Two papers published at C6

I have updated the publications tab with two papers that were published in the proceedings of the upcoming Conference on Cyber Conflict. As is always the case, by the time they went to print I already had some ideas for changing them. Nevertheless, here they are:

• Lorents, P. and Ottis, R. (2010) Knowledge Based Framework for Cyber Weapons and Conflict. In Czosseck, C. and Podins, K. (Eds.) Conference on Cyber Conflict. Proceedings 2010. Tallinn: CCD COE Publications, p 129-142.[link]
• Ottis, R. (2010) From Pitch Forks to Laptops: Volunteers in Cyber Conflicts. In Czosseck, C. and Podins, K. (Eds.) Conference on Cyber Conflict. Proceedings 2010. Tallinn: CCD COE Publications, p 97-109. [link]

Any comments and feedback welcome.

There are those who know...

Only two weeks until the Conference on Cyber Conflict! While this and some other projects keep me busy, I wanted to point you to a great story over at ubiwar. This discussion has developed over a few days in various other blogs as well.

The issue is about people with access to classified material making authoritative statements, because they "know how things really are". However, since what they know and how they know it is classified, they will not follow through with argumentation. A person who has no access to the classified material has no way of verifying the correctness of the claim, so he has to take it on faith.

My short stance on this is - if it is classified, shut up about it. One, it is not helpful for the open debate. Two, classified is not equivalent to correct. Three, "classified" may refer to something that does not exist.