Artificial intelligence has confronted us with a raft of dilemmas that challenge us to decide what values are important in our designs.

Artificial intelligence has confronted us with a raft of dilemmas that challenge us to decide what values are important in our designs.

This chapter explores the notion of power and its effects on information flow. Current information flows are dictated by two conflicting powers—the power to enable information flow, and the power to block the flow. These powers manifest themselves at all levels, such as that of the individual users and the government infrastructure. While an individual may seek access to information, the government may try to block the information or prevent it from leaving or reaching the individual. To this scenario a third entity could be added: the malware creator and digital attacker. Furthermore, localized rules and regulations enable governments and individuals to exercise more control over digital information while also enabling some information flow deemed appropriate by either party. But in the end, it is not the ability to control flows that matters as much as the ability to influence decisions and actions.

Aunque los datos estadisticos relativos a los ciberataques son hasta cierto punto escasos, parece que la mayoria de las organizaciones los han sufrido. En la ultima docena de anos, se han mas que decuplicado los incidentes comunicados a un organismo estadounidense de ciberseguridad. La preocupacion esta justificada. Se descubren cada ano miles de vulnerabilidades de los sistemas operativos y aplicaciones mas conocidos. Comparar la naturaleza de estos sistemas informaticos con la de un puente ayuda a entender por que son tan propensos a sufrir agresiones y por que es tan dificil evitarlas. Con todo, aunque el numero de ciberataques haya crecido, no lo ha hecho proporcionalmente al aumento del uso de los sistemas informaticos. La adopcion por parte de todos de determinados protocolos de seguridad reduciria en gran medida los ataques exitosos.

In the domain of cyber defense, the concept of active defense is often taken to mean aggressive actions against the source of an attack. It is given such names as “attack back” and “hack back” and equated with offensive cyber strikes. It is considered dangerous and potentially harmful, in part because the apparent source of an attack may be an innocent party whose computer has been compromised and exploited by the attacker.

Two proposals intended to reduce flaws in software use two very different approaches for software security.