I love how these stories always tend to focus on the "cyber attacks" rather than the incompetence that allowed them to be attacked in the first place.
These days, if a website gets defaced because of an outdated Wordpress installation, the media instantly rallies to the victim's defence and portrays the script kiddies that did it as terrorists. And if they're not personally identifiable, they're government agents of wherever their IP addresses originate from (or whoever the current political go-to villain happens to be).
I wouldn't be surprised if this major government IT SNAFU paves the way to more aggressive "cyber crime" laws and more posturing against Russia. It'll also likely be used to make the public forget about the entire NSA ordeal (because hey, we totally need the US to protect us against evil Russia).
Keep in mind that the entire "we're under attack" narrative isn't as popular or widely accepted in Germany as it is in the US. The last attempt to portray us as having to defend ourselves against an attack was during our involvement in Afghanistan, which the public generally disagreed with (although our politicians promised unlimited solidarity to the US).
We're also in a really awkward position: politically we're very dependent on the US (up to the point where US agencies can legally do what it wants in Germany thanks to post-WW2 agreements) but economically we're also very dependent on Russia -- as is a lot of Europe, for that matter.
> I love how these stories always tend to focus on the "cyber attacks" rather than the incompetence that allowed them to be attacked in the first place.
For the same reason stories about home invasions or robberies don't blame the victim for leaving their house or car unlocked.
Sure. But if someone hacks you or robs you, the media should place blame on the person who was actually malicious, not the one who was merely negligent
Somalia being a post-apocalyptic wasteland qualifies as a mesofact[0], I guess. Whether it actually ever was quite that bad I don't even know. I think the idea is mostly fed via movie tropes.
The victim here is not the government but the people it's supposed to serve. They are providing a bad service if data (likely ours but they don't say) gets stolen away.
These days, if a website gets defaced because of an outdated Wordpress installation, the media instantly rallies to the victim's defence and portrays the script kiddies that did it as terrorists. And if they're not personally identifiable, they're government agents of wherever their IP addresses originate from (or whoever the current political go-to villain happens to be).
I wouldn't be surprised if this major government IT SNAFU paves the way to more aggressive "cyber crime" laws and more posturing against Russia. It'll also likely be used to make the public forget about the entire NSA ordeal (because hey, we totally need the US to protect us against evil Russia).
Keep in mind that the entire "we're under attack" narrative isn't as popular or widely accepted in Germany as it is in the US. The last attempt to portray us as having to defend ourselves against an attack was during our involvement in Afghanistan, which the public generally disagreed with (although our politicians promised unlimited solidarity to the US).
We're also in a really awkward position: politically we're very dependent on the US (up to the point where US agencies can legally do what it wants in Germany thanks to post-WW2 agreements) but economically we're also very dependent on Russia -- as is a lot of Europe, for that matter.