Well, it’s nice to see that the House and Senate can agree on something. Although in this case they’ve agreed to a provision snuck into the U.S. military’s 2012 funding bill that grants the military power to conduct “offensive” strikes online — including clandestine attacks. And won’t that be fun for everybody.

The provision itself, runs as follows:

Congress affirms that the Department of Defense has the capability, and upon direction by the President may conduct offensive operations in cyberspace to defend our Nation, Allies and interests, subject to–
(1) the policy principles and legal regimes that the Department follows for kinetic capabilities, including the law of armed conflict; and
(2) the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1541 et seq.).

They don’t define the word “offensive”, because that would be too restrictive, but it is liable to include stuff like that Stuxnet worm that compromised Iran’s nuclear set-up a while back, launching massive denial-of-service attacks, or disabling forums thought to be online meeting points for potential terrorists. Or, you know, Occupy Wall Street supporters, it depends.

The funding bill still needs to go to the President for his signature, which seems like a perfunctory measure.

The provision seems largely to be based on fear drummed out by large American security contractors about an impending “cyberwar,” in response to stuff like Chinese hackers targeting large U.S corporations with data-mining trojans, which apparently counts as an act of war. Except, as WIRED points out, spying isn’t an act of war:

Just ask the NSA and CIA, who spend billions of dollars a year spying on other countries by intercepting communications and persuading foreign citizens to give the U.S. valuable intelligence.

Which means that a fun mix of hypocrisy and paranoia is increasing the American military’s power to tap and operate on the internet.

Yaay.

[Source: FAS]