I submitted the RT story yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9305942. The RT article has a copy of the executive order, which is a legally binding law enabling "promulgation of rules and regulations" until it (hopefully) is reviewed and struck down by the judicial system as being unconstitutional. Given what we've seen historically from this White House and Congress, I'm not holding my breath.

This legally binding order gives the US Government the right to lay claim to assets held by individuals and corporations who may "constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States", all without prior notice.

Laws and legal contracts provide us a trusted system by which we may operate within a society. By 'sweeping off' certain rights, that trust is effectively eroded to the point implicit trust is all that remains of the 'contract' held with the governing body, in this case the US Government. This opens up the path to abuse of power by certain individuals by enabling them to hack the remaining (implicit) trust to suit their own needs.

While cyber criminals should be held accountable for their actions and the acts they commit can create additional suffering for individuals, corporations and communities, I don't feel eroding trust of the governing body of a country is the most logical approach to combatting crime committed by the criminals. Implicit trust in things of importance, especially infrastructure, never ends well for the parties trying to trust each other. FWIW, this is an opinion based on trust observations seen while working on infrastructure, which is not necessarily a fact of all our reality. At the very least, this is a complicated issue.

There are certainly other avenues available to us for addressing criminal behavior on the Internet. Those avenues are most likely technical in nature, and are clearly well beyond the responsibilities (or abilities) of The Office of the President of the United States.

It feels like the US is currently in a massive bought of cognitive dissonance: wanting to stop attacks while (at least for some) holding our freedoms as individuals to high levels. As with most duality situations, this will resolve itself at a future date in one way or another. For all of us, I hope this is done in a transparent, trustworthy and LEGAL way.

I would add that implementing technical measures to combat these attacks in and of themselves could be considered violations of this Executive Order as they may judged by the government at will: "any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of State, to be responsible for or complicit in, or to have engaged in, directly or indirectly, cyber-enabled activities originating from, or directed by persons located, in whole or in substantial part, outside the United States that are reasonably likely to result in, or have materially contributed to, a significant threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States".

Cyber-enabled activities likely to result in a threat. Think about it.