back to article UK in Frenchy cyber love-in to ward off 'information bomb'

The UK's defence secretary Michael Fallon has announced a cyber love-in with the French to offset the threat of the "information bomb" – whatever that is. Fallon was discussing the complexity of the cyber-threat, and the means "to urgently identify ways to safeguard against the threats" at France’s first Cyber Defence …

  1. Your alien overlord - fear me

    "A hundred years ago we stood together on the frontline of a Great War" - er, no. *We* were on the frontline covering the little surrender monkey's ar$es.

    Two hundred years ago, we were whipping said ar$es.

    France doesn't win much do they?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Well they well and truly kicked our arses in 1066

      1. Anonymous Custard
        Headmaster

        The Normans were vikings in ancestry, they just came via France.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      er, no. "We" weren't alive. Why are you claiming credit for something you never did and hating people you don't know?

      Can anyone join in? You prick.

    3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Facepalm

      I can has Continental Balance Of Forces by depoping the countryside?

      *We* were on the frontline covering the little surrender monkey's ar$es.

      For this style of historical retconning you now get the AMURRICAN BAGDE OF EXCEPTIONALIST KEYBOARDER HONOR!

      Long may it stain your shirt.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I can has Continental Balance Of Forces by depoping the countryside?

        "For this style of historical retconning you now get the AMURRICAN BAGDE OF EXCEPTIONALIST KEYBOARDER HONOR!"

        Except that the OP is obviously speaking of Britain, not the US, so you can just keep your stain where it belongs, okay?

    4. x 7

      "*We* were on the frontline covering the little surrender monkey's ar$es."

      Actually, "we" were pretty much on the back foot until the yanks arrived and pointed out what dickheads our generals were - and saved our bacon with their superior numbers

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Your alien overlord - fear me

      You really need to go round a few french towns/villages and see the memorials to those who lost their lives in both wars before you make stupid comments.

      Perhaps you should just shuffle over to Twatter.

  2. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. dogged

    The information bomb is a term for the public finding out exactly what its elected representatives get up to and who pays them to do it.

    1. Anonymous Custard

      I thought that was a revolution?

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        In modern days "revolutions" are just about tweeting a bit more than usual, then going back to watch TV.

  4. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Facepalm

    This Paul Virilio seems to have been the typical lefty pretend-intellectual.

    What an impenetrable utter crap. He's actually pining for more state intervention and control? I hope he's happy and will get a fat drone on his worthless arse.

    A fundamental disorientation which completes and perfects the social and financial deregulation whose baleful consequences we already know.

    I'm still waiting for "social and financial deregulation" that exists anywhere except in the minds of the Marxist/Leninist and "Progressive" lumières. The drowing man cries for more water!

    1. Mark 85

      Re: This Paul Virilio seems to have been the typical lefty pretend-intellectual.

      The governments are embracing it because it's basically about your first sentence "intervention and control". They're doing whatever it takes to legitimize their quest for power.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Information bomb" Ermagerd. They're saying it like propaganda is a new thing; not something that has been used by absolutely bloody everyone since writing began.

    True, you can do it faster and more cheaply these days; but all that means is that most people will become more resistant to it.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Big Brother

      Well, Well it's getting hotter in the "democracies" because the Message Needs Some Control, right?

      Ironically, shortly after the New York Times expressed its concern for journalists in early August, the Guardian reported in an article written by William C. Bradford, a recently hired assistant professor in the law department at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The article, entitled “Trahison des Professeurs: The Critical Law of Armed Conflict Academy as an Islamist Fifth Column,” was published in the National Security Law Journal of George Mason University Law School.

      Bradford argued that the U.S. should be more aggressive in attacking Muslims to include attacks which are war crimes under the law of war. But it was his advocacy that the U.S. military attack other “lawful targets” in its war on terrorism, which include “law school facilities, scholars’ home offices and media outlets where they give interviews” that caught the most attention. These civilian areas were all places where a “causal connection between the content disseminated and Islamist crimes incited” exist, according to Bradford.

      Furthermore, Bradford wrote, “Shocking and extreme as this option might seem, [dissenting] scholars, and the law schools that employ them, are – at least in theory – targetable so long as attacks are proportional, distinguish noncombatants from combatants, employ nonprohibited weapons, and contribute to the defeat of Islamism.” In other words, dissenting scholars are unprivileged belligerents and subject to attack, just as journalists are according to the Law of War manual.

