined for big things, unicorn fever has raised fears of a dot-com-like
bubble. “Dead unicorns” The unicorns include a handful of startups worth at least $10 billion, a group sometimes called the
“decacorns.” These include China’s Xiaomi, Airbnb, Pinterest and Dropbox, in addition to Uber and Snapchat. Some
equity investors are getting nervous over the trend.
Turn: Tech bubble is coming soon, increasing growth is unstable
Jeff Reeves, editor of InvestorPlace.com, 03-27-14
“Is cloud computing the next tech bubble?” Online:
“http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cloud-computing-the-next-tech-bubble-2014-03-27”
Box Inc., the latest player to ride the wave of Wall Street optimism for cloud computing, just
filed its S-1 this week to go public. But while the media circus around “the cloud” continues and
another baby-faced 20-something CEO gets ready to ring the opening bell on Wall Street,
investors need to start getting real about the current bubble in tech stocks. Here’s a heaping
helping of reality to get you started, direct from Box’s filing with the SEC: “We have a history
of cumulative losses, and we do not expect to be profitable for the foreseeable future.” “We
have incurred significant losses in each period since our inception in 2005. We incurred net
losses of $50.3 million in our fiscal year ended December 31, 2011, $112.6 million in our fiscal
year ended January 31, 2013, and $168.6 million in our fiscal year ended January 31, 2014. As
of January 31, 2014, we had an accumulated deficit of $361.2 million.” If that’s not bad
enough, the company plans to raise just $250 million in its IPO — not even enough to cover two
years of losses at the current cash bleed. The kicker? Like many Silicon Valley firms, Box is
implementing a dual class structure where insiders with Class B stock get 10 votes per share
while the rabble who come in via IPO get just a single vote per share — ensuring that Box can
raise money without ceding any power. I mean, what could go wrong? For the record, I don’t
think Box CEO Aaron Levie is a poor leader with bad intentions. The bottom line is that rightly or
wrongly, Wall Street is salivating over companies like Box right now… and taking the cloud
storage player to market at a time the market is ready, willing and eager just makes sense. And
on some level, the Wall Street enthusiasm for “the cloud” is warranted. There is undoubtedly
growth in the sector; Research firm IHS recently estimated cloud-related business spending
will hit $235 billion by 2017 — up 60% double from 2013’s tally of $145 billion — and even a
modest piece of that market can add up to big revenue potential. Profits, on the other hand,
are much harder to come by. And that goes for every corner of the cloud computing space.
Take Workday WDAY, +0.20% , a stock that’s a different than Box because it offers cloudbased software for payroll and HR managers. But it still is part of the cloud zeitgeist. Anyway,
Workday reported earnings in February, and its sales and marketing expenses on the year that
ended Jan. 31 tallied $197 million — more than 55% of the $354 million in total revenue
brought in across the prior 12 months. Workday went public in 2012 operating at a deep loss,
and still isn’t projected to turn a profit this year or next. The same is true for rival NetSuite N, 0.63% , which reported big losses again in its latest earnings report, characterized by $210
million spent on marketing and sales over the year that ended Dec. 31, over $333 million in
revenue — a 63% spend rate. NetSuite has been public since the very end of 2007 and hasn’t
turned a profit either, however, as its need to land new customers trumps any desire to run a
profitable business. Of course, then there’s yet ANOTHER competitor to NetSuite and
Workday in Salesforce.com CRM, +1.46% . The company has a much bigger client list and is
more established, with total revenue of $3.8 billion… but recently has ramped up marketing
efforts to compete. Salesforce burned almost $2.2 billion in marketing and sales expenses in
the year that just ended Jan. 31, roughly 58% of total sales. But hey, at least Salesforce.com is
going to turn a profit this year … so long as you overlook conventional accounting practices
and stick to non-GAAP math. I hope you get the drift: Namely, that competition is fierce and
profits are hard to come by in this corner of the cloud computing market. The narrative that’s
spun about cloud computing is reductive: That the NetSuites and Workdays have easy pickings
since the target markets are huge, and because big guys like Oracle ORCL, -0.90% and SAP SAP,
-2.23% aren’t as agile and are beholden to their legacy technology businesses. But clearly the
battle for growth in cloud computing isn’t as easy as all that, considering the massive
marketing spending going on — and the utter lack of profits as a result. Bringing things back to
our latest cloud darling, Box, it’s easy to see this narrative playing out in cloud storage as well as
enterprise software and CRM applications. Box is deeply unprofitable, when key competitor
Dropbox files we can expect a similar story, and big guys like Google GOOG, -0.11% with its Drive
product, which recently saw a price cut, will continue to force Box and its ilk to aggressively
pursue new customers with no focus whatsoever on profitability. To say this unsustainable is an
understatement. Many observers have called this a bubble, and that’s not unreasonable.
Problems with cloud computing stocks Of course, lots of money can be made in a bubble if
you ride the inflation phase. Consider that Workday offered at $28 about 18 months ago and
is now pushing $100 a share. Also, NetSuite priced at $26 a share in December 2007 and is
trading around $100 a share currently. Clearly, investors have been willing to bid these players
up. But if the growth stalls, the valuations will plunge. And there are already cracks in cloud
computing stocks at the beginning of 2014. After a post-earnings pop, Workday has given up
17% from its February peak. And NetSuite is down about 20% in the last month, too. That hints
that sentiment may be cooling off. Another sign is that short interest in Workday has soared
lately, from under 3.6 million shares held short at the end of October to over 6 million shares
held short as of mid-March. There’s also a serious problem brought on by recent disclosures by
Edward Snowden about NSA spying tactics and concerns about privacy in the age of “big data.”
As the New York Times recently reported, Microsoft MSFT, -3.87% and IBM IBM, -5.86% have
already lost out on big contracts thanks to foreign customers fearing for their privacy. Then
there’s the practical hassle and up-front expense that big companies would shoulder if they
transition their platforms to the cloud. Despite all the hype about the advantages of cloud-based
enterprise products, corporations are struggling to squeeze more out of their workers with less.
The largest publicly traded companies have been reluctant to invest in any kind of IT products
over the last few years, and that means big customers could remain hard to come by… and
that the painful and expensive grind of chasing small customers at volume will persist for
some time. There’s nothing wrong with this game, of course, and Amazon AMZN, -0.82% is the
poster child for tech stocks that forgo profits in pursuit of scale. Bears who gripe about the
relative lack of profits have been beaten back at every turn. Still, it seems prudent for
investors to be skeptical about cloud computing right now. When will the bubble burst? Look,
I know that it’s hard to love old tech giants like Oracle and Cisco CSCO, -0.68% . In fact, Oracle
earnings just missed on the top line last week, rekindling the old criticism that Oracle is being
eaten alive by smaller cloud computing competitors. And at the same time, here’s Workday —
co-founded by the guy behind Peoplesoft, a company Oracle famously snatched up in a hostile
2004 takeover — and it’s on track to record over $725 million in revenue this fiscal year,
compared to just $134 million two years ago, a staggering 440% increase. You can see why
cloud stocks have soared. But once that growth slows? Well, all bets are off. Valuations in this
space are grossly overdone and leave no margin for error. Investors swallowing this narrative
may be oversimplifying both the challenges and the opportunities in enterprise technology
stocks right now. Call me a Grinch, but I can’t get excited about money-losing tech start ups that
win multi-billion-dollar valuations even if they happen to cater to whatever buzzword is used
the most in TED Talks or SXSW panels. There may be no signs of a cloud computing breakdown
in the markets just yet, but this will end badly for many cloud computing players. Swing trade
it if you want, and ride the momentum while it lasts… but just be honest with yourself about
these stocks and the risk they carry.
Advantage 3 – Privacy
1NC – Privacy Frontline
Turn: Giving up privacy helps economy
JIM HARPER Updated Aug. 7, 2010. It's Modern Trade: Web Users Get as Much as They Give
http://allthingsd.com/20100809/its-modern-trade-web-users-get-as-much-as-they-give/
The reason why a company like Google can spend millions and millions of dollars on free services
like its search engine, Gmail, mapping tools, Google Groups and more is because of online advertising that trades
in personal information. And it's not just Google. Facebook, Yahoo, MSN and thousands of blogs, news sites, and comment
boards use advertising to support what they do. And personalized advertising is more valuable than advertising
aimed at just anyone. Marketers will pay more to reach you if you are likely to use their
products or services. (Perhaps online tracking makes everyone special!) If Web users supply less information to the Web, the
Web will supply less information to them. Free content won't go away if consumers decline to allow personalization, but there will
be less of it. Bloggers and operators of small websites will have a little less reason to produce the stuff that makes our Internet an
endlessly fascinating place to visit. As an operator of a small government-transparency web site, WashingtonWatch.com, I add new
features for my visitors when there is enough money to do it. More money
spent on advertising means more
tools for American citizens to use across the web.
Weigh consequences — especially when responding to terrorism.
Isaac 2
Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the
Study of Democracy and Public Life at Indiana University-Bloomington, 2002 (“Ends, Means, and
Politics,” Dissent, Volume 49, Issue 2, Spring, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via
EBSCOhost, p. 35-37)
As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have
taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility . The
concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from
three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one’s intention does not ensure the
achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with
morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail
impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean
conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice ,
moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in
injustice . [end page 35] This is why, from the standpoint of politics—as opposed to religion—
pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in
principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is
as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action,
rather than the motives of action, that is most significant . Just as the alignment with “good”
may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of “good” that generates evil . This is the
lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one’s goals be sincere or
idealistic; it is equally important , always , to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals
and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral
absolutism inhibits this judgment . It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes
arrogance . And it undermines political effectiveness .
No NSA abuses – checks the internal link
Lowry 2015,
Rich, Editor, the National Review, 5-27-2015, "Lowry: NSA data program faces death by bumper
sticker," Salt Lake Tribune,
http://www.sltrib.com/csp/mediapool/sites/sltrib/pages/printfriendly.csp?id=2557534
You can listen to orations on the NSA program for hours and be outraged by its violation of
our liberties, inspired by the glories of the Fourth Amendment and prepared to mount the barricades to stop the NSA in its
tracks — and still have no idea what the program actually does . That’s what the opponents leave out or
distort, since their case against the program becomes so much less compelling upon fleeting contact with reality. The program
involves so-called metadata, information about phone calls, but not the content of the calls — things like the numbers called, the
time of the call, the duration of the call. The phone companies have all this information, which the NSA acquires from them. What
happens next probably won’t shock you, and it shouldn’t. As
Rachel Brand of the Privacy and Civil Liberties
Oversight Board writes, “It is stored in a database that may be searched only by a handful of
trained employees, and even they may search it only after a judge has determined that there
is evidence connecting a specific phone number to terrorism.” The charge of domestic spying is redolent of
the days when J. Edgar Hoover targeted and harassed Martin Luther King Jr. Not only is there zero evidence of any such
abuse, it isn’t even possible based on the NSA database alone. There are no names with the numbers. As
former prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy points out, whitepages.com has more personal identifying information. The NSA is
hardly a rogue agency. Its program is overseen by a special panel of judges, and it has briefed
Congress about its program for years.
Privacy violations inevitable – tech and corporations
Goldsmith, 2015
Jack the Henry L. Shattuck Professor at Harvard Law School, The Ends of Privacy, The New
Rambler, Apr. 06, 2015 (reviewing Bruce Schneier, Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to
Collect Your Data and Control Your World (2015)). Published Version
http://newramblerreview.com/images/files/Jack- Goldsmith_Review-of-Bruce-Schneier.pdf
The truth is that consumers love the benefits of digital goods and are willing to give up traditionally
private information in exchange for the manifold miracles that the Internet and big data bring .
Apple and Android each offer more than a million apps, most of which are built upon this model, as are countless other Internet
services. More generally, big
data promises huge improvements in economic efficiency and
productivity, and in health care and safety. Absent abuses on a scale we have not yet seen,
the public’s attitude toward giving away personal information in exchange for these benefits
will likely persist, even if the government requires firms to make more transparent how they
collect and use our data. One piece of evidence for this is that privacy-respecting search engines and email services do not
capture large market shares. In general these services are not as easy to use, not as robust, and not as efficacious as their personaldata-heavy competitors. Schneier understands and discusses all this. In
the end his position seems to be that we
should deny ourselves some (and perhaps a lot) of the benefits big data because the costs to
privacy and related values are just too high. We “have to stop the slide” away from privacy, he
says, not because privacy is “profitable or efficient, but because it is moral.” But as Schneier also
recognizes, privacy is not a static moral concept. “Our personal definitions of privacy are both cultural and
situational,” he acknowledges. Consumers are voting with their computer mice and smartphones for more digital goods in exchange
for more personal data. The
culture increasingly accepts the giveaway of personal information for the
benefits of modern computerized life. This trend is not new. “The idea that privacy can’t be invaded
at all is utopian,” says Professor Charles Fried of Harvard Law School. “There are amounts and kinds of information which
previously were not given out and suddenly they have to be given out. People adjust their behavior and conceptions accordingly.”
That is Fried in the 1970 Newsweek story, responding to an earlier generation’s panic about big data and data mining.
The same
point applies today, and will apply as well when the Internet of things makes today’s data
mining seem as quaint as 1970s-era computation.
No Moral Objections to Surveillance – even new concerns don’t assume the
strength of activist potential
Sagar 15—Rahul Sagar, Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton University, 2015 (“Against
Moral Absolutism: Surveillance and Disclosure After Snowden,” Cambridge Journals Online, June
12th, Available online at
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9749725&fileId=S
0892679415000040, Accessed on 7/15/15)
I have challenged the conspiratorial view that state surveillance serves to reinforce the
hegemony of a shadowy elite. A basic premise of the discussion that follows is that in
contemporary liberal democracies, communications surveillance is a legitimate activity. What,
then, ought to be the bounds of such surveillance and how far can we be confident that these bounds are being observed? In order
to ascertain the rightful bounds on communications surveillance we need to weigh the interests it furthers against those it
threatens. The interest it furthers is national security. Greenwald questions this link on a number of grounds. He argues that
surveillance is a disproportionate response to the threat of terrorism, which has been “plainly exaggerated” because the “risk of any
even if the
threat of terrorism is real, surveillance isunjustified because to “venerate physical safety above all other values” means accepting “a
n employed
to further other national or commercial interests. He asks how, for instance, does “spying on negotiation sessions at an economic
miss the
mark. That terrorist plots thus far have been amateurish does not mean that terrorists will not learn and eventually succeed in
The terror
in terrorism comes from the unpredictability and the brutality of the violence inflicted on
civilians. There is a difference between voluntarily undertaking a somewhat risky bicycle ride
in rush hour traffic and being unexpectedly blown to bits while commuting to work. Finally, it is
widely accepted that countries have a right to pursue their national interests, subject of
course to relevant countervailing ethical considerations. It is not hard to imagine how intercepting Chancellor
Angela Merkel’s conversation could serve the United States’ national security interests (for example, it could provide intelligence on
Europe’s dealings with Russia). What are the countervailing values that have been overlooked in this case? The President’s Review
Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, set up in the wake of Snowden’s disclosures, warns that surveillance of
foreign leaders must be “respectful.” But the justification offered is strategic rather than moral: the group urges caution out of
tion would have weak legs since
American allies, including Germany, reportedly engage in similar practices
acknowledges, the NSA’s surveillance of foreign leaders is “unremarkable” because “countries have spied on heads of state for
surveillance undermines national security because “it swamps the intelligence agencies with so much data that they cannot possibly
so
how in
terms of success in combating terrorism. But these criticisms are equally unpersuasive. It is certainly possible that a surveillance
program could generate so much raw data that an important piece of information is overlooked. But in such a case the appropriate
response would not be to shut down the programbut rather to bulk up the processing power and manpower devoted to it. Finally,
both the President’s Review Group and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board have examined the efficacy of the NSA’s
programs. Both report that the NSA’s foreign surveillance programs have contributed to more than fifty counterterrorism
investigations, leading them to conclude that the NSA “does in fact play an important role in the nation’s effort to prevent terrorist
national
security is not the only value liberal democracies and their citizens deem important. Hence we need to consider how far
communications surveillance impinges on other important interests and values. Greenwald identifies two major harms. The first is
political in nature. Mass surveillance is said to stifle dissent because “a citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly
becomes a compliant and fearful one.” Compliance
nonconformist behavior, individuals
occurs because, anticipating being shamed or condemned for
who know they are being watched “think only in line with what
is expected and demanded.”
“indifference or support of those who think themselves exempt invariably allows for the misuse of power to spread far beyond its
. The more extreme claim, that surveillance
furthers thought control, is neither logical nor supported by the facts. It is logically flawed
because accusing someone of trying to control your mind proves that they have not succeeded
in doing so. On a more practical level, the fate met by states that have tried to perfect mass control—
the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic, for example—suggests that surveillance
cannot eliminate dissent. It is also not clear that surveillance can undermine dissident movements as easily as Greenwald
posits. The United States’ record, he writes, “is suffused with examples of groups and individuals being
placed under government surveillance by virtue of their dissenting views and activism—Martin Luther King, Jr., the
eeds pointing out
that surveillance
did not prevent the end of segregation, retreat from Vietnam, and the rise of
environmental consciousness. This record suggests that dissident movements that have public opinion
on their side are not easily intimidated by state surveillance (a point reinforced by the Arab Spring).
