Anti-Hacker Executive Order: 5 Concerns

http://www.govinfosecurity.com/anti-hacker-executive-order-5-concerns-a-8072

This article talks about how President Obama plans to deal with what he called a “national emergency”.  This emergency is the result of the ongoing problem that computer hackers are causing by disrupting U.S. businesses and government agencies. To help fight against this issue, the President has signed an Executive Order which will allow government agencies to block or seize the assets of such perpetrators. Although this seems fair and just, many questions and concerns arise from some security experts. These concerns include: the legality of evidence gathering, finding where these attacks are truly coming from, where the “intelligence” is coming from and the possible negative reactions that some countries may have if the U.S. were to impose sanctions on them.

As former Dept. of Justice official Mark Rasch calls it, “This is essentially a cold cyberwar – we’re treating cyber-attacks like any other type of attack and reserving our right to respond with sanctions”

Questions:

Are we heading into this “war” too fast or has this emergency gone on long enough? Any ideas on how to stop these attacks?

If another country is allegedly behind such attacks should our government get involved in this cyberwar by way of sanctions or are the possible economic consequences too unpredictable?

Since most of the government’s cyber attack intelligence comes from the private sector, can we truly rely on this information to make judgement, what can be done to have more reliable information?