To send a message to North Korea, and the world, that cyberterrorism will not be tolerated, Sony should release its controversial movie “The Interview” for free on the Internet, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said on Friday on
Newsmax TV.
Dershowitz appeared on “America’s Forum” Friday with Michael Hayden, a retired general and the former head of the CIA and the NSA.
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“We have to make sure that whoever did this pays a heavy consequence and they have to know that it can't ever succeed and the best way to make it fail is for all the studios to get together now and to release the film free, on the Internet, so that not 10 to 20 million people will see it, but hundreds of millions of people will see it,” Dershowitz said. “North Korea or whoever is behind this has to learn, you try to censor in America more people will see your film than ever before.”
The private sector taking a hard stance is critical to showing North Korea that “if we ever do this, more people will see it, there will be less censorship, more people will understand what a fool the North Korea leader is and we have to fight back,” Dershowitz said. “We just can't accept losing to the terrorist the way we're doing now.”
Sony has an obligation, he added, to both its shareholders and the American people to “go beyond profits” and ask “what am I doing to protect America's freedoms?”
Though a cyberattack was not “totally unexpected,” according to Hayden, it is surprising is that it came from “a backward country like North Korea.”
“People view this as the next logical step in the
growth of cyber dangers,” he said.
The incident is proof that American business cannot be lackadaisical in its response.
“The private sector has to assume far more responsibility for its own defense than it has in the past. Sony's behavior in this, from flash all the way to bang, has really been disappointing. These kinds of attacks pose incredibly difficult policy from the government. Is this a crime or something more? What should we do to defend or respond? Those last sets of questions are still unanswered.”
North Korea’s actions should be a warning shot to the United States about what could happen with a nuclear capable Iran, Dershowitz added.
“One of the reasons why we can't fight back against North Korea is because they have an atomic bomb,” he said. “Imagine an Iranian regime with nuclear weapons and greater technological sophistication. These are the people who threatened to kill those who did the cartoons. You give Iran a nuclear weapon, let it flex its nuclear muscles and its computer together and North Korea will seem like nothing.”
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