Surveillance may make it harder for individuals to associate with movements on the far ends of the political spectrum. But why
must a liberal democracy refrain from monitoring extremist groups such as neo-Nazis and
anarchists? There is the danger that officials could label as “extreme” legitimate movements seeking to challenge the prevailing
order. Yet the possibility that surveillance programs could expand beyond their original ambit
does not constitute a good reason to end surveillance altogether. A more proportionate response is to see
that surveillance powers are subject to oversight. The second harm Greenwald sees surveillance posing is personal in nature.
Surveillance is said to undermine the very essence of human freedom because the
“range of choices people consider
when they believe that others are watching is . . . far more limited than what they might do
when acting in a private realm
-based surveillance is viewed as especially damaging in this respect because
this is “where virtually everything is done” in our day, making it the place “where we develop and express our very personality and
sense of self.” Hence, “to permit surveillance to take root on the Internet would mean subjecting virtually all forms of human
respects. First, it
exaggerates the extent to which our self-development hinges upon electronic
communication channels and other related activities that leave electronic traces. The arrival
of the Internet certainly opens new vistas, but it does not entirely close earlier ones. A person who fears
what her browsing habits might communicate to the authorities can obtain texts offline.
Similarly, an individual who fears transmitting materials electronically can do so in person , as
Snowden did when communicating with Greenwald. There are costs to communicating in such “old-fashioned” ways, but these costs
are neither new nor prohibitive. Second, a
substantial part of our self-development takes place in public.
We become who we are through personal, social, and intellectual engagements, but these
engagements do not always have to be premised on anonymity. Not everyone wants to hide all the time,
which is why public engagement—through social media or blogs, for instance—is such a central aspect of the contemporary
Internet.
Transparency is inevitable and aids psychological and ethical self-development
– welcome to Post-Privacy
Seemann, 2015,
Michael Seemann studied Applied Cultural Studies in Lünebur, Now he blogs at mspr0.de and
writes for various media like Rolling Stone, TIME online, SPEX, Spiegel Online, c’t and the DU
magazine “ Digital Tailspin Ten Rules for the Internet After Snowden” The Network Notebooks
series March 2015 http://networkcultures.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/03/NN09_Digital_Tailspin_SP.pdf
POST-PRIVACY: TRANSPARENCY AS A STOIC EXERCISE In his book Post-Privacy: Prima leben ohne Privatsphäre (Post-Privacy: Living
just Fine Without Privacy),18 Christian Heller embraces an even more radical strategy. He argues that it
is time to say
goodbye to privacy altogether and to embrace the inevitable: transparency. He highlights, amongst other
points, the fact that privacy as we know it today is a relatively new form of coexistence, and one that has not only been
advantageous. The
private sphere has, for the longest time, been the place of the oppression of women,
for example. Contrast this with the gay rights movements, which were among the first to show how social
progress can be achieved by making ultimately personal information public. Since we are
unable to halt technological progress, we'd better get used to the idea of total transparency,
says Heller. Heller himself acts out this idea in practice. He documents all of his daily routines, his finances, and large amounts of
highly personal information in a publicly accessible wiki.19 It is easy to dismiss this as a self-indulgent discovery trip, but Heller is
undeniably radicalizing an issue that has become the norm, in social networks anyway, namely the fact that formerly private matters
are explicitly being made public. Unlike many Facebook users, however, Heller doesn’t deceive himself.
He is highly aware
of the fact that his data can be used and abused, by anyone, at any time, for any purpose. In this sense, postprivacy as a strategy complies well with Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s dictum of antifragility. Post-privacy is a practical
exercise in stoicism: basing your assumptions on the worst case scenario – in this case, that all
information is public by default – will not give you a false sense of security, but rather will allow you to
make plans in such a way that, should this worst case actually occur, you will not be
confronted with unsolvable problems. If you keep in mind that all data is accessible, in one
way or another, this can actually reduce anxiety – one of the more negative effects of
surveillance.
The current balance between security and privacy is perfect
Karen J. Greenberg, [ the executive director of the Center on Law and Security], APRIL 12,
2007
Karen J. Greenberg, Jeff Grossman, Sybil Perez, Joe Ortega, Jim Diggins, Wendy Bedenbaugh,
[SECRECY AND GOVERNMENT: America Faces the Future PRIVACY IN THE AGE OF NATIONAL
SECURITY] Pgs. 74-75
People often talk about the threats to our privacy under the Patriot Act and other Bush
administration programs, but the actual notion of what privacy is – whether we have a right
to it, why we think we have a right to it, and whether we even want it – seems to be
somewhat up for grabs. The issue brings together the government, the corporate sector, the medical sector, and many
diverse specialties that we do not usually combine in the same conversation. I see today’s discussion as the beginning of a longterm
dialogue about these ideas, which hopefully will come into focus as we talk about them. Privacy is a generational issue, and the way
in which policymakers and commentators address it today may be irrelevant sooner than we think. My mother will not use her
credit card at the supermarket because she does not want people to know what groceries she buys. That is her notion of privacy.
One of my brothers will not go through the E-ZPass lane at the tollbooth because he does not like the idea of anybody knowing
where he has been or where he is going. My daughter and her friends, however, post photos and trade notes on Facebook. They are
an open book to one another and they do not care. They have a very different conception of what privacy should be. I
think that
the idea of protecting privacy, as we understand it, is already outdated. Over time, we should
begin to understand a new concept of privacy that is very much within us. Prof. Burt Neuborne: We
are going to ask difficult and theoretical questions about the nature of privacy and how it evolved as an idea. In thinking about the
future, this panel will also discuss the notion of what privacy will look like in the technologically explosive world of the 21st century,
why we should care, and what parameters should be imposed upon it. Valerie Caproni:
Given my position as
general counsel for the FBI, I suspect that few people will be surprised when I say that the
primacy of privacy has not been sacrificed to the demands of national security or law
enforcement. I do think that the topic needs to be discussed and that there must be public
debate about it. I recognize that many of the panelists today feel that the accretion of power
in the executive branch has endangered privacy and that we seem to have an endless desire
to collect information on citizens. Nevertheless, it is my strong belief that the FBI is striking
the correct balance between privacy and security (I do not have sufficiently in-depth
knowledge to talk about other federal agencies). Too often, the debate is phrased in terms of
an either/or proposition: you can either respect privacy or have national security, but not
both. I reject that notion. The question is one of balance. From the Bureau’s perspective, the
notion of balancing security and privacy is nothing new. Benjamin Franklin said, “They that
can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety.” I think we respect the notion of a middle ground. For all of our almost 100 years of existence, the FBI
has been in the business of balancing national security and civil liberties. We view privacy as one element of civil liberties. There
have admittedly been times in our history when we did not do a good job of balancing those equities. The abuses of the 1960s and
’70s that led to the Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House are prime examples of the balance being
askew, but things have changed since those days. The agents now working at the Bureau were children in the days of the
counterintelligence programs known as “COINTELPRO.” Those programs are not a part of any current agent’s history.
2NC – Privacy Hurts Economy
Privacy hampers economic growth – things like online advertising that use
personal information is key for companies to effectively market and sell their
goods - Harper
Secret surveillance programs are necessary
Michael Sheehan was appointed a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of
International Organizations . Secrecy and Government: America Faces the Future. April 12, 2007
So there are different levels of secrecy; the secrecies involved in discrete acts and the
secrecies involved in entire state actions. But to get back to what we are concerned with today, we are talking
about issues involv- ing counterterrorism and some of the programs involved. I think that most people would agree that the
government needs to keep certain secrets. The issues really revolve around pro- grams, not
secrets – secret programs. Three of them have been mentioned here today: the NSA wiretap program, which
President Bush initiat- ed after September 11th; the national security letter program that has been internally
investigat- ed by the FBI; and the NYPD programs looking at some of the actions prior to the Republican National Convention
here in New York City. In my view, each
one of these programs was jus- tif ied in itself and was
generally well-needed. But each of them probably suf- fered a little from not get- ting the
proper legislative action and oversight to prevent abuse. The NSA wiretap program, which we wrote
about here at the Center on Law and Security, was in my view well-warranted, and the presi- dent should have gotten the
proper authority from the Congress. And he would have gotten it. I believe that if he had partnered with the Congress to give
them aggressive oversight, he would have gotten that also. I believe that both sides of the aisle would have been able to provide constructive oversight of that program, and it would have worked much better. Perhaps the program would not have
been in the jeopardy that it is in right now, although it still is going on. You
do not hear a lot of squawking from
the Democratically-controlled Congress because they recognize its value. Now, with proper
over- sight, I think they are a little bit more comfort- able with it.
Surveillance reinforces the equal protection of the law – key to equitable
morals
Taylor 05
[In Praise of Big Brother: Why We Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Government
Surveillance; James Stacey Taylor; Public Affairs Quarterly Vol. 19, No. 3 (Jul., 2005), pp. 227-246
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical Publications
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40441413] //duff
A system of constant State surveillance would have other advantages, too. Under the current criminal justice
system a wealthy defendant who is innocent of the charges that she is faced with can use her
wealth to hire private investigators to demonstrate her innocence, either by finding persons who
witnessed the crime of which she is accused, or by finding persons who can provide her with a legitimate alibi. This option is
not open to poorer defendants who are similarly innocent, but who cannot afford to hire
private investigators. Since this is so, innocent, poor defendants are more likely than innocent,
wealthy defendants to accept plea bargains, or to be convicted of crimes that they did not
commit. If, however, a poor person were to be accused of a crime in a State that subjected its citizens to
constant surveillance, the judge in her case would be morally justified (indeed, would be morally
required) in enabling the defense to secure information that would prove her innocence, and
that would have been gathered by the State's surveillance devices. A State's use of constant
surveillance could thus reduce the number of persons who are wrongfully convicted. This would
not only be good in itself, but it would also lead to a more equitable justice system, for the disparity in
wrongful conviction rates between the wealthy (who could use their wealth to prove their innocence) and the
poor could be eliminated.
Turn: Innovation thrives with reduced privacy and more surveillance which is k2
innovation
Cohen, American legal scholar, 2014
Julie [She is also currently a member of the Advisory Board for public interest organizations
Electronic Privacy Information Center[2] and Public Knowledge. Along with academic articles,
Cohen is the author of Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code, and the Play of Everyday
Practice and a co-author of casebook Copyright in a Global Information Economy.]“WHAT
PRIVACY IS FOR”, Pg. 17-18, Online: http://www.harvardlawreview.org/wpcontent/uploads/pdfs/vol126_cohen.pdf
There is, however, a new flavor of innovation on the scene: Big Data. “Big Data” is shorthand
for the combination of a technology and a process. The technology is a configuration of
information-processing hardware capable of sifting, sorting, and interrogating vast quantities
of data in very short times. The process involves mining the data for patterns, distilling the patterns into predictive
analytics, and applying the analytics to new data. Together, the technology and the process comprise a
technique for converting data flows into a particular, highly data-intensive type of
knowledge.49 The technique of Big Data can be used to analyze data about the physical world — for example, climate or
seismological data — or it can be used to analyze physical, transactional, and behavioral data about people. So used, it is vastly more
nimble than old practices of category-driven profiling developed in the late twentieth century and now widely criticized.50
According to its enthusiasts, Big Data will usher in a new era of knowledge production and
innovation, producing enormous benefits to science and business alike. According to its critics,
Big Data is profiling on steroids, unthinkably intrusive and eerily omniscient.
2NC – Security Outweighs
Valuing morality first fails in a real and imperfect world. Concern for only
morality ignore the effects of our actions and also generates arrogance that
undermines political effectiveness – that’s Isaac
Security comes first—privacy is never absolute
Himma 7—Kenneth Himma, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University,
holds JD and PhD and was formerly a Lecturer at the University of Washington in Department
of Philosophy, the Information School, and the Law School, 2007 (“Privacy vs. Security: Why
Privacy is Not an Absolute Value or Right,” Available online at http://ssrn.com/abstract=994458,
accessed on 7/17/15)
Although an account that enables us to determine when security and privacy come into conflict and when security trumps privacy
would be of great importance if I am correct about the general principle, my
efforts in this essay will have to be limited to
showing that the various theories of legitimacy presuppose or entail that, other things being equal, security is, as a
general matter, more important than privacy. Among the moral rights most people believe deserve legal
protection, none is probably more poorly understood than privacy. What exactly privacy is, what interests it encompasses, and why
it deserves legal protection, are three of the most contentious issues in theorizing about information ethics and legal theory. While
there is certainly disagreement about the nature and importance of other moral rights deserving legal protection, like the right to
property, the very concept of privacy is deeply contested. Some people believe that the various interests commonly characterized as
privacy interests have some essential feature in common that constitutes them as privacy interests; others believe that there is no
such feature and that the concept of privacy encompasses a variety of unrelated interests, some of which deserve legal protection
while others do not Notably, many people tend to converge
on the idea that privacy rights, whatever they
absolute in the sense that they may not legitimately be infringed for any
reason. While the various iterations of the USA PATRIOT Act are surely flawed with respect to
their particulars, there are many people who simply oppose, on principle, even a narrowly
crafted attempt to combat terrorism that infringes minimally on privacy interests. There is no
valid justification of any kind, on this absolutist conception, for infringing any of the interests falling within the
ultimately encompass, are
scope of the moral right to privacy.
The right to security trumps the right to privacy – Individual ethics prove
Himma 2007 (KENNETH EINAR , “Privacy Versus Security: Why Privacy is Not an Absolute
Value or Right” San Diego Law Review,
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=9460991130930661030770741120160170900150
22028045089092075001073099001099109106114127011017012000106100015114101076020
12309307801005001209207209311307809602108100803803405509010712607809111602810
3066027088072124015085097094100087114086001099009078&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2)
From an intuitive standpoint, the idea that the right to privacy is an absolute right seems utterly
implausible. Intuitively, it seems clear that there are other rights that are so much more
important that they easily trump privacy rights in the event of a conflict. For example, if a
psychologist knows that a patient is highly likely to commit a murder, then it is, at the very
least, morally permissible to disclose that information about the patient in order to prevent
the crime—regardless of whether such information would otherwise be protected by privacy
rights. Intuitively, it seems clear that life is more important from the standpoint of morality than any of
the interests protected by a moral right to privacy. Still one often hears—primarily from academics in
information schools and library schools, especially in connection with the controversy regarding the USA PATRIOT Act—the claim
that privacy should never be sacrificed for security, implicitly denying what I take to be the underlying rationale
for the PATRIOT Act. This also seems counterintuitive because it does not seem unreasonable to
believe we have a moral right to security that includes the right to life. Although this right to
security is broader than the right to life, the fact that security interests include our interests in
our lives implies that the right to privacy trumps even the right to life—something that seems
quite implausible from an intuitive point of view. If I have to give up the most private piece of
information about myself to save my life or protect myself from either grievous bodily injury or financial ruin, I
would gladly do so without hesitation. There are many things I do not want you to know
about me, but should you make a credible threat to my life, bodily integrity, financial security, or health, and
then hook me up to a lie detector machine, I will truthfully answer any question you ask about me. I value
my privacy a lot, but I value my life, bodily integrity, and financial security much more than any of the
interests protected by the right to privacy.
Advantage 4 - Cyberterror
1NC – Cyberterror Frontline
Software complexity causes most backdoors
Graham 12 (Robert, Errata Security, “Bogus story: no Chinese backdoor in military chip,”
Errata Security, 5/28/2012, http://blog.erratasec.com/2012/05/bogus-story-no-chinesebackdoor-in.html#.VbA8i-i6euU)//duncan
Backdoors are a common problem in software. About 20% of home routers have a backdoor in them, and 50% of
industrial control computers have a backdoor. The cause of these backdoors isn't malicious, but a
byproduct of software complexity. Systems need to be debugged before being shipped to
customers. Therefore, the software contains debuggers. Often, programmers forget to disable
the debugger backdoors before shipping. This problem is notoriously bad for all embedded
operating systems (VxWorks, QNX, WinCE, etc.).¶ Chips have reached the software level of complexity.
It is rare that any designer builds a chip from scratch. Instead, designers construct a chip from
building-blocks. One of the most common building-blocks is the debugger, known as JTAG. This is a
standard way of soldering some wires to the chip and connecting to the USB port, allowing common tools to debug your custom
chip.¶ Whereas companies
(should) disable the debug feature in the version they send to
customers, that's not so easy with chips. It requires millions of dollars for every change to
chip design. Therefore, chips always have the JTAG interface enabled. What chip designers attempt to do is
just not connect the pins to it. Or, if they connect the pins, they don't route to the pins on the circuit board.¶ This has led to a
popular hacking activity of taking a device, finding the JTAG pins, and hooking them up. A lot
of devices have been hacked this way – although it requires that the hacker have physical control over the device.