      Not to defend him but Bradford was articulating the underlying logic of the new Law of War manual’s position that dissenting journalists can be targeted as unprivileged belligerents. This, as stated above, is consistent with oppressive extra-constitutional martial law practices which Chief Prosecutor Mark Martins boasts of as “U.S. domestic common law of war.”

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Holy shit that's scary. Isn't deliberately fucking over the rules everyone has agreed to live by (the constitution) treasonous in itself?

    2. Mark 85

      True, you can do it faster and more cheaply these days; but all that means is that most people will become more resistant to it.

      Actually, it's the other way around... the more they hear it/read it, the less resistant they will become and the more acceptance they will have. Goering (IIRC) preached that tell a lie often enough and it will become the truth or words to that effect. He is/was right. It shows up in all the government's security theater.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        That might be the case where there are few sources of information; but how about today? With absolutely everybody trying it on in order to try and sell you stuff?

        Back in Goering's day people actually believed governments; whereas I would suggest that that is not the case today.

  6. x 7

    Well....we're supposed to be one of France's major industrial spying targets. So now we're going to allow GCHQ to transfer technology to France so they can spy on us more efficiently.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Don't worry - they'll completely ignore it if it's not in French.

  7. P.B. Lecavalier
    Alert

    Information Bomb Revealed!

    What is the "information bomb"? Easy. It's all those computers running M$ products that are so pirate-friendly. The solution to this has been known for a long time.

    And add to this a large number of smartphones that have not received a security patch in a long time (*cough cough* Android *cough cough*), but I'm not too worried about this, as I don't think there is much sensitive information there, other than... browsing history and questionable pictures?

  8. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Opening the Floodgates .......

    Fallon also said the French and the UK should share information and lessons on how to attract and train cyber-specialists, given the recent “information bomb” resulting in extensive levels of generalised information being made easily accessible.

    And the likes of a Fallon doing their cyber “King Canute trying to hold back the tides” stunt are most probably terrorised and fundamentally radicalised when considering the wide and relatively easy access there be to secured and cryptic levels of highly specific information for greater intelligence services and future projects and programmes and/or, should certain needs dictate, pogroms against which their efforts and prognostications and prevarications will prove barren and fruitless.

    And does … “and posit that a handful of really smart mindful humans and virtual machines can and will and do control the money and media, and words shared create, command and control, and also catastrophically collapse worlds.”* …… equate to an information bomb blitzkrieg and Live Operational Virtual Environment Global Operating Device War Gamesplay?

    Oh, and furthermore, with particular and peculiar regard to the problem of how to attract and train cyber-specialists, throwing millions and/or billions at the very best of them will simply ensure their services deliver, guaranteed perfect enough to be quite heavenly, results. Provide anything less and pay peanuts will guarantee monkeys.

    And there of course be tiers of expertise which be attracted by commensurate rates of reward with quite specific entry payments to access increasingly real and sensitive and virtually powerful options for both politically incorrect and elite exclusive executive command and control of full spectrum operations.

    For example, £$€7777777/£$€88888888/£$€999999999/etc, And they be bargains and easily remembered figures, for it is only pretty printed paper being offered and sought in those cases, isn’t it.

    So now y’all know. IT Command and Control of Creative CyberSpace, Computers and Communications [C42] is both extremely expensive and relatively cheap and really no more difficult than that. Have a nice 0day day, y’all.

    Capiche, El Reg? Are you at the cutting leading edge?

    * http://amanfrommars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/150924.html

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Does anyone else worry that while we are preparing to defend against a "cyber war", large groups of really nasty people in the Middle East and Africa are running rampage with actual deadly weapons.

    1. Bloakey1

      "Does anyone else worry that while we are preparing to defend against a "cyber war", large groups of really nasty people in the Middle East and Africa are running rampage with actual deadly weapons."

      I do, I am also concerned that we are using multi-million pound drones and missile systems when the enemy is effectively using their version of smart weaponry to whit: the suicide bomber and the donkey / vehicle mark 1. their systems are often more targeted, accurate and destructive than ours and their rules of engagement would gladden the heart of any squaddie.

  10. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    By the absence of their sharing of critical information will you know them

    However, the release and speech failed to provide any further details of what it meant.

    "Tis ever the case and par for the course with government and their lackeys venturing into unknown fields of fabulous fabless endeavour. Typical SNAFU.

    1. Bloakey1

      Re: By the absence of their sharing of critical information will you know them

      I say old chap, I really do not catch your banter.

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