American committee: lock PC when stealing intellectual property

An American organization that wants to combat intellectual property infringement recommends the use of ransomware to prevent the extraction of ‘valuable information’. This would require help from the police to be able to use the PC again.

According to the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, this does not conflict with existing American legislation. That organization wants to combat intellectual property infringement and consists of both politicians and business people, including a former CEO of Intel. The recommendation, which can be found in a report on the recommendation of infringement of intellectual property rights, the committee immediately came under a lot of criticism.

When an unauthorized person opens a file containing ‘valuable information’, their computer could be rendered useless. However, it is not clear what exactly is meant by ‘valuable information’; it could be just trade secrets, but it may also refer to other copyrighted content, such as software and media files.

The members of the committee also recommend taking measures to track files when files leave a company network. Legislation against copyright infringement is also urgently needed and action is needed against Chinese hackers who steal American trade secrets, they believe. Finally, the report thinks aloud about ‘hacking back’ digital attackers, which is currently prohibited. The committee does not dare to make a hard recommendation to the government, but does say that the current legislation is not in line with digital reality.