American companies have already been hacked by China
Storm 3/28 (Darlene, writes for Computerworld, “America is losing the cybersecurity war;
China hacked every major US company,” 3/28/2012,
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2472742/cybercrime-hacking/america-is-losing-thecybersecurity-war--china-hacked-every-major-us-company.html)//duncan
*language modified
Gloom and doom is the predicted forecast, but that is in regard to U.S. cybersecurity instead
of the weather. Four top government cybersecurity officials have basically come out to say America is
getting her hiney kicked in cyberattacks by nation state hackers.¶ "Your government failed you," testified
Richard Clarke, a former cybersecurity and cyberterrorism advisor for the White House. He said that to Congress about 9/11, but now he's warning the
people that we are defenseless when it comes to cybersecurity; our government has failed us again. Clarke stated, "
Every major
company in the United States has already been penetrated [breached] by China."¶
To begin with,
the "United States government did the Stuxnet attack," Clarke claimed during an interview with Smithsonian. After dropping that bombshell, he
then moved on to cyber espionage, stolen intellectual property and imported tech tainted
with backdoor attack tools. He warned not to get him started on "our supply chain of chips,
routers and hardware we import from Chinese and other foreign suppliers and what may be
implanted in them -- 'logic bombs,' trapdoors and 'Trojan horses,' all ready to be activated on
command so we won't know what hit us. Or what's already hitting us."¶ "My greatest fear," Clarke says, "is
that, rather than having a cyber-Pearl Harbor event, we will instead have this death of a thousand cuts. Where we lose our competitiveness by having
all of our research and development stolen by the Chinese. And we never really see the single event that makes us do something about it. That it's
always just below our pain threshold. That company after company in the United States spends millions, hundreds of millions, in some cases billions of
dollars on R&D and that information goes free to China....After a while you can't compete." ¶ Then Shawn Henry, the FBI's 'top cyber cop,' told the Wall
Street Journal the
U.S. is "not winning" the war against computer criminals.¶ Uncle Sam needs
hackers because we are, in fact, outgunned. After 24 years with the FBI, Henry is leaving the government to take a different
cybersecurity job. But before the FBI's executive assistant director leaves, he admitted, "I don't see how we ever come out of
this without changes in technology or changes in behavior, because with the status quo, it's an
unsustainable model. Unsustainable in that you never get ahead, never become secure, never
have a reasonable expectation of privacy or security.''¶ Henry's gloomy outlook seems to
match up with Clarke's claim that China has hacked into every major U.S. company. Henry
confirmed that while FBI agents were investigating other cases, they've found stolen data
from companies that had no clue they were hacked. Company executives "are shocked and, in
many cases, they've been breached for many months, in some cases years, which means that
an adversary had full visibility into everything occurring on that network, potentially.''
Alt causes to grid collapse – plus it’s still resilient
CNN 14 (“Hackers attacked the U.S. energy grid 79 times this year,” CNN Money, 11/18/2014,
http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/18/technology/security/energy-grid-hack/)//duncan
The nation's energy grid is constantly under attack by hackers.¶ In fiscal year 2014, there were 79
hacking incidents at energy companies that were investigated by the Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a
division of the Department of Homeland Security. There were 145 incidents the previous year.¶ The
outermost defenses aren't holding up. Between April 2013 and 2014, hackers managed to break into
37% of energy companies, according to a survey by ThreatTrack Security.¶ Cybersecurity firm FireEye (FEYE)
identified nearly 50 types of malware that specifically target energy companies in 2013 alone,
according to its annual report. Energy firms get hit with more spy malware than other industries,
according to a 2014 study by Verizon (VZ, Tech30).¶ In March, TrustedSec discovered spy malware in the
software that a major U.S. energy provider uses to operate dozens of turbines, controllers and
other industrial machinery. It had been there for a year -- all because one employee clicked
on a bad link in an email.¶ And just last month, CERT revealed that a Russian malware called BlackEnergy had
found its way onto the software that controls electrical turbines in the United States. ¶
Investigators didn't see any attempts to damage or disrupt machines. But the malware gives hackers a backdoor to
plant destructive code in the future.¶ So far, no computer virus has shut down any portion of the
grid. But hackers are still breaking in, giving them the potential to flip switches off.¶ "Our grid is definitely vulnerable," said David
Kennedy, TrustedSec's CEO. "The energy industry is pretty far behind most other industries when it comes to security best practices
and maintaining systems."¶ No utility provider contacted by CNNMoney was willing to comment.¶ Related: Why it's tricky to blame
hacks on Russia¶ Why are energy companies so vulnerable? One reason is that these industrial
systems rely on 1970sera technology. It doesn't get upgraded, because doing so would interrupt service, Kennedy said.¶
At a power grid security conference in San Antonio, Texas in October, NSA director Admiral Mike Rogers told energy companies the
power infrastructure just wasn't designed to stand up to today's attacks.¶ "Power... is one of the segments that concerns me the
most," he said, according to a transcript obtained by CNNMoney.¶ So serious are the implications that DHS and FBI are now touring
12 American cities, hosting classified meetings with energy providers and utility companies to brief them on the danger.¶
blackenergy dhs alert¶ This confidential alert was sent to U.S. energy firms and their security consultants.¶ So, why haven't hackers
been able to turn off the lights yet?¶ Energy companies do take precautions. They have cybersecurity teams, and they separate their
Internet-connected corporate computers from the stations that control critical machines. Firewalls and passwords help.¶ And
energy companies use so many different types of machines that taking out a city's power
would take a calculated, coordinated effort by an army of hackers.¶
David Whitehead is a research
executive at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, which builds devices that monitor electrical current. He said
it's easier to
cause damage by shooting at power transformers with rifles -- like snipers did last year in
Silicon Valley.¶ Storms also currently pose a more potent threat of power outages than
hackers.
Backdooring is specifically key to combat cyber terrorist attacks
Goldsmith 13 (Jack, a contributing editor at New Republic, teaches at Harvard Law School and
is a member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law, “We Need an
Invasive NSA,” New Republic, 10/10/2013,
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115002/invasive-nsa-will-protect-us-cyberattacks)//duncan
Ever since stories about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) electronic intelligence-gathering
capabilities
began tumbling out last June, The New York Times has published more than a dozen editorials excoriating
the “national surveillance state.” It wants the NSA to end the “ mass warehousing of
everyone’s data” and the use of “ back doors ” to break encrypted communications. A major
element of the Times’ critique is that the NSA’s domestic sweeps are not justified by the terrorist threat they aim to prevent.¶ At the
end of August, in the midst of the Times’ assault on the NSA, the
newspaper suffered what it described as a
“malicious external attack” on its domain name registrar at the hands of the Syrian Electronic Army, a group of
hackers who support Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. The paper’s website was down for several hours and,
for some people, much longer. “In terms of the sophistication of the attack, this is a big deal,”
said Marc Frons, the Times’ chief information officer. Ten months earlier, hackers stole the corporate
passwords for every employee at the Times, accessed the computers of 53 employees, and
breached the e-mail accounts of two reporters who cover China. “We brought in the FBI, and the FBI said
this had all the hallmarks of hacking by the Chinese military,” Frons said at the time. He also acknowledged that the hackers were in
the Times system on election night in 2012 and could have “wreaked havoc” on its coverage if they wanted.¶ Such cyber-
intrusions threaten corporate America and the U.S. government every day. “Relentless assaults on
America’s computer networks by China and other foreign governments, hackers and criminals have created an urgent need for
safeguards to protect these vital systems,” the Times editorial page noted last year while supporting legislation encouraging the
private sector to share cybersecurity information with the government. It cited General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA,
who had noted a 17-fold increase in cyber-intrusions on critical infrastructure from 2009 to 2011 and who described the losses in the
United States from cyber-theft as “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.” If a “catastrophic cyber-attack occurs,” the
Timesconcluded, “Americans will be justified in asking why their lawmakers ... failed to protect them.”¶ When catastrophe strikes,
the public will adjust its tolerance for intrusive government measures.¶ The Times editorial board is quite right about the seriousness
of the cyber- threat and the federal government’s responsibility to redress it.
What it does not appear to realize is
the connection between the domestic NSA surveillance it detests and the governmental
assistance with cybersecurity it cherishes. To keep our computer and telecommunication
networks secure, the government will eventually need to monitor and collect intelligence on
those networks using techniques similar to ones the Timesand many others find reprehensible
when done for counterterrorism ends.¶ The fate of domestic surveillance is today being fought around the topic of
whether it is needed to stop Al Qaeda from blowing things up. But the fight tomorrow, and the more important
fight, will be about whether it is necessary to protect our ways of life embedded in computer
networks.¶ Anyone anywhere with a connection to the Internet can engage in cyber-operations within the United States. Most
truly harmful cyber-operations, however, require group effort and significant skill. The attacking group or nation must have clever
hackers, significant computing power, and the sophisticated software—known as “malware”—that enables the monitoring,
exfiltration, or destruction of information inside a computer. The supply of all of these resources has been growing fast for many
years—in governmental labs devoted to developing these tools and on sprawling black markets on the Internet. ¶
Telecommunication networks are the channels through which malware typically travels, often
anonymized or encrypted, and buried in the billions of communications that traverse the
globe each day. The targets are the communications networks themselves as well as the computers they connect—things like
the Times’ servers, the computer systems that monitor nuclear plants, classified documents on computers in the Pentagon, the
nasdaq exchange, your local bank, and your social-network providers.¶
To keep these computers and networks
secure, the government needs powerful intelligence capabilities abroad so that it can learn
about planned cyber-intrusions. It also needs to raise defenses at home. An important first step is to correct the market
failures that plague cybersecurity. Through law or regulation, the government must improve incentives for individuals to use security
software, for private firms to harden their defenses and share information with one another, and for Internet service providers to
crack down on the botnets—networks of compromised zombie computers—that underlie many cyber-attacks. More, too, must
be done to prevent insider threats like Edward Snowden’s, and to control the stealth introduction of
vulnerabilities during the manufacture of computer components—vulnerabilities that can later be used as windows for cyberattacks.¶ And yet that’s still not enough. The
U.S. government can fully monitor air, space, and sea for potential attacks from
limited access to the channels of cyber-attack and cyber-theft, because they are owned
by private telecommunication firms, and because Congress strictly limits government access to private
communications. “I can’t defend the country until I’m into all the networks,” General Alexander reportedly told senior
abroad. But it has
government officials a few months ago.¶ For Alexander, being in the network means having government computers scan the content
and metadata of Internet communications in the United States and store some of these communications for extended periods. Such
access , he thinks, will give the government a fighting chance to find the needle of known
malware in the haystack of communications so that it can block or degrade the attack or
exploitation . It will also allow it to discern patterns of malicious activity in the swarm of
communications, even when it doesn’t possess the malware’s signature. And it will better
enable the government to trace back an attack’s trajectory so that it can discover the identity
and geographical origin of the threat.
No impact to backdoors
So 13 (Candice, writer for itbusiness.ca, Carleton University formerly at Edmonton Journal, the
Ottawa Citizen, the Globe and Mail, and the Windsor Star, “Security experts debate use of
backdoors in coding,” itbusiness.ca, 11/7/2013, http://www.itbusiness.ca/news/securityexperts-debate-use-of-backdoors-in-coding/44646)//duncan
*Citing G. Mark Hardy, president of the National Security Corporation
Still,
backdoors may not be as serious a concern as people have supposed , says G. Mark Hardy,
president of the National Security Corporation. He has developed information security plans for four U.S. military commands, and he
wrote the requirements for communication security encryption for one of its satellite programs.¶ Backdoors have
been
around about as long as software has been around, with many of them just being there for
software developers to ensure their programs are running properly, Hardy says, adding he feels people
are just starting to take notice now, though they didn’t seem to care much about that in the past.¶ “Backdoors by
themselves aren’t necessarily bad or evil, but they do exist in many applications for either
testing purposes or to be able to do ongoing verification that things are working correctly. The
problem occurs when third parties access backdoors and the applications contain sensitive information, and now you, the consumer,
are not aware of the fact,” he says.¶ “In my opinion,
backdoors are not your biggest concern.
The NSA doesn’t steal
credit card numbers. The NSA doesn’t do identity theft and ruin your credit. Organized crime does. And organized crime, as well as
other groups, actively seek exploits by which they can achieve financial gain.Ӧ Hardy adds that in many cases, hackers
gain
access through programming errors, and not necessarily through backdoors. He adds he feels
a lot of the news coming out of the NSA is really just rumours and speculation.¶ “I have not
seen tangible evidence of backdoors being inserted into code by government agencies, but that is
what the buzz is about,” he says.¶ While it’s almost impossible to write perfect code, completely free of
errors, users need to keep their systems up-to-date, patch regularly, and avoid using free services where they can. Free services
may not charge the user directly, but they may rely on a freemium model or push ads.¶ If security professionals do choose to use
backdoors, they should only use well-known, published encryption algorithms that have been tried and tested, instead of
proprietary algorithms, he says. For example, the Data Encryption Standard (DES) has been around for more than 30 years, with
banks now using triple DES to transfer data.¶ Ultimately,
is a need to protect national security.
Hardy
says he
feels citizens need to understand there
No cyber impact
Jason HEALEY, Director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, 13 [“No,
Cyberwarfare Isn't as Dangerous as Nuclear War,” March 20, 2013,
www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/03/20/cyber-attacks-not-yet-anexistential-threat-to-the-us]
America does not face an existential cyberthreat today, despite
cybervulnerabilities are undoubtedly grave and the
recent
warnings . Our
threats we face are severe but far from comparable to
nuclear war . The most recent alarms come in a Defense Science Board report on how to make military cybersystems more
resilient against advanced threats (in short, Russia or China). It warned that the "cyber threat is serious, with potential consequences
similar in some ways to the nuclear threat of the Cold War." Such fears were also expressed by Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 2011. He called cyber "The single biggest existential threat that's out there" because "cyber actually more
than theoretically, can attack our infrastructure, our financial systems." While
it is true that cyber attacks might do
these things, it is also true they have not only never happened but are far more difficult to
accomplish than mainstream thinking believes . The consequences from cyber threats may be similar in some
ways to nuclear, as the Science Board concluded, but mostly, they are incredibly dissimilar. Eighty years ago, the generals of the U.S.
Army Air Corps were sure that their bombers would easily topple other countries and cause their populations to panic, claims which
did not stand up to reality. A
study of the 25-year history of cyber conflict, by the Atlantic Council and
Cyber Conflict Studies Association, has shown a similar dynamic where the impact of disruptive
cyberattacks has been consistently overestimated . Rather than theorizing about future cyberwars or
extrapolating from today's concerns, the history of cyberconflict that have actually been fought, shows that cyber incidents have so
far tended to have effects that are either widespread but fleeting or persistent but narrowly focused. No
attacks, so far,
have been both widespread and persistent. There have been no authenticated cases of
anyone dying from a cyber attack. Any widespread disruptions, even the 2007 disruption against Estonia,
have been short-lived causing no significant GDP loss. Moreover, as with conflict in other domains, cyberattacks can take
down many targets but keeping them down over time in the face of determined defenses has so far been out of the range of all but
the most dangerous adversaries such as Russia and China. Of course, if the United States is in a conflict with those nations, cyber will
be the least important of the existential threats policymakers should be worrying about. Plutonium
trumps bytes in a
shooting war. This is not all good news. Policymakers have recognized the problems since at least 1998 with little significant
progress. Worse, the threats and vulnerabilities are getting steadily more worrying. Still, experts have been warning
of a cyber Pearl Harbor for 20 of the 70 years since the actual Pearl Harbor . The transfer of U.S. trade
espionage could someday accumulate into an existential threat. But it
doesn't seem so seem just yet, with only handwaving estimates of annual losses of 0.1 to 0.5 percent to the total U.S.
