Obama's New Cyber Sanctions Woefully Inadequate: More Protection Needed for Stolen Cyber Property

WASHINGTON, April 7, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- In her latest op-ed in Business Insider, cyber and research consultant Mattie Fein highlights the weaknesses in President Obama's recent Executive Order with protecting American businesses and government information. Fein elaborates, "The current Order should have been applied retroactively to known international bad actors dwelling in Berlin, Shenyang, or otherwise." The current Order exempts hackers operating in the United States; an inexcusable omission. In addition, Fein questions why the Order has a limitation to trade secrets exclusively without protection of profits of "individuals or organizations that publish both private and government owned information in the United States or abroad that is known to have been illicitly obtained." Renowned attorney for Sony Pictures, David Boies, in a letter to The New York Times, demanded it refrain from publishing information illegally obtained from North Korea's cyber attack. Obama's order should be lauded for the economic sanctions persons or entities receive that derive a "commercial or competitive advantage or private financial gain." However, information stolen by Edward Snowden or Wikileaks' Julian Assange and fenced is completely ignored by the current Order. Protection of stolen cyber property also requires international cooperation which Fein points out will be difficult with countries like Germany, an unreliable partner in bringing hackers to justice. Recently, German courts refused to extradite $60 million dollar hacker to the United States for fear of an "unfair sentence in the United States." Great Britain's democracy has prospered with an Official Secrets Act for more than a century, and we should learn from that example. Congressional action partnered with the private sector urgently needs to bridge Obama's gap in the current Executive Order.

Mattie Fein, is Founder and President of M22 Strategies, Inc. a research and consulting group on cyber and national security issue policy. She currently is working on a thesis on Counterterrorism measures using the Reverse Turing Test.