GDP of around $15 trillion. That's bad, but it doesn't add up to an existential crisis or "economic cyberwar."
secrets through Chinese cyber
2NC – No Grid Collapse
No chance of massive cyber attack on infrastructure
Harris 2/26 (Shane, Sr. Intelligence and National Security Correspondent for The Daily Beast
and an ASU Future of War Fellow at the New America Foundation, Wake Forest University with
a B.A. in Politics, “Top Spy: Small Hacks Are Bigger Threat Than ‘Cyber Armageddon,’” The Daily
Beast, 2/26/2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/26/top-spy-small-hacks-arebigger-threat-than-cyber-armageddon.html)//duncan
The risk of a catastrophic cyber attack that disables a key piece of national infrastructure,
such as a portion of the power grid, is “remote at this time” and not the biggest threat to U.S.
national security
in cyberspace, the country’s top intelligence official told a Senate panel on Thursday.¶ In his annual
testimony about the intelligence community’s assessment of “global threats” Director
of National Intelligence James
Clapper sounded a more nuanced and less hyperbolic tone about the security of the Internet
than some top U.S. officials have in the recent past, including Leon Panetta, who, in a speech as Secretary of Defense warned of “a
cyber Pearl Harbor; an attack that would cause physical destruction and the loss of life.”¶ “Rather
than a ‘cyber
armageddon’ scenario that debilitates the entire U.S. infrastructure, we envision something
different,” Clapper told the the Senate Armed Services Committee in his written testimony. “We foresee an ongoing series of
low-to-moderate level cyber attacks from a variety of sources over time, which will impose cumulative costs on U.S. economic
competitiveness and national security.”¶ Those sources, Clapper noted, include criminals who’ve dramatically ramped up their theft
of millions of peoples financial and personal data; spies who relentlessly target U.S. companies for their trade secrets; and rogue
regimes such as North Korea, which has used its offensive cyber capabilities “for political objectives,” he said, as in the recent hack
of Sony Pictures Entertainment for its planned release of a film mocking the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un.¶ Clapper’s remarks
were meant not to dismiss a potential major cyber event, but to draw attention to the reality that the U.S. is being bombarded by
cyber attacks of a smaller scale every day—and that those campaigns are taking a toll, Brian Hale, the spokesperson for the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence, told The Daily Beast.¶ Experts said Clapper’s remarks were notably at odds with earlier and
more alarming statements.¶ “His testimony seems a departure from how many defense and intelligence officials have talked about
the cyber threat to critical infrastructure in the past,” said Sharon Burke, a former assistant secretary of defense. ¶ “Sometimes, it’s
seemed as though officials have just been trying to get the attention of the private sector, as though they had to be alarmist to get
anyone to take the threat seriously and really hype the worst case scenarios. Maybe now that everyone does take it seriously, they
can talk more realistically about the clear and present threats,” Burke, now a senior adviser at think tank New America, said.¶
“Rather than a ‘cyber armageddon’ scenario that debilitates the entire U.S. infrastructure, we
envision something different,” Clapper told the the Senate Armed Services Committee.¶ Clapper’s remarks even
ratcheted down some of his own rhetoric from his previous testimony to the same committee. In his 2014 statement (PDF), the
intelligence director said that “large segments” of computerized systems used to help manage water, oil,gas, and electrical facilities
“remained vulnerable to attack, which might cause significant economic or human impact.” In that testimony, Clapper offered no
precise assessment on the likelihood of such a cyber attack, whereas this
year he described it as possible but
unlikely.¶ The intelligence director’s modulated remarks underscored the extent to which the government’s cyber spies and
analysts have gotten better at determining which groups and countries pose the most significant threats, what motivates them, and
whether they are capable of a major cyber attack on a piece of infrastructure or have an incentive to conduct one.¶ “Although cyber
operators can infiltrate or disrupt targeted [unclassified] networks, most can no longer assume that their activities will remain
undetected,” Clapper said. “Nor can they assume that if detected, they will be able to conceal their identities. Governmental and
private sector security professionals have made significant advances in detecting and attributing cyber intrusions.”¶ That’s not a new
development. For instance, U.S. intelligence officials have known for years that China is the source of organized hacking campaigns,
both sponsored and directed by the Chinese military, that steal U.S. companies’ trade secrets and other intellectual property. The
U.S. government even has dossiers on the most active Chinese cyber hackers and keeps a running catalog of their techniques and
tradecraft.¶ But those same officials have also noted that China
is one of the U.S.’s biggest lenders and trading
partners, so it has little to gain from a cyber attack on U.S. infrastructure that could wound
the American economy. Furthermore, the U.S.has sent clear signals that it reserves the right to
respond militarily and economically to cyber intrusions.¶ The Department of Defense has publicly concluded
that a cyber attack that disables electrical, financial, or other infrastructure systems vital to the daily functioning of the U.S. would
effectively constitute an act of war, and that the president would have the option of retaliating both in cyberspace and the physical
world with a conventional military strike.(After President Obama identified North Korea as the source of the Sony hack, the
administration imposed economic sanctions on the country, which Obama called a “proportional” response.)¶ Clapper’s testimony
also reflected the fact that while, as he put it, “cyber
threats to U.S. national and economic security are
increasing in frequency, scale, sophistication, and severity of impact,” there has never been an
attack of the magnitude that would warrant the “Armageddon” label. Far more pernicious, and largely
unaddressed, experts say, is the risk that hackers will insert malicious computer code into software and hardware in the course of its
manufacture and distribution.
Litany of alt causes to grid cybersecurity
Chand et al 4/22 (Sharon, director, Deloitte & Touche, Steve Livingston, principal, Deloitte &
Touche, David Nowak, senior manager, Deloitte & Touche, “Why U.S. Grid Still Vulnerable to
Cyber Attack,” WSJ, 4/22/2015, http://deloitte.wsj.com/cio/2015/04/22/3-reasons-u-s-grid-stillvulnerable-to-cyber-attack/)//duncan
Widespread use of legacy systems and the variety of equipment in some power companies’
environments can make it hard for utilities to stay on top of newly identified security flaws
and patch management. While manufacturers routinely issue software patches for the industrial control
systems, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, and other operational technologies in use among utilities, the need to
maintain smooth, day-to-day business operations typically limits how promptly or
consistently they apply them. But as attackers increasingly target the grid, the risk of unanticipated disruption caused by a cyber
attack may significantly outweigh the risk of limited disruption caused by a controlled patch management process. ¶ Security flaws in device software
are among three major vulnerabilities at attackers’ disposal. As in other industries, adversaries
take advantage of basic lapses
in IT and physical security controls, such as misconfiguration of firewalls, intrusion detection
systems, and other perimeter devices. Weak password practices and poorly defined user
access policies make it easier for hackers to masquerade as legitimate users. Ill-designed
segregation of networked assets (like industrial control systems devices) can allow attackers to access
substations and distribution systems once inside the corporate environment. Meanwhile, lapses in
physical security may literally leave doors open for intruders, allowing them to walk into
facilities and plant malware on systems with simple USB devices.¶ While not a vulnerability per se, the
digitization the power industry is pursuing also opens it up to greater cyber risk, as is the case
with many other industries. As utilities adopt more digital technologies inside substations,
implement smart meters, modernize grid systems, and integrate back-office systems, new
avenues for accidental and malicious disruption emerge.¶ Factors like digitization, lax
controls, and flawed devices have made attacking the grid from thousands of miles away
exponentially easier for both well-organized, well-financed nation states and for individual hackers that use crude,
pre-built crimeware tools to execute their attacks. With just a few keystrokes and invisible bits of code planted on substation devices, attackers could
remotely unleash malware that destroys equipment, causes widespread outages, creates unsafe facility conditions, and ultimately threatens public
safety and results in substantial economic costs. Shrouded by the relative anonymity of the Internet, attackers may skirt law enforcement agencies’
efforts to find and prosecute them.
Passwords are a freaking alt cause
Mason 6/9 (Anthony, CBS reporter, “Report exposes common cracks in cybersecurity,” CBS,
6/9/2015, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-exposes-common-cracks-incybersecurity/)//duncan
CHICAGO -- At the Chicago headquarters of the cybersecurity firm Trustwave, Charles Henderson
leads a team of
"ethical hackers" whose job it is to expose weaknesses for clients all over the world.¶ "We attack
systems just as these criminals do attempting to find flaws, vulnerabilities," Henderson explained.¶ According to
Trustwave's report detailing hundreds of breaches last year: 95 percent of all mobile apps
were vulnerable to attack; 49 percent of all attacks involved theft of identification information
and cardholder data; weak passwords led to 28 percent of all cyber breaches ; and "password
1" was the most common password.¶ "It's not ninjas dropping through ceilings,"
Henderson said.
"It's really simple stuff. It's things like passwords that lead to a compromise."¶ To show how easy it
is, Trustwave analyst Garret Picchioni had me enter a seven character password. Using commercial
software -- capable of making 81 billion guesses per second -- it only took 37 seconds to
crack.¶ Picchioni says seven or eight character passwords are not safe enough.¶ "Computer hardware
has reached a point where we're able to attack them so quickly that a password that small
isn't practical anymore," Picchioni said. "Especially for incredibly sensitive things like financials, online banking."
2NC – Backdoors Good
Backdoors are key to provide law enforcement critical information to prevent
crime
Hess 4/29 (Amy, Executive Assistant Director at FBI, “Encrytpion And Cybersecurity For Mobile
Electronic Communication Devices,” Department of Justice, 4/29/2015, pdf)//duncan
Encryption of stored data is not new, but it has become increasingly prevalent and sophisticated. The
challenge to law enforcement and national security officials has intensified with the advent of
default encryption settings and stronger encryption standards on both devices and networks. ¶
In the past, a consumer had to decide whether to encrypt data stored on his or her device and take some action to implement that
encryption. With today’s new operating systems, however, a
device and all of a user’s information on that
device can be encrypted by default – without any affirmative action by the consumer. In the
past, companies had the ability to decrypt devices when the Government obtained a search
warrant and a court order. Today, companies have developed encryption technology which
makes it impossible for them to decrypt data on devices they manufacture and sell, even when lawfully ordered to
do so. Although there are strong and appropriate cybersecurity and other reasons to support these new uses of encryption, such
decisions regarding system design have a tremendous impact on law enforcement’s ability to fight crime and bring perpetrators to
justice.¶ Evidence of criminal activity used to be found in written ledgers, boxes, drawers, and file cabinets, all of which could be
searched pursuant to a warrant. But like the general population, criminal
actors are increasingly storing such
information on electronic devices. If these devices are automatically encrypted, the
information they contain may be unreadable to anyone other than the user of the device. Obtaining a search
warrant for photos, videos, email, text messages, and documents can be an exercise in futility. Terrorists and other
criminals know this and will increasingly count on these means of evading detection.¶
Additional
Considerations¶ Some assert that although more and more devices are encrypted, users back-up and store much of their data in
“the cloud,” and law enforcement agencies can access this data pursuant to court order. For several reasons, however, the data may
not be there. First,
aside from the technical requirements and settings needed to successfully back
up data to the cloud, many companies impose fees to store information there – fees which
consumers may be unwilling to pay. Second, criminals can easily avoid putting information
where it may be accessible to law enforcement. Third, data backed up to the cloud typically
includes only a portion of the data stored on a device, so key pieces of evidence may reside
only on a criminal’s or terrorist’s phone, for example. And if criminals do not back up their phones
routinely, or if they opt out of uploading to the cloud altogether, the data may only be found
on the devices themselves – devices which are increasingly encrypted.¶ Facing the Challenge¶ The
reality is that cyber adversaries will exploit any vulnerability they find. But security risks are better addressed by
developing solutions during the design phase of a specific product or service, rather than
resorting to a patchwork solution when law enforcement presents the company with a court
order after the product or service has been deployed.¶ To be clear, we in the FBI support and
encourage the use of secure networks and sophisticated encryption to prevent cyber threats
to our critical national infrastructure, our intellectual property, and our data. We have been on the
front lines of the fight against cybercrime and economic espionage and we recognize that absolute security does not exist in either
the physical or digital world. Any lawful intercept or access solution should be designed to minimize its impact upon the overall
security.
But without a solution that enables law enforcement to access critical evidence, many
investigations could be at a dead end.
The same is true for cyber security investigations;
if there is no way
to access encrypted systems and data, we may not be able to identify those who seek to steal
our technology, our state secrets, our intellectual property, and our trade secrets.¶ A common
misperception is that we can simply break into a device using a “brute force” attack – the idea that
with enough computing resources devoted to the task, we can defeat any encryption. But the reality is that even a
supercomputer would have difficulty with today’s high-level encryption standards. And some
devices have a setting that erases the encryption key if someone makes too many attempts to
break the password, effectively closing all access to that data.¶ Finally, a reasonable person might also ask,
“Can’t you just compel the owner of the device to produce the information in a readable form?” Even if we could compel an
individual to provide this information, a suspected criminal would more likely choose to defy the court’s order and accept a
punishment for contempt rather than risk a 30-year sentence for, say, production and distribution of child pornography.¶
Without access to the right evidence, we fear we may not be able to identify and stop child
predators hiding in the shadows of the Internet, violent criminals who are targeting our
neighborhoods, and terrorists who may be using social media to recruit, plan, and execute an
attack in our country. We may not be able to recover critical information from a device that
belongs to a victim who can’t provide us with the password, especially when time is of the
essence.
2NC – No impact to backdoors
No cyber impact to backdoors – they are inevitable. Code is never perfect and
backdoors are an inherent part of software – So.
Cyber attacks through backdoors are unlikely, there are easier ways
Slava Borilin, lab expert at kasperskylab, 09-24-14
“So malware attacks against critical infrastructure are inevitable. What’s next?” Online:
“https://business.kaspersky.com/so-malware-attacks-against-critical-infrastructure-areinevitable-whats-next-2/2647”
Critical infrastructure operators are often reluctant to deploy full-scale anti-malware
protection. They are worried about compatibility, performance, compliance, and most
importantly: possible downtime. In a critical environment such as the infrastructure of an oil/gas company, one minute
of downtime may cost anywhere between $20,000 and $500,000. It’s no surprise that some companies prefer to deploy
protection partially, or rely on the “security by obscurity” approach (see “5 Myths of Cyber Security”). As our
research shows, malware is the true enemy. The potential impact of a misconfigured security solution is nowhere near the
devastating consequences of a true security breach. Critical
systems are prone to all types of cyber attacks,
but these three are the most likely: An attack using a sophisticated Stuxnet-like cyberweapon.
Always complex, always targeted, very hard to mitigate. Luckily, such attacks are not widespread, as of today. Generic
malware attack. This one is the most frequent, caused by wreckless handling of critical control
systems. Wreaks havoc in obsolete and largely unprotected environments, but it is less likely
to damage the modern system. Our whitepaper on Critical Infrastructure protection provides more data: link. An
APT. An attack that is not Stuxnet-style in terms of complexity, but still a targeted one. As we see
from the recent attack investigations (see our report on Energetic Bear), control environments are now being used as an entry point
to further infiltrate the entire network of a company in order to steal sensitive information. There
is a high chance of a
successful malware attack in a critical environment, and there are numerous ways to infiltrate
the system: via a vulnerable software, using social engineering, USB thumb drives, etc . What is
the right strategy to protect a company against it? We believe it is the proper combination of Whitelisting (critical machine runs only
critical software, everything else is blocked) and a modern anti-virus engine with a strong heuristics-based detection method that
protects from APTs, software vulnerabilities, etc. It doesn’t sound like a big deal since all vendors offer such functionality. But the
key is the right configuration and usage/maintenance/update. An out-of-the-box security solution won’t fit the critical environment
and may lead to the highly feared downtime. Only a carefully tuned, tailored solution, customized by both company engineers and
security vendor experts, will protect the critical environment safely and effectively.
Cyber attacks on critical infrastructure are inevitable
Glenn Chapman, 02-18-11
“Destructive cyber attack inevitable: NSA chief” Online: “http://phys.org/news/2011-02-destructive-cyber-inevitable-nsa-chief.html”
The US National Security Agency (NSA)
chief on Thursday urged top computer security specialists to
harden the nation's critical infrastructure against inevitable destructive cyber attacks. "This is an
important time," NSA and Cyber Command director Gen. Keith Alexander said during a presentation at a premier RSA Conference in
San Francisco. "Most of the destructive tools being developed haven't been used; we need to use this window of opportunity to
develop defenses." Two days earlier, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn gave a similar warning, saying the
capability
clearly exists for malicious software to cause real-world damage at power plants, water
supplies and other vital points. "Few weapons in the history of warfare, once created, have
gone unused," Lynn said during a speech at RSA. "It is possible to imagine attacks on military
networks or critical infrastructure-like our transportation system and energy sector-that cause severe economic
damage, physical destruction, or even loss of life." Last month, Russia called on NATO to track down the culprits behind a Stuxnet
computer worm that targeted a Russian-built Iranian nuclear power plant, saying the incident could have triggered a new Chernobyl.
Secure military networks will matter little if power grid cuts or other government systems are disabled by cyber attacks, according to
Lynn. He called for extending military computer defenses to privately held parts of the infrastructure key to the nation functioning.
"During a natural disaster, like a hurricane, military troops and helicopters are often used by FEMA to help deliver relief," Lynn said.
"In a similar vein, the military's cyber capabilities will be available to civilian leaders to help protect the networks that support
government operations and critical infrastructure." Private operations that the government wants to guard include companies that
supply defense department equipment, according to Alexander. He argued that the military network's "secure zone" needed to be
extended to all critical resources in partnerships with the private sector. Alexander maintained that national security agents and the
computer wizards running company networks could work together without infringing on people's rights. "I
believe we have
the talent to build cyber security that protects our civil liberties and privacy," he said. "We can
and must do both." Alexander added that the nation's security depended on the education of coming generations as well as
today's software and hardware innovations. "Our nation needs to push science, technology, engineering and mathematics,"
Alexander said. "It is absolutely vital to our future." As in past years at the annual RSA gathering, US defense officials called on
computer security specialists to help them keep the nation safe. "Securing our nation's networks is a team sport," Alexander said.
"We need your help."
Cyber attack impact is small compared to other events
Martin Libicki, Senior management scientist at the RAND Corporation, October 2014
Martin, where his research focuses on the effects of information technology on domestic and
national security. He is the author of several books, including Conquest in Cyberspace: National
Security and Information Warfare and Information Technology Standards: Quest for the
Common Byte. He has also written two cyberwar monographs: Cyberwar and Cyberdeterrence
and Crisis and Escalation in Cyberspace. Prior to joining RAND, Libicki was a senior fellow at the
National Defense University, A Dangerous World? Threat Perceptions and US National Security,
Pg. 126-127
The immediate and direct damage from a major cyberattack can range from zero to tens of billions of dollars (e.g., from a broad
outage of electric power). Direct casualties would likely be few, and indirect causalities may have to be inferred from guessing what
total damage would
likely be less than $ 1 billion. Indirect effects may be larger if a cyberattack causes a great loss
of confidence— in the banking system, for example, which could trigger a recession. But it is a stretch to argue that even a
would have happened if, say, emergency 911 service had not been taken down. In this essay’s scenario,
cyberattack that stopped the banking system completely (much less the sort that merely prevented 24– 7 access to a bank’s
website) would
damage customers’ confidence that their bank accounts would maintain their
integrity. NASDAQ’s three-hour shutdown on August 22, 2013, for example, did not spark a
wave of selling. It would require data corruption (e.g., depositors’ accounts being zeroed out)
rather than temporary disruption, before an attack would likely cause depositors to question whether their deposits
are safe. Is corruption that easy to carry out, however? To put the question another way, what kind of technique would allow
hackers to reduce a depositor's account balance without allowing them to increase the bal-ance of another depositor—such as
themselves? If that transfer were possible, why don't more such state-sponsored hackers go into business for themselves? So
although one hesitates to say that a
major cyberattack can never ever be as catastrophic as the 9/11
attacks (or natural events such as Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy for that matter), the
world has been living with the threat from cyberspace for nearly a quarter cen-tury, and
nothing remotely close to such destruction has taken place.
2NC – AT: Cyberterror – No Impact
No cyberterror impact – difficult to succeed because of intermediary steps –
studies prove the impact is overstated – nobody has ever died and experts have
been warning about it for 20 years – that’s Healey
No impact to cyber-terror---won’t cause military conflict
Thomas P.M. Barnett 13, special assistant for strategic futures in the U.S. Defense
Department's Office of Force Transformation from 2001 to 2003, is chief analyst for Wikistrat,
March/April 2013, “Think Again: The Pentagon,” Foreign Policy,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/04/the_pentagon?page=full
As for cyber serving as a stand-alone war-fighting domain, there you'll find the debates no less theological in their
intensity. After serving as senior managing director for half a dozen years at a software firm that specializes in securing supply
chains, I'm
deeply skeptical . Given the uncontrollable nature of cyberweapons (see: Stuxnet's many
view them as the 21st century's version of chemical weapons -- nice to have, but hard
permutations), I
to use . Another way to look at it is to simply call a spade a spade: Cyberwarfare is nothing more than espionage and sabotage
cyberwar turns out to be in the national security realm, it will
always be dwarfed by the industrial variants -- think cyberthieves, not cyberwarriors. But you wouldn't
know it from the panicky warnings from former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the generals about the
imminent threat of a "cyber Pearl Harbor."¶ Please remember amid all this frenetic scaremongering that the Pentagon is
updated for the digital era. Whatever
never more frightened about our collective future than when it's desperately uncertain about its own. Given the rising health-care
costs associated with America's aging population and the never-ending dysfunction in Washington, we should expect to be
bombarded with frightening scenarios of planetary doom for the next decade or two. None
of this bureaucratic
chattering will bear any resemblance to global trends , which demonstrate that wars have
grown increasingly infrequent, shorter in duration, and diminished in lethality. But you won't hear that from the nextwarriors on the Potomac.
Their impacts are all hype
Walt 10 – Stephen M. Walt 10 is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of international
relations at Harvard University "Is the cyber threat overblown?" March 30
walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/03/30/is_the_cyber_threat_overblown
cyber-warfare
Am I the only person -- well, besides Glenn Greenwald and Kevin Poulson -- who thinks the "
" business may be overblown? It’s clear
the U.S. national security establishment is paying a lot more attention to the issue, and colleagues of mine -- including some pretty serious and level-headed people
-- are increasingly worried by the danger of some sort of "cyber-Katrina." I don't dismiss it entirely, but this sure
looks to me like a classic
opportunity for threat-inflation .¶ Mind you, I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of shenanigans going on in cyber-space, or that various
here’s what makes me
worry that the threat is being overstated .¶ First, the whole issue is highly esoteric -- you really need to
know a great deal about computer networks, software, encryption, etc., to know how serious the danger might be. Unfortunately, details about a
number of the alleged incidents that are being invoked to demonstrate the risk of a
"cyber-Katrina," or a cyber-9/11, remain classified, which makes it hard for us lay-persons to gauge just how
serious the problem really was or is. Moreover, even when we hear about computers
being penetrated by hackers, or parts of the internet crashing, etc., it’s hard to know how much
valuable information was stolen or how much actual damage was done. And as with other
specialized areas of technology and/or military affairs, a lot of the experts have a clear vested interest in hyping
the threat , so as to create greater demand for their services. Plus, we already seem to
forms of cyber-warfare don't have military potential. So I'm not arguing for complete head-in-the-sand complacency. But
have politicians leaping on the issue as a way to grab some pork for their states.¶ Second, there are lots of
different problems being lumped under a single banner, whether the label is "cyber-terror" or "cyber-war."
One issue is the use of various computer tools to degrade an enemy’s military capabilities (e.g., by disrupting communications nets, spoofing sensors, etc.). A
second issue is the alleged threat that bad guys would penetrate computer networks and shut down power grids, air traffic control, traffic lights, and other
important elements of infrastructure, the way that internet terrorists (led by a disgruntled computer expert) did in the movie Live Free and Die Hard. A third
problem is web-based criminal activity, including identity theft or simple fraud (e.g., those emails we all get from someone in Nigeria announcing that they have
millions to give us once we send them some account information). A fourth potential threat is “cyber-espionage”; i.e., clever foreign hackers penetrate Pentagon or
defense contractors’ computers and download valuable classified information. And then there are annoying activities like viruses, denial-of-service attacks, and
This sounds like a
rich menu of potential trouble, and putting the phrase "cyber" in front of almost
any noun makes it sound trendy and a bit more frightening. But notice too that these are all somewhat
different problems of quite different importance, and the appropriate response to each is likely to be different too. Some issues -- such as
the danger of cyber-espionage -- may not require elaborate technical fixes but
simply more rigorous security procedures to isolate classified material from the web. Other problems
may not require big federal programs to address, in part because both individuals
other things that affect the stability of web-based activities and disrupt commerce (and my ability to send posts into FP).¶
and the private sector have incentives to protect themselves
(e.g., via firewalls or by backing up critical data). And
as Greenwald warns, there may be real costs to civil liberties if concerns about vague cyber dangers lead us to grant the NSA or some other government agency
Is the danger that
some malign hacker crashes a power grid greater than the likelihood that a
blizzard would do the same thing? Is the risk of cyber-espionage greater than the
potential danger from more traditional forms of spying? Without a comparative assessment of different
greater control over the Internet. ¶ Third, this is another issue that cries out for some comparative cost-benefit analysis.
risks and the costs of mitigating each one, we will allocate resources on the basis of hype rather than analysis. In short, my fear is not that we won't take reasonable
precautions against a potential set of dangers; my concern is that we will spend tens of billions of dollars protecting ourselves against a set of threats that are not as
dangerous as we are currently being told they are.
No risk of extinction- its all exaggerated
Singer, 12 – Director 21st Century Defense Initiative (Peter, “The Cyber Terror Bogeyman”,
Armed Forces Journal, November, http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2012/11/cyberterror-singer)//VP
But so far, what
terrorists have accomplished in the cyber realm doesn’t match our fears, their
dreams or even what they have managed through traditional means. The only publicly
documented case of an actual al-Qaida attempt at a cyber attack wouldn’t have even met the
FBI definition. Under questioning at Guantanamo Bay, Mohmedou Ould Slahi confessed to trying to knock offline the Israeli
prime minister’s public website. The same goes for the September denial-of-service attacks on five U.S. banking firms, for which the
Islamist group “Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters” claimed responsibility. (Some experts believe the group was merely stealing
credit for someone else’s work.) The
attacks, which prevented customers from accessing the sites for a few hours, were the
equivalent of a crowd standing in your lobby blocking access or a gang of neighborhood kids
constantly doing “ring and runs” at your front doorbell. It’s annoying, to be sure, but nothing that would make
the terrorism threat matrix if you removed the word “cyber.” And while it may make for good headlines, it is certainly not in the vein
of a “cyber 9/11” or “digital Pearl Harbor.” Even the 2007 cyber attacks on Estonia, the most-discussed incident of its kind, had little
impact on the daily life of the average Estonian and certainly no long-term effect. Allegedly assisted by the Russian government, and
hence well beyond the capacity of most terror organizations, the attacks merely disrupted public-facing government websites for a
few days. Compare that with the impact of planes crashing into the center of the U.S. financial system, the London subway attacks
or the thousands of homemade bomb attacks that happen around the world each year. Even when you move into the “what if” side
the damage potential of cyber terror still pales compared with other types of potential terror
attacks. A disruption of the power grid for a few days would certainly be catastrophic (though it’s something that Washington,
D.C., residents have lived through in the last year. Does the Pepco power company qualify as a cyber threat?). But, again, in strategic
planning, we have to put threats into context. The explosion of just one nuclear bomb, even a jury-rigged radiological “dirty bomb,”
could irradiate an American city for centuries. Similarly, while a computer virus could wreak havoc in the economy, a biological
attack could change our very patterns of life forever. As one cyber expert said, “There
are [cyber] threats out there,
but there are no threats that threaten our fundamental way of life.”
2NC – AT: Cyberterror – Hype
Their evidence is exaggeration by special interests – decades of data prove no
impact
Lawson 11 (Sean Ph.D. Department of Communication University of Utah "BEYOND CYBER-DOOM:
Cyberattack Scenarios and the Evidence of History" Jan 11
mercatus.org/sites/default/files/publication/beyond-cyber-doom-cyber-attack-scenarios-evidencehistory_1.pdf)
Despite persistent ambiguity in cyber-threat perceptions, cyber-doom
scenarios have remained an important
tactic used by cybersecurity proponents. Cyber-doom scenarios are hypothetical stories about
prospective impacts of a cyberattack and are meant to serve as cautionary tales that focus
the attention of policy makers, media, and the public on the issue of cybersecurity. These stories typically follow a set
pattern involving a cyberattack disrupting or destroying critical infrastructure. Examples include attacks against the
electrical grid leading to mass blackouts, attacks against the financial system leading to
economic losses or complete economic collapse, attacks against the transportation system leading to planes and
trains crashing, attacks against dams leading floodgates to open, or attacks against nuclear power plants leading to meltdowns
(Cavelty, 2007: 2). Recognizing
that modern infrastructures are closely interlinked and
interdependent, such scenarios often involve a combination of multiple critical infrastructure
systems failing simultaneously, what is sometimes referred to as a “cascading failure.” This was the case
in the “Cyber Shockwave” war game televised by CNN in February 2010, in which a computer worm Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables
published by WikiLeaks.org seem to corroborate this accusation (Shane & Lehren, 2010).5 spreading among cell phones eventually
led to serious disruptions of critical infrastructures (Gaylord, 2010). Even more ominously, in their recent book, Richard Clarke and
Robert Knake (2010: 64–68) present a scenario in which a cyberattack variously destroys or seriously disrupts all U.S. infrastructure
in only fifteen minutes, killing thousands and wreaking unprecedented destruction on U.S. cities. Surprisingly, some argue that we
have already had attacks at this level, but that we just have not recognized that they were occurring. For example, Amit Yoran,
former head of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Division, claims that a “cyber- 9/11” has already
occurred, “but it’s happened slowly so we don’t see it.” As evidence, he points to the 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia, as well as other
incidents in which the computer systems of government agencies or contractors have been infiltrated and sensitive information
stolen (Singel, 2009). Yoran is not alone in seeing the 2007 Estonia attacks as an example of the cyberdoom that awaits if we do not
take cyber threats seriously. The speaker of the Estonian parliament, Ene Ergma, has said that “When I look at a nuclear explosion,
and the explosion that happened in our country in May, I see the same thing” (Poulsen, 2007). Cyber-doom scenarios are not new.
As far back as 1994, futurist and best-selling author Alvin Toffler claimed that cyberattacks on the World Trade Center could be used
to collapse the entire U.S. economy. He predicted that “They [terrorists or rogue states] won’t need to blow up the World Trade
Center. Instead, they’ll feed signals into computers from Libya or Tehran or Pyongyang and shut down the whole banking system if
they want to. We know a former senior intelligence official who says, ‘Give me $1 million and 20 people and I will shut down
America. I could close down all the automated teller machines, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, and most hospital and business
computer systems’” (Elias, 1994). But
we have not seen anything close to the kinds of scenarios outlined
did not use cyberattack against the World Trade Center;
by Yoran, Ergma, Toffler, and others. Terrorists
they used hijacked aircraft. And the attack of 9/11 did not lead to the long-term collapse of the U.S. economy; we would
have to wait for the impacts of years of bad mortgages for a financial meltdown. Nor did the cyberattacks on Estonia
approximate what happened on 9/11 as Yoran has claimed, and certainly not nuclear warfare
as Ergma has claimed. In fact, a scientist at the NATO Co-operative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, which was
established in Tallinn, Estonia in response to the 2007 cyberattacks, has written that the immediate impacts of
those attacks were “minimal” or “nonexistent,” and that the “no critical services were
permanently affected” (Ottis, 2010: 72). Nonetheless, many cybersecurity proponents continue to
offer up cyber-doom scenarios that not only make analogies to weapons of mass destruction
(WMDs) and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but also hold out economic, social, and even civilizational collapse as possible impacts of
cyberattacks. A report from the Hoover Institution has warned of so-called “eWMDs” (Kelly & Almann, 2008); the FBI has warned
that a cyberattack could have the same impact as a “wellplaced bomb” (FOXNews.com, 2010b); and official DoD documents refer to
“weapons of mass disruption,” implying that cyberattacks might have impacts comparable to the use of WMD (Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff 2004, 2006). John Arquilla, one of the first to theorize cyberwar in the 1990s (Arquilla & Ronfeldt, 1997), has
spoken of “a grave and growing capacity for crippling our tech-dependent society” and has said that a “cyber 9/11” is a matter of if,
not when (Arquilla, 2009). Mike McConnell, who has claimed that we are already in an ongoing cyberwar (McConnell, 2010), has
even predicted that a cyberattack could surpass the impacts of 9/11 “by an order of magnitude” (The Atlantic, 2010). Finally, some
have even compared the 7 impacts of prospective cyberattacks to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed roughly a quarter
million people and caused widespread physical destruction in five countries (Meyer, 2010); suggested that cyberattack could pose
an “existential threat” to the United States (FOXNews.com 2010b); and offered the possibility that cyberattack threatens not only
the continued existence of the United States, but all of “global civilization” (Adhikari, 2009). In
response, critics have
noted that not only has the story about who threatens what, how, and with what potential
impact shifted over time, but it has done so with very little evidence provided to support the
claims being made (Bendrath, 2001, 2003; Walt, 2010). Others have noted that the cyber-doom
scenarios offered for years by cybersecurity proponents have yet to come to pass and
question whether they are possible at all (Stohl, 2007). Some have also questioned the motives of
cybersecurity proponents. Various think tanks, security firms, defense contractors, and
business leaders who trumpet the problem of cyber attacks are portrayed as selfinterested
ideologues who promote unrealistic portrayals of cyber-threats (Greenwald, 2010)
Their ev is hype – damage is minimal and redundancy shields critical
infrastructure
Liebowitz 11 1/21, *Matt Liebowitz: Security News Daily Staff Writer, “Cyberwar Overhyped and Unlikely, Report Says,”
http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/337-cyberwar-overhyped-and-unlikely-report-says.html, AJ
The threat of “cyberwar,” and in fact the term itself, is overhyped and unlikely, according to a pair of British
researchers. Contrary to popular beliefs spurred by current fears, cybercriminals have little power to carry out
large-scale, devastating attacks, argue Dr. Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute and Prof. Peter Sommer of the
London School of Economics. “If you look at the way it is covered, the computer scare story of the
week, you might get the sense that such a disaster is just around the corner,” Sommer told the New
York Times. “It is unlikely that there will ever be a true cyberwar.” The report, released Monday, was
commissioned for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Sommer downplayed recent security crises that
have gotten lots of press, including the WikiLeaks diplomatic-cable release and cyberattacks on WikiLeaks’ behalf by the “hacktivist”
Sommer said future conflicts between nations were
bound to have a cyberspace component, but they will be just a part of the battle, not the
entire war. In an interview with the British computer magazine PC Pro, Brown supported Sommer’s stance. “Between wellequipped states, like the U.S., China, U.K. and so on, certain cyberweaponry would likely be a part of any
future war,” said Brown. “Less capable states and sub-state actors, like terrorist groups and
individual hackers, will not be able to have an equivalent damaging effect using cyberattacks.”
Brown said “cyberweaponry” has probably already been by the U.S. during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. “We don’t
help ourselves using ‘cyberwar’ to describe espionage or hacktivists blockading or defacing of
websites, as recently seen in reaction to WikiLeaks,” Sommer told The Guardian. “Nor is it helpful to
group trivially avoidable incidents like viruses and frauds with determined attempts to disrupt
national infrastructure.” On the other side of the coin, Brown and Sommer believe online attacks are
not going to slow down and advised governments to secure their infrastructures to defend
against targeted attacks. “Critical systems that are controlling power grids — they should not
be connected to the Internet at all. They really are running a great risk by doing that ,” Brown told
PC Pro. He argued that systems that control the power, water and telecommunication grids should be
set up to ensure that software is kept up to date and that if a system fails, there is a backup
that can immediately take its place. In a related development, a former Pentagon official on Tuesday, speaking at the
group Anonymous, which he likened to Greenpeace.
Black Hat D.C. hackers’ conference, called for the creation of a “skunk works,” a loosely organized group of experts from the
technological and political fields. “We need to bring policymakers like me and techies like you together in a wonk-geek coalition,”
said Franklin Kramer, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs under President Clinton, during his
keynote address to the assembled hackers.
2NC – Imapct All Hype
No risk of cyberterror- too much hype and too many obstacles- this card is
amazing
Singer 12 [Peter W. Singer, Director, 21st Century Defense Initiative
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Nov 2012, “The Cyber Terror Bogeyman,”
http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2012/11/cyber-terror-singer]
About 31,300. That is roughly the number of magazine and journal articles written so far that
discuss the phenomenon of cyber terrorism.¶ Zero. That is the number of people that who
been hurt or killed by cyber terrorism at the time this went to press.¶ In many ways, cyber
terrorism is like the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week ,” when we obsess about shark attacks
despite the fact that you are roughly 15,000 times more likely to be hurt or killed in an
accident involving a toilet. But by looking at how terror groups actually use the Internet,
rather than fixating on nightmare scenarios, we can properly prioritize and focus our efforts.¶
Part of the problem is the way we talk about the issue. The FBI defines cyber terrorism as a
“premeditated, politically motivated attack against information, computer systems, computer
programs and data which results in violence against non-combatant targets by subnational
groups or clandestine agents.” A key word there is “violence,” yet many discussions sweep all
sorts of nonviolent online mischief into the “terror” bin. Various reports lump together
everything from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s recent statements that a terror group might
launch a “digital Pearl Harbor” to Stuxnet-like sabotage (ahem, committed by state forces) to
hacktivism, WikiLeaks and credit card fraud. As one congressional staffer put it, the way we use
a term like cyber terrorism “has as much clarity as cybersecurity — that is, none at all.”¶ Another
part of the problem is that we often mix up our fears with the actual state of affairs. Last year,
Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, the Pentagon’s lead official for cybersecurity, spoke to
the top experts in the field at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. “It is possible for a terrorist
group to develop cyber-attack tools on their own or to buy them on the black market,” Lynn
warned. “A couple dozen talented programmers wearing flip-flops and drinking Red Bull can do
a lot of damage.Ӧ The deputy defense secretary was conflating fear and reality , not just about
what stimulant-drinking programmers are actually hired to do, but also what is needed to pull
off an attack that causes meaningful violence. The requirements go well beyond finding top
cyber experts. Taking down hydroelectric generators, or designing malware like Stuxnet that
causes nuclear centrifuges to spin out of sequence doesn’t just require the skills and means to
get into a computer system. It’s also knowing what to do once you are in. To cause true
damage requires an understanding of the devices themselves and how they run, the
engineering and physics behind the target.¶ The Stuxnet case, for example, involved not just
cyber experts well beyond a few wearing flip-flops, but also experts in areas that ranged from
intelligence and surveillance to nuclear physics to the engineering of a specific kind of Siemensbrand industrial equipment. It also required expensive tests, not only of the software, but on
working versions of the target hardware as well.¶ As George R. Lucas Jr., a professor at the U.S.
Naval Academy, put it, conducting a truly mass-scale action using cyber means “simply outstrips
the intellectual, organizational and personnel capacities of even the most well-funded and wellorganized terrorist organization, as well as those of even the most sophisticated international
criminal enterprises.”¶ Lucas said the threat of cyber terrorism has been vastly overblown.¶ “To
be blunt, neither the 14-year-old hacker in your next-door neighbor’s upstairs bedroom, nor the
two- or three-person al-Qaida cell holed up in some apartment in Hamburg are going to bring
down the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams,” he said.¶ We should be crystal clear: This is not to say
that terrorist groups are uninterested in using the technology of cyberspace to carry out acts of
violence. In 2001, al-Qaida computers seized in Afghanistan were found to contain models of a
dam, plus engineering software that simulated the catastrophic failure of controls. Five years
later, jihadist websites were urging cyber attacks on the U.S. financial industry to retaliate for
abuses at Guantanamo Bay.¶ Nor does it mean that cyber terrorism, particularly attacks on
critical infrastructure, is of no concern . In 2007, Idaho National Lab researchers experimented
with cyber attacks on their own facility; they learned that remotely changing the operating cycle
of a power generator could make it catch fire. Four years later, the Los Angeles Times reported
that white-hat hackers hired by a water provider in California broke into the system in less than
a week. Policymakers must worry that real-world versions of such attacks might have a ripple
effect that could, for example, knock out parts of the national power grid or shut down a
municipal or even regional water supply.¶ But so far, what terrorists have accomplished in the
cyber realm doesn’t match our fears , their dreams or even what they have managed through
traditional means.¶ But so far, what terrorists have accomplished in the cyber realm doesn’t
match our fears, their dreams or even what they have managed through traditional means.¶ The
only publicly documented case of an actual al-Qaida attempt at a cyber attack wouldn’t have
even met the FBI definition. Under questioning at Guantanamo Bay, Mohmedou Ould Slahi
confessed to trying to knock offline the Israeli prime minister’s public website.
Threats like cyberterror/war are unlikely- too much hype involved
Brown 13 [Ian Brown, Ian Brown is Associate Director of Oxford University’s Cyber Security
Centre, and Senior Research Fellow at the OII, 8/24/13, ““Cyber war is not a realistic threat,”
http://www.alpbach.org/medienakademie/en/ian-brown/]
Cyber war, cyber terrorism – these are terms that might be mentioned in a discussion about
the threats society could face in the future. According to cyber security expert Ian Brown,
horror scenarios such as terrorists taking over the financial system or taking control of
infrastructure are highly unlikely to happen . He points out that the EU has been in peace for
decades and that there is no actual risk of cyber war or cyber terrorism. Neither cyber war
nor cyber terror has been able to cause casualties or loss of territory. “You can think of all sorts
of extreme threats, but it is completely unrealistic for governments to make their day-to-day
plans based on those extreme scenarios,” he says, stressing that governments should be
concentrating on more realistic threats.¶ The real threats: cyber crime and fraud¶ According to
Brown, the biggest cyber threats society is facing at the moment are cybercrime and fraud
against individuals. While governments and big businesses usually have the resources and
capacities to protect their own systems, individuals – especially those who do not belong to the
generation of digital natives – are not very familiar with the risks of the internet. These people
could be taught security skills such as picking a good password or taking care while doing online
banking. “That’s a role governments should be playing: thinking about how to protect more
vulnerable people in the population,” Brown says.¶ “It is very easy to get distracted by dramatic
but unlikely threats like cyber terrorism and cyber warfare ,” he says. While he agrees that
governments should plan ahead and prepare for future threats, he warns from getting too
excited about cyber threats: “You are likely to spend very large amounts of money in
preparing for a threat that will be very unlikely to materialise. And also, you are very likely to
do a lot of damage to civil liberties.” He advises governments to focus on protecting citizens
against more realistic threats like cybercrime and fraud and thereby also reduce the risk of the
extreme scenarios.¶ Surveillance and privacy violation¶ Being asked about his opinion on
surveillance, as it is being exercised by the NSA, Brown warns from privacy infringement and
demands stricter rules. According to him, the NSA and GCHQ argue that monitoring everything
is not surveillance, as long as there are strict rules about how the collected data can be
processed. “That’s the wrong way of looking at the question,” he says, arguing that as citizens,
we cannot be sure whether these rules are being obeyed. “It is very tempting if you are an
intelligence agency. If you have lots and lots of data, you start looking at a small amount, but
you can do your job better if you look at larger amounts of it.” Brown demands stricter
regulations about which data can be collected in the first place. He warns from privacy violation:
“Personally, I think that would be dangerous for democracy on the long run.”
2NC - AT: Dead Hand
Dead hand can’t cause accidents – still in human control
Thompson, 2009
Nicholas Thompson, senior editor, 9-21-2009, “Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday
Machine,” Wired, http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/1710/mf_deadhand?currentPage=all
As Yarynich describes Perimeter with pride, I challenge him with the classic critique of such
systems: What if they fail? What if something goes wrong? What if a computer virus,
earthquake, reactor meltdown, and power outage conspire to convince the system that war has
begun? Yarynich sips his beer and dismisses my concerns. Even given an unthinkable series of
accidents, he reminds me, there would still be at least one human hand to prevent Perimeter
from ending the world. Prior to 1985, he says, the Soviets designed several automatic systems
that could launch counterattacks without any human involvement whatsoever. But all these
devices were rejected by the high command. Perimeter, he points out, was never a truly
autonomous doomsday device. "If there are explosions and all communications are broken,"
he says, "then the people in this facility can—I would like to underline can—launch."
2NC - No tech
No cyber impact- technical obstacles and states will remain rational
Lemos 13 [Robert Lemos, he is an expert on cyberwarfare and deterrence, 3/15/13, “CyberAttacks Eclipse Terrorism in Impact, U.S. Leaders Say,”
- See more at: http://www.eweek.com/security/cyber-attacks-eclipse-terrorism-in-impact-usleaders-say/#sthash.0Mn12q8r.dpuf]
However, while cyber-espionage has become common, cyber-sabotage will continue to be
rare , Clapper said. A successful attack on critical infrastructure is unlikely, for example,
because rogue actors tend not to have the technical skills, and more sophisticated nationstate adversaries would be unlikely to attack outside of wartime, he said.¶ Three Enterprise
Storage Trends to Consider in 2014 Download Now¶ "The level of technical expertise and
operational sophistication required for such an attack—including the ability to create physical
damage or overcome mitigation factors like manual overrides—will be out of reach for most
actors during this time frame," Clapper said. "Advanced cyber actors—such as Russia and
China—are unlikely to launch such a devastating attack against the United States outside of a
military conflict or crisis that they believe threatens their vital interests."¶ In a separate
hearing, Gen. Keith Alexander, commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, supported Clapper's
statements, saying that nation-states are unlikely to conduct major attacks through the Internet
unless at war.¶ "We have some confidence in our ability to deter major state-on-state attacks
in cyberspace but we are not deterring the seemingly low-level harassment of private and
public sites, property, and data," Alexander said in prepared remarks (pdf) at a March 12
hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Armed Services. "States and extremist groups
are behaving recklessly and aggressively in the cyber-environment."¶ The U.S. Cyber Command is
quickly ramping up its operations, and plans to hire up to 5,000 cyber-savvy soldiers to staff its
operations. - See more at: http://www.eweek.com/security/cyber-attacks-eclipse-terrorism-inimpact-us-leaders-say/#sthash.FUs4r1A2.dpuf
2NC - Airgapping
Cyberattacks won’t result in nuclear war --- airgapping solves
Green 2 – editor of The Washington Monthly (Joshua, 11/11, The Myth of Cyberterrorism,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0211.green.html)
There's just one problem: There is no such thing as cyberterrorism--no instance of anyone ever having
been killed by a terrorist (or anyone else) using a computer. Nor is there compelling evidence that
al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization has resorted to computers for any sort of serious destructive
activity. What's more, outside of a Tom Clancy novel, computer security specialists believe it is virtually impossible
to use the Internet to inflict death on a large scale, and many scoff at the notion that terrorists would bother trying. "I don't lie
awake at night worrying about cyberattacks ruining my life," says Dorothy Denning, a computer science professor at
Georgetown University and one of the country's foremost cybersecurity experts. "Not only does
[cyberterrorism] not rank alongside chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, but it is not anywhere near as serious as
other potential physical threats like car bombs or suicide bombers." Which is not to say that cybersecurity isn't a serious problem--it's just not one that
involves terrorists. Interviews with terrorism and computer security experts, and current and former government and military officials, yielded near unanimous agreement
that the real danger is from the criminals and other hackers who did $15 billion in damage to the global economy last year using viruses, worms, and other readily available
tools. That figure is sure to balloon if more isn't done to protect vulnerable computer systems, the vast majority of which are in the private sector. Yet when it comes to
imposing the tough measures on business necessary to protect against the real cyberthreats, the Bush administration has balked. Crushing BlackBerrys When ordinary
people imagine cyberterrorism, they tend to think along Hollywood plot lines, doomsday scenarios in
which terrorists hijack nuclear weapons, airliners, or military computers from halfway around the world. Given the colorful history of
federal boondoggles--billion-dollar weapons systems that misfire, $600 toilet seats--that's an understandable concern. But, with few exceptions, it's not one that applies to
The government is miles ahead of the private sector when it comes to
cybersecurity," says Michael Cheek, director of intelligence for iDefense, a Virginia-based computer
security company with government and private-sector clients. "Particularly the most sensitive military systems."
preparedness for a cyberattack. "
Serious effort and plain good fortune have combined to bring this about. Take nuclear weapons. The biggest fallacy about their vulnerability, promoted in action thrillers
like WarGames, is that they're designed for remote operation. "[The movie] is premised on the assumption that there's a modem bank hanging on the side of the
nuclear weapons and
other sensitive military systems enjoy the most basic form of Internet security: they're "air-gapped," meaning that they're not
computer that controls the missiles," says Martin Libicki, a defense analyst at the RAND Corporation. "I assure you, there isn't." Rather,
physically connected to the Internet and are therefore inaccessible to outside hackers .
Nuclear weapons also contain " p ermissive a ction l ink s ," mechanisms to prevent
weapons from being armed without inputting codes carried by the president.) A retired military official
(
was somewhat indignant at the mere suggestion: "As a general principle, we've been looking at this thing for 20 years. What cave have you been living in if you haven't
the Defense Department has been particularly vigilant to
protect key systems by isolating them from the Net and even from the Pentagon's internal network. All new software must be
submitted to the National Security Agency for security testing. "Terrorists could not gain control of our spacecraft,
nuclear weapons, or any other type of high-consequence asset," says Air Force Chief Information
Officer John Gilligan. For more than a year, Pentagon CIO John Stenbit has enforced a moratorium on new wireless networks, which are often easy to
considered this [threat]?" When it comes to cyberthreats,
hack into, as well as common wireless devices such as PDAs, BlackBerrys, and even wireless or infrared copiers and faxes. The September 11 hijackings led to an outcry
that airliners are particularly susceptible to cyberterrorism. Earlier this year, for instance, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) described "the absolute havoc and devastation
that would result if cyberterrorists suddenly shut down our air traffic control system, with thousands of planes in mid-flight." In fact, cybersecurity experts give some of
their highest marks to the FAA, which reasonably separates its administrative and air traffic control systems and strictly air-gaps the latter. And there's a reason the 9/11
It's impossible to hijack a plane remotely, which eliminates the
possibility of a high-tech 9/11 scenario in which planes are used as weapons. Another source of concern is terrorist infiltration of
our intelligence agencies. But here, too, the risk is slim. The CIA's classified computers are also air-gapped, as is the
FBI's entire computer system. " They've been paranoid about this forever," says Libicki, adding that paranoia is a sound governing
hijackers used box-cutters instead of keyboards:
principle when it comes to cybersecurity. Such concerns are manifesting themselves in broader policy terms as well. One notable characteristic of last year's Quadrennial
Defense Review was how strongly it focused on protecting information systems.
2NC - AT: Turns Econ
1. Our economy can absorb terror attacks- no impact
Baumert et al 13 (Thomas Baumert Corresponding author. Universidad Católica de Valencia
and Chair of the Economics of Terrorism, ¶ Universidad Complutense de Madrid.¶ Mikel Buesa
Chair of the Economics of Terrorism, Universidad Complutense de Madrid¶ and Timothy Lynch
Siena College. ¶ 4/18/13 “THE IMPACT OF TERRORISM ON STOCK MARETS: THE BOSTON
BOMBING ¶ EXPIRIENCE IN COMPARISSON WITH PREVIOUS TERRORIST EVENTS”
http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/ICES2013/papers/archive/baumert-buesalynch-impact-of-terrorism-on-stock-markets-boston-bombing)
Financial markets are the first — after a period of initial shock, when there is a ¶ predominance
of exaggerated reactions as a result of uncertainty (Chen and Siems ¶ 2004:39) — to absorb and
transform the news of a terrorist attack — or any similar “disastrous” event6¶ — into
economic information, efficiently incorporating it into share¶ prices, so that these reflect almost
immediately the expectations as to future ¶ performances of these shares (Johnston and
Nedelescu 2005: 4).7¶ ¶ To carry out this type of analysis we take as a base the principle of stock
market ¶ effectiveness (Fama et al. 1969; Fama 1970 and 1991), through which as long as ¶
liquidity is ensured, the incorporation of information to share prices — that is, the ¶
transformation of a news item into quantifiable economic information — takes place ¶
immediately. From this is derived, also, that share prices reflect at all times the existing ¶
information, so that a reaction only occurs in the face of fresh news (Abadie and ¶ Gardeazabal
2003:122). ¶ Specifically, a terrorist attack implies an important rise in uncertainty among
financial ¶ agents along with a perception of greater risk, as, on the one hand, the
vulnerability of ¶ the system becomes evident — as further attacks cannot be ruled out —
and, on the ¶ other, when the direct and indirect costs resulting from them are taken into ¶
consideration.8¶ These costs, depending upon the magnitude and intensity of the attacks, ¶ could
lead to a slowdown in the general growth of the economy. This takes shape in the ¶ higher
volatility of stocks and an increase in risk premiums. Consequently, investors ¶ will tend to reorganise their portfolios, getting rid of the higher-risk shares in favour of ¶ assets with similar
liquidity but greater security, such as, for example, government ¶ bonds with short-term
maturity dates or similar (Saxton 2002:2). ¶ This reaction takes place almost immediately and
reflects the perception of short-term ¶ costs, and normally the markets return to the previous
situation in a relatively short ¶ time . Normally, for this negative outlook to become mediumterm there will have to be¶ a series of attacks or, at least, the financial agents will believe that
this is probably to ¶ happen. In other words, the impact of single terrorist events on stock
markets is ¶ unnoticeable in the long term. Markets get used to terrorist actions and rapidly
recover ¶ from their effects. Uncertainty is thus transferred to the derivatives market, which by ¶
means of the risk premium assesses long-term instability.
Advantage 5 - Internet Freedom
1NC – IF Frontline
Authoritarian states are more likely to cooperate and less likely to cause
conflicts
Lai and Slater 3 (Brian, Associate Professor at U of Iowa Political Science, PhD Emory
University, Dan, Associate Professor at U Chicago, PhD Emory, “The Conflict Behavior of
Authoritarian States, 1950-1992,” University of Iowa Political Science Department Workshop,
2/7/2003, Pg. 3, PDF)//duncan
Some have argued that states with similar regime types are less likely to have conflictual relations and are more likely to cooperate.
Democracies are not the only states that have an affinity to cooperate with each other. Literature on regime similarity argues that
state leaders are likely to cooperate with states of similar regime types to protect their
domestic institutions. A state's domestic costs of enforcement are likely to be higher when faced with states with different
domestic institutions (Werner and Lemke1997). As such, state leaders are likely to support states with similar institutions. Similarly,
Leeds finds that jointly
autocratic dyads are more likely to cooperate with each other than one
democracy and one autocracy (Leeds 1999). Empirical evidence indicates that states are more likely to intervene in
an ongoing dispute with a state that has a similar political institution, and more likely to form alliances and
cooperate with states with similar political institutions (Lai and Reiter 2000; Leeds 1999; Werner and Lemke
1997).¶ The current research has clearly shown that the regime type of a state has an impact on its foreign policy behavior.
Democratic states are less conflict prone with each other due to normative, institutional, informational, or war fighting advantages.
Beyond the democratic peace and regime similarity arguments, additional evidence has shown that
even autocratic states
are more likely to cooperate and less likely to be in conflict with each other (Peceny et al. 2002;
Weart 1994; Andreski 1980 ;Oren and Hays 1997). First, Oren and Hays find that developed Socialist states (those in the
Council of Mutual Economic Assistance) were less likely to go to war than other types of states (developing
Socialists, developed Capitalists, developing Capitalists). While socialist states are not necessarily autocratic, Oren and Hays'
conceptualization of socialist states encompasses states that all have autocratic political
systems (Oren and Hays 1997). Alternatively, Bebler argues that Socialist states lacked a conflict resolution
mechanism and were generally unwilling to allow international arbitration, leading them to use force
against each other (Bebler 1987). While Oren and Hays and Bebler focus on the economic orientation of states, Weart and Andreski
focus on political institutions. Weart finds that while democratic states were less likely to go to war with each other, oligarchic
states were also less likely to go to war with each other. Similar to Oren and Hays, Weart finds that only
established democracies and oligarchies are less likely to go to war with similar regimes (Weart 1994). Finally, Andreski argues that
military dictatorships should be less likely to use force externally because so much of their
military force is geared towards internal control. This reduces the availability of military
forces for external use and leads the military to be unprepared to fight external conflicts
(Andreski 1980).
Collapse of authoritarian regimes is inevitable
Diamond 1/24 [Larry Diamond, Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International
Studies, January 24, 2014, “Are worries about health of democracy overblown? Rebuttals”, http://demdigest.net/blog/worrieshealth-democracy-overblown-rebuttals/]
As Freedom House demonstrates in its latest annual survey, freedom in the world declined in 2013 for the eighth consecutive year.
Yet this
net assessment encompasses some sharply divergent trends, and it obscures some
underlying elements of hope and resilience, writes Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at
the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he directs the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of
Law (CDDRL). While
democracy has foundered recently in some big, strategic states—like Bangladesh and Egypt (and
of the recent erosions in freedom have come in states that were
already authoritarian, such as Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Gambia, he contends in a
now potentially Ukraine)—most
debate for The Economist. Amid these disheartening retreats, it
is possible to miss the quiet persistence or
renewal of democracy in places like Ghana and Georgia, or the potent electoral pushback against
autocratic ambitions in Argentina, notes Diamond, a founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and a senior consultant
to the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. Nearly 40% of the world’s Muslims
live in four big democracies: Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey and India. And the predominantly Muslim populations of Mali and Senegal
together roughly match the 25m or so in Saudi Arabia. Then there is the Arab world. It
is not only premature but
superficial as well to write off Arab hopes for freedom. Tunisia has just turned a major constitutional corner and,
as The Economist recently noted, “Democratic institutions appear to have a good chance of taking root.”
A major reason is that unlike its Muslim Brotherhood counterpart in Egypt, the principal Islamist party in Tunisia, Nahda, ultimately
opted for
moderation and compromise. … Despite their manifest problems of political order,
Libya, Yemen and even Iraq have levels of political pluralism that would have been
unimaginable a decade ago. Nor should we presume that authoritarian rule is stable
elsewhere in the Middle East. Sooner or later—and probably sooner in Jordan and Morocco—decaying
authoritarian regimes will need to commit to real political reform or face new surges of
protest from youthful and increasingly tech-savvy populations who want better government
and a better life. We are still in the midst of a long arc of history that will bend towards
democracy in our time.
US allies destroy i-freedom signal
Hanson
10/25/12,
Nonresident
Fellow,
Foreign
Policy,
Brookings
http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2012/10/25-ediplomacy-hanson-internet-freedom
Another challenge is dealing with close partners and allies who undermine internet
freedom. In August 2011, in the midst of the Arab uprisings, the UK experienced a different connection technology infused
movement, the London Riots. On August 11, in the heat of the crisis, Prime Minister Cameron told the House of Commons: Free flow
of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and
industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are
plotting violence, disorder and criminality. This policy had far-reaching implications. As recently as January 2011, then President of
Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, ordered the shut-down of Egypt’s largest ISPs and the cell phone network, a move the United States had
heavily criticized. Now the UK was contemplating the same move and threatening to create a rationale for authoritarian
governments everywhere to shut down communications networks when they threatened “violence, disorder and criminality.” Other
allies like Australia are also pursuing restrictive internet policies. As OpenNet reported it: “Australia
maintains some of the most restrictive Internet policies of any Western country…” When these allies pursue policies
so clearly at odds with the U.S. internet freedom agenda, several difficulties arise. It undermines the
U.S. position that an open and free internet is something free societies naturally want. It
also gives repressive authoritarian governments an excuse for their own monitoring and filtering activities.
To an extent, U.S. internet freedom policy responds even-handedly to this challenge because the vast bulk of its grants are for open
source circumvention tools that can be just as readily used by someone in London as Beijing, but so far,
the U nited S tates has
been much more discreet about criticising the restrictive policies of allies than authoritarian
states.
Turn - Internet freedom is used to crush dissent
Siegel 11 (Lee Siegel, a columnist and editor at large for The New York Observer, is the author of “Against the Machine: How the Web Is Reshaping Culture and
Commerce — and Why It Matters. “‘The Net Delusion’ and the Egypt Crisis”, February 4, 2011, http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/the-net-delusion-and-the-egyptcrisis)
Morozov takes the ideas of what he calls “cyber-utopians” and shows how reality
perverts them in one political situation after another. In Iran, the regime used the internet
to crush the internet-driven protests in June 2009. In Russia, neofascists use the internet to
organize pogroms. And on and on. Morozov has written hundreds of pages to make the point that technology is amoral and cuts
many different ways. Just as radio can bolster democracy or — as in Rwanda — incite
genocide, so the internet can help foment a revolution but can also help crush it. This seems obvious,
yet it has often been entirely lost as grand claims are made for the internet’s positive, liberating qualities. ¶And suddenly here are Tunisia and, even more dramatically, Egypt,
simultaneously proving and refuting Morozov’s argument. In both cases, social networking allowed truths that had been whispered to be widely broadcast and commented
In Tunisia and Egypt — and now across the Arab world — Facebook and Twitter
have made people feel less alone in their rage at the governments that stifle their lives. There is nothing more
upon.
politically emboldening than to feel, all at once, that what you have experienced as personal bitterness is actually an objective condition, a universal affliction in your society that
Yet at the same time, the Egyptian government shut off the internet,
misinformation is being spread through
Facebook — as it was in Iran — just as real information was shared by anti-government protesters. This is the “dark side of internet
freedom” that Morozov is warning against. It is the freedom to wantonly crush the forces
of freedom. ¶All this should not surprise anyone. It seems that, just as with every other type of technology of communication, the internet is not a
solution to human conflict but an amplifier for all aspects of a conflict. As you read about
pro-government agitators charging into crowds of protesters on horseback and camel, you
realize that nothing has changed in our new internet age. The human situation is the same as it always was, except that it
therefore can be universally opposed. ¶
which is an effective way of using the internet. And according to one Egyptian blogger,
is the same in a newer and more intense way. Decades from now, we will no doubt be celebrating a spanking new technology that promises to liberate us from the internet. And
the argument joined by Morozov will occur once again.
Private companies will voluntarily self-censor – nominal internet freedom is
irrelevant
Morozov 11 (Evgeny Morozov, visting scholar at Stanford University, Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, 2011, “The Net Delusion,” ch. 8)
What is clear is that, contrary to the expectations of many Western policymakers, Facebook
is hardly ideal for promoting democracy; its own logic, driven by profits or ignorance of the
increasingly global context in which it operates, is, at times, extremely antidemocratic . Were
Kafka to pen his novel The Trial—in which the protagonist is arrested and tried for reasons that are never explained to him—today, El Ghazzali's case
could certainly serve as inspiration. That
much of digital activism is mediated by commercial intermediaries
who operate on similar Kafkaesque principles is cause for concern, if only because it introduces too much
unnecessary uncertainty into the activist chain, imagine that El Ghazzali's group was planning a public protest on the very
day that its page got deleted: The protest could have easily been derailed. Until there is complete certainty that a
Facebook group won't be removed at the most unfortunate moment, many dissident groups
will shy away from making it their primary channel of communication. In reality, there is no
reason why Facebook should even bother with defending freedom of expression in Morocco,
which is not an appealing market to its advertisers, and even if it were, it would surely be much easier to make money
there without crossing swords with the country's rulers. We do not know how heavily Facebook polices sensitive
political activity on its site, but we do know of many cases similar to El Ghazzali s. In February 2010, for example, Facebook was
heavily criticized by its critics in Asia for removing the pages of a group with 84,298 members that had
been formed to oppose the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong
Kong, the pro-establishment and pro-Beijing party. According to the group's administrator, the ban was triggered by
opponents flagging the group as "abusive" on Facebook. This was not the first time that Facebook constrained the work of such groups. In the run-up to
the Olympic torch relay passing through Hong Kong in 2008, it shut down several groups, while many pro-Tibetan activists had their accounts
deactivated for "persistent misuse of the site." It's
not just politics: Facebook is notoriously zealous in policing
other types of content as well. In July 2010 it sent multiple warnings to an Australian jeweler for posting photos of her exquisite
porcelain doll, which revealed the doll's nipples. Facebook's founders may be young, but they are apparently puritans. Many other
intermediaries are not exactly unbending defenders of political expression either. Twitter has
been accused of silencing online tribute to the 2008 Gaza War. Apple has been bashed for
blocking Dalai Lama-related iPhone apps from its App Store for China (an application related to Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled
leader of the Uighur minority, was banned as well). Google, which owns Orkut, a social network that is surprisingly popular in India, has been
accused of being too zealous in removing potentially controversial content that may be interpreted as
calling for religious and ethnic violence against both Hindus and Muslims. Moreover, a 2009 study found that Microsoft has been
censoring what users in the United Arab Emirates, Syria, Algeria, and Jordan could find through its Bing search
engine much more heavily than the governments of those countries.
US Online gambling ban kills internet freedom signal
Kibbe 4/28/14 (Matt, FreedomWorks, "Coalition Letter: No Federal Ban on Internet Gambling")
We, the undersigned individuals and organizations, are writing to express our deep concerns about the
Restoration of America’s Wire Act (H.R. 4301), which would institute a de facto ban on internet gaming in
all 50 states. The legislation is a broad overreach by the federal government over matters traditionally
reserved for the states. H.R. 4301 will reverse current law in many states and drastically increase the
federal government’s regulatory power. As we have seen in the past, a ban will not stop online
gambling. Prohibiting states from legalizing and regulating the practice only ensures that it
will be pushed back into the shadows where crime can flourish with little oversight . In this
black market, where virtually all sites are operated from abroad, consumers have little to no protection from
predatory behavior.¶ Perhaps even more concerning is the fact that this bill allows the federal
government to take a heavy hand in regulating the Internet, opening the door for increased
Internet regulation in the future. By banning a select form of Internet commerce, the federal
government is setting a troubling precedent and providing fodder to those who would like
to see increased Internet regulation in the future. We fear that H.R. 4301 will begin a dangerous
process of internet censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by calculated
international infringers while constraining the actions of private individuals and companies
in the United States.
2NC – Authoritarian collapse inevitable
Status quo solves the impact – Regimes will have to reform to appease
increasingly liberal demographics. Institutions are also able to provide external
pressure to change - Diamond
Reverse authoritarianism trends prove that they can’t last
Diamond 1/21 [Larry Diamond, Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman
Spogli Institute for International Studies, Jan 21st 2014, “The proposer's opening remarks”,
http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/1055]
Two big, dynamic middle-income countries where democracy was expected to consolidate, Thailand and Turkey, are now each in
severe political crisis as a result of political polarisation and intolerance. In Thailand, the much-theorised agent of democratic
defence and reform, the urban middle class is demanding a kind of "time out" from democracy because its party has lost the last few
elections. In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has veered towards an increasingly authoritarian style as he seeks to maintain his and his
party's hold on power. Then of course there is the sorry performance of democracies in Europe, Japan and the United States, where
elections of late have not produced governments and parliaments capable of formulating viable policies to address the big economic
and social challenges. Those
who incline towards optimism about the future of democracy—and I am
that democracy globally has been facing a lot of challenges and setbacks in recent
years. Yet none of this has cumulated into an authoritarian "reverse wave ". There are many
instances of democratic progress or renewal, not least in Tunisia, where constitutional compromise has now
one—know
positioned the country to emerge as the first genuine democracy in the Arab world, a potentially transformative development for
the region. And
authoritarian regimes face their own huge problems of performance, legitimacy
and stability, which I hope to discuss as this debate proceeds.
2NC – Other Countries Hurt I Freedom
American commitment to allies undermines the perception of the internet
agenda – countries like Australia gives dictatorships an excuse to not follow the
freedom agenda - Hanson
China undermines global i-freedom
Chang 14 (Research Associate, Technology
& National Security Program, the Center for a New
American Security)
(Amy Chang, How the 'Internet with Chinese Characteristics' Is Rupturing the Web, 12/15/2014,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-chang-/china-internet-sovereignty_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 multistakeholder model of Internet governance).
2NC - Doesn’t Solve Authoritarianism
Authoritarian governments use the internet to solidify the regime. In Russia
and Iran social media is used to organize pogroms and destroy protests.
Internet serves as an enabler to crush dissent - Siegel
No evidence that the internet actually spurs democratization
Aday et al. 10 (Sean Aday is an associate professor of media and public affairs and international affairs at The George Washington University, and director of the
Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication. Henry Farrell is an associate professor of political science at The George Washington University. Marc Lynch is an
associate professor of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University and director of the Institute for Middle East Studies. John Sides is an
assistant professor of political science at The George Washington University. John Kelly is the founder and lead scientist at Morningside Analytics and an affiliate of the Berkman
Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Ethan Zuckerman is senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and also part of
the team building Global Voices, a group of international bloggers bridging cultural and linguistic differences through weblogs. August 2010, “BLOGS AND BULLETS: new media in
contentious politics”, http://www.usip.org/files/resources/pw65.pdf)
New media, such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, have played a major role in episodes of contentious political action. They are often
described as important tools for activists seeking to replace authoritarian regimes and to
promote freedom and democracy, and they have been lauded for their democratizing potential. Despite the prominence of
“Twitter revolutions,” “color revolutions,” and the like in public debate, policymakers and scholars know very little
about whether and how new media affect contentious politics. Journalistic accounts are
inevitably based on anecdotes rather than rigorously designed research. Although data on new media have been
sketchy, new tools are emerging that measure linkage patterns and content as well as track memes across media outlets and thus might offer fresh insights into new media. The
impact of new media can be better understood through a framework that considers five levels of analysis: individual transformation, intergroup relations, collective action,
. New media have the potential to change how citizens think or act,
mitigate or exacerbate group conflict, facilitate collective action, spur a backlash among
regimes, and garner international attention toward a given country. Evidence from the protests after the Iranian
regime policies, and external attention
presidential election in June 2009 suggests the utility of examining the role of new media at each of these five levels. Although there is reason to believe the Iranian case exposes
the Iranian regime’s use of the same social network tools to
harass, identify, and imprison protesters—suggests that, like any media, the Internet is not a “magic
the potential benefits of new media, other evidence—such as
bullet.” At best, it may be a “rusty bullet .” Indeed, it is plausible that traditional media sources were
equally if not more important. Scholars and policymakers should adopt a more nuanced view
of new media’s role in democratization and social change, one that recognizes that new media can
have both positive and negative effects. Introduction In January 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton articulated a powerful vision of
the Internet as promoting freedom and global political transformation and rewriting the rules of political engagement and action. Her vision resembles that of others who argue
that new media technologies facilitate participatory politics and mass mobilization, help promote democracy and free markets, and create new kinds of global citizens. Some
observers have even suggested that Twitter’s creators should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in the 2009 Iranian protests.1 But not everyone has such sanguine
these technologies
may actually exacerbate conflict , as exemplified in Kenya, the Czech Republic, and Uganda,
and help authoritarian regimes monitor and police their citizens. 2 They argue that new media
encourage self-segregation and polarization as people seek out only information that
reinforces their prior beliefs, offering ever more opportunities for the spread of hate,
misinformation, and prejudice.3 Some skeptics question whether new media have significant
effects at all. Perhaps they are simply a tool used by those who would protest in any event or a
trendy “hook” for those seeking to tell political stories. Do new media have real consequences for contentious politics—and in
which direction?4 The sobering answer is that, fundamentally, no one knows. To this point, little research has sought to estimate the
causal effects of new media in a methodologically rigorous fashion, or to gather the rich data
needed to establish causal influence. Without rigorous research designs or rich data,
views. Clinton herself was careful to note when sharing her vision that new media were not an “unmitigated blessing.” Pessimists argue that
partisans of all viewpoints turn to anecdotal evidence and intuition
Mobilization and Internet access are not correlated – other factors are more
important
Kuebler 11 (Johanne Kuebler, contributor to the CyberOrient journal, Vol. 5, Iss. 1, 2011, “Overcoming the Digital Divide: The Internet and Political Mobilization in
Egypt and Tunisia”, http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=6212)
The assumption that the uncensored accessibility of the Internet encourages the
struggle for democracy has to be differentiated. At first sight, the case studies seem to
confirm the statement, since Egypt, featuring a usually uncensored access to the Internet, has
witnessed mass mobilisations organised over the Internet while Tunisia had not. However, the
mere availability of freely accessible Internet is not a sufficient condition insofar
as mobilisations in Egypt took place when a relative small portion of the
population had Internet access and, on the other hand, mobilisation witnessed a
decline between 2005 and 2008 although the number of Internet users rose during
the same period. As there is no direct correlation between increased Internet use and political
action organised through this medium, we have to assume a more complex relationship. A
successful social movement seems to need more than a virtual space of debate to
be successful, although such a space can be an important complementary factor in opening
windows and expanding the realm of what can be said in public. A political movement
revolves around a core of key actors, and "netizens" qualify for this task. The Internet
also features a variety of tools that facilitate the organisation of events. However, to be
successful, social movements need more than a well-organised campaign. In
Egypt, we witnessed an important interaction between print and online media,
between the representatives of a relative elitist medium and the traditional, more accessible print
media. A social movement needs to provide frames resonating with grievances of
the public coupled with periods of increased public attention to politics in order to
create opportunity structures. To further transport their message and to attract
supporters, a reflection of the struggle of the movement with the government in
the "classical" media such as newspapers and television channels is necessary to give
the movement momentum outside the Internet context.
2NC - Doesn’t Solve Censorship
Censorship is inevitable – Companies used for dissent, like facebook, only have
an incentive of PROFIT. This means there is no motivation to protect freedom Morozov
Non-state actors and social media monitoring make censorship impossible to
counter
Morozov 11 (Evgeny Morozov, visting scholar at Stanford University, Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, 2011, “The Net Delusion,” ch. 4)
governments do not need to wait until breakthroughs in artificial intelligence to make
more accurate decisions about what it is they need to censor. One remarkable difference
between the Internet and other media is that online information is hyperlinked. To a large extent,
all those links act as nano-endorsements. If someone links to a particular page, that page is granted some importance. Google has
But
managed to aggregate all these nano-endorsements—making the number of incom- ing links the key predictor of relevance for search results—and build a mighty business
around it. Hyperlinks also make it possible to infer the context in which particular bits of information appear online without having to know the meaning of those bits. If a dozen
antigovernment blogs link to a PDF published on a blog that was previously unknown to the Internet police, the latter may assume that the document is worth blocking without
Thanks to
Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, such associations are getting much easier for
the secret police to trace. If authoritarian governments master the art of aggregating the
most popular links that their opponents share on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites, they can create a
very elegant, sophisticated, and, most disturbingly, accurate solution to their censorship
needs. Even though the absolute amount of information—or the number of links, for that matter—may be
growing, it does not follow that there will be less "censorship" in the world. It would
simply become more fine-tuned. If anything, there might be less one-size-fits-all "wasteful"
censorship, but this is hardly a cause for celebration. The belief that the Internet is too big
to censor is dangerously naive. As the Web becomes even more social, nothing prevents
governments— or any other interested players—from building censorship engines powered by
recommendation technology similar to that of Amazon and Netflix. The only difference, however, would be that instead of being prompted to check
ever reading it. The links—the "nano-endorsements" from antigovernment bloggers—speak for themselves. The PDF is simply guilty by association.
out the "recommended" pages, we'd be denied access to them. The "social graph"—a collection of all our connections across different sites (think of a graph that shows
everyone you are connected to on different sites across the Web, from Facebook to Twitter to YouTube)—a concept so much beloved by the "digerati," could encircle all of us.
The main reason why censorship methods have not yet become more social is because
much of our Internet browsing is still done anonymously. When we visit different sites, the people who administer them
two powerful forces may destroy
online anonymity. From the commercial end, we see stronger integration between social
cannot easily tell who we are. There is absolutely no guarantee that this will still be the case five years from now;
networks and different websites— you can now spot Facebook's "Like" button on many
sites—so there are growing incentives to tell sites who you are. Many of us would
eagerly trade our privacy for a discount coupon to be used at the Apple store. From the government end,
growing concerns over child pornography, copyright violations, cybercrime, and
cyberwarfare also make it more likely that there will be more ways in which we will need
to prove our identity online. The future of Internet control is thus a function of numerous (and rather complex) business and social forces; sadly, many
of them originating in free and democratic societies. Western governments and foundations can't solve the censorship problem by just building more tools; they need to
identify, publicly debate, and, if necessary, legislate against each of those numerous forces. The West excels at building and supporting effective tools to pierce through the
firewalls of authoritarian governments, but it is also skilled at letting many of its corporations disregard the privacy of their users, often with disastrous implications for those
who live in oppressive societies. Very litde about the currently fashionable imperative to promote Internet freedom suggests that Western policymakers are committed to
Another reason why so much of
today's Internet censorship is invisible is because it's not the governments who practice it.
While in most cases it's enough to block access to a particular critical blog post, it's even
better to remove that blog post from the Internet in its entirety. While governments do not have such mighty power,
resolving the problems that they themselves have helped to create. We Don't Censor; We Outsource!
companies that enable users to publish such blog posts on their sites can do it in a blink. Being able to force companies to police the Web according to a set of some broad
It's the companies who incur all the costs, it's the companies
who do the dirty work, and it's the companies who eventually get blamed by the users.
Companies also are more likely to catch unruly content, as they know their online
communities better than government censors. Finally, no individual can tell companies
how to run those communities, so most appeals to freedom of expression are pointless. Not
guidelines is a dream come true for any government.
surprisingly, this is the direction in which Chinese censorship is evolving. According to research done by Rebecca MacKinnon, who studies the Chinese Internet at New America
Foundation and is a former CNN bureau chief in Beijing, censorship of Chinese user-generated content is "highly decentralized," while its "implementation is left to the Web
companies themselves". To prove this, in mid-2008 she set up anonymous accounts on a dozen Chinese blog platforms and published more than a hundred posts on
controversial subjects, from corruption to AIDS to Tibet, to each of them. MacKinnon's objective was to test if and how soon they would be deleted. Responses differed widely
across companies: The most vigilant ones deleted roughly half of all posts, while the least vigilant company censored only one. There was little coherence to the companies'
behavior, but then this is what happens when governments say "censor" but don't spell out what it is that needs to be censored, leaving it for the scared executives to figure
The more leeway companies have in interpreting the rules, the more uncertainty there
is as to whether a certain blog post will be removed or allowed to stay. This Kafkaesque
uncertainty can eventually cause more harm than censorship itself, for it's hard to plan an
activist campaign if you cannot be sure that your content will remain available. This also suggests
out.
that, as bad as Google and Facebook may look to us, they still probably undercensor compared to most companies operating in authoritarian countries. Global companies are
usually unhappy to take on a censorship role, for it might cost them dearly. Nor are they happy to face a barrage of accusations of censorship in their own home countries.
Local companies, on the other hand, couldn't care less Social networking sites in Azerbaijan
probably have no business in the United States or Western Europe, nor are their names likely to be mispronounced at congressional
hearings.) But this is one battle that the West is already losing. Users usually prefer local rather
than global services; those are usually faster, more relevant, easier to use, and in line with
local cultural norms. Look at the Internet market in most authoritarian states, and you'll
probably find at least five local alternatives to each prominent Web 2.0 start-up from Silicon Valley.
For a total online population of more than 300 million, Facebook's 14,000 Chinese users,
by one 2009 count, are just a drop in the sea (or, to be exact, 0.00046 percent). Companies, however, are not the only intermediaries that could be
(:
pressured into deleting unwanted content. RuNet (the colloquial name for the Russian-speaking Internet), for example, heavily relies on "com-munities," which are somewhat
akin to Facebook groups, and those are run by dedicated moderators. Most of the socially relevant online activism in Russia happens on just one platform, Livejournal. When in
2008 the online community of automobile lovers on Livejournal became the place to share photos and reports from a wave of unexpected protests organized by unhappy drivers
in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, its administrators immediately received requests from FSB, KGB's successor, urging them to delete the reports. They complied,
although they complained about the matter in a subsequent report that they posted to the community's webpage (within just a few hours that post disappeared as well).
Formally, though, nothing has been blocked; this is the kind of invisible censorship that is
most difficult to fight. The more intermediaries—whether human or corporate—are
involved in publishing and disseminating a particular piece of information, the more
points of control exist for quietly removing or altering that information. The early believers in "dictator's
dilemma" have grossly underestimated the need for online intermediaries. Someone still has to provide access to the Internet,
host a blog or a website, moderate an online community, or even make that community
visible in search engines. As long as all those entities have to be tied to a nation state,
there will be ways to pressure them into accepting and facilitating highly customized
censorship that will have no impact on economic growth.
2NC – Alt Cause Gambling
Online Gambling Ban would destroy the PERCEPTION that the US is commited
to Internet Freedom. It sets a precedent of governmental control that leads to
further regulaition in the future – Kibbe.
Gambling ban spills over to internet freedom generally
Hammond
3/12/14,
writer
for
RedState
http://www.redstate.com/diary/mikehammond/2014/03/12/crony-online-gambling-ban-threatens-gunowners-rights/
And, frankly, the fact is that neither the sponsors nor the beneficiaries of the Internet
gambling regulation are people who have given a lot of thought to constitutional
principle — or the precedential impact of extending regulation into this area. Sen.
Dean Heller (R-NV) is sponsoring the ban on behalf of the owner of a Las Vegas casino, and
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is reportedly jumping on board. Heller represents Nevada and will
hawk the interests of the casino owners who handed Harry Reid his current six-year term.
Thanks for that! Graham has a different reason for his involvement. Billionaire casino owner
Sheldon Adelson has pledged to “spend whatever it takes” to have it the federal ban enacted.
And Graham, after years of stabbing conservatives in the back, has his back against the wall.
With a contentious primary and polls suggesting Graham could be forced into a runoff, he would
like nothing more than a billionaire casino owner to rain campaign ads from the heavens to help
him survive. True, billionaire Las Vegas casino owners are on both sides of this issue. And I
certainly don’t begrudge billionaires their billions. But I’m staking my claim with the
billionaires who don’t believe that Big Government should stick its heavy hand
into the market in order to protect their billions. The bottom line? This “camel’s nose in
the tent” of Internet regulation creates a dangerous precedent for those
concerned about Internet freedom. It should scare those who want to stop Chuck
Schumer and his gun-grabber choir form moving the central element of Barack Obama’s gun
control agenda. To coin a phrase, “Ideas have consequences.” And regulation of
Internet gaming opens the door to regulation of other things congressmen or
billionaire political spenders find objectionable. Obviously, that includes firearms.
Gambling ban undoes internet freedom promotion
Aronson 14 Institute for International Economic Policy Working
Paper Series Elliott School of
International Affairs The George Washington University Can Trade Policy Set Information Free? IIEPWP-2014-9 Susan Ariel Aaronson George Washington University
http://www.gwu.edu/~iiep/assets/docs/papers/2014WP/AaronsonIIEPWP20149.pdf
T here is a contradiction at the heart of the Internet. Al though the Internet has become a
platform for trade, trade policies have both enhanced and undermined Internet freedom and the open
Internet. Two recent events illuminate this paradox. First, The New York Times ( America’s paper of
record ) reported it had b een repeatedly hacked after it published several articles delineating the financial
holdings of the families of China’s highest leaders. The hackers inserted malware and stolen its employees’
e - mail account passwords, allegedly to find out information abou t the Times’ sources. Soon thereafter,
The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Voice of America and other media outlets publicly
claimed their computers were hacked, allegedly also by Chinese hackers. And in late February the
government of A ntigua announced that it would retaliate against America’s ban of
Antiguan online gambling sites. The World Trade Organization (WTO) gave the small island nation
approval to sell items protected under US copyright law as a means of compensation for trade p ractices
that “devastated” its economy. Antigua plans to set up a website to sell US - copyrighted material without
paying the copyright holders. In short , while China was using trade to steal information and in so doing
reduce Internet openness , Antigua will use trade to undermine property rights while
advancing information flows. Although t he global Internet is creating a virtuous circle of
expanding growth, opportunity, and information flows , policymakers and market actors
are taking steps tha t undermine access to information, reduce freedom of expression and
splinter the Internet. Almost every country has adopted policies to protect privacy, enforce
intellectual property rights, protect national security, or thwart cyber - theft, hacking, and sp am. While
these actions may be necessary to achieve important policy goals, these policies may distort cross border information flows and trade. Meanwhile, US, Canadian and European firms provide much of
the infrastructure as well as censor ware or blockin g services to their home governments and repressive
states such as Iran, Russia, and China
Online gambling is the BIGGEST internal link
Braithwaite
and
Blitz 5/6/9 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7d47231c-3a82-11de-8a2d00144feabdc0.html#axzz3E1KKpH4h staff, Financial Times
Barney Frank, chairman of the House financial services committee, presented legislation on
Wednesday that would legalise internet gambling in the US and pave the way for overseas
companies to return to the market. Calling existing law “the single biggest example of
an intrusion” into internet freedom, Mr Frank said he was confident of some cross-party support
for the bill, which would regulate and tax online gambling.