U.S. President Barack Obama reacts after tweeting at his first ever Twitter Town Hall in the East Room at the White House in Washington, July 6, 2011. REUTERS/Larry Downing Cyber attacks from abroad against both American businesses and the federal government have become epidemic because perpetrated with virtual impunity.

North Korea's cyber attack on Sony Pictures is exemplary. So is Germany's paradise for notorious cyber hooligans.

President Barack Obama’s issued an Executive Order on April 1 to economically sanction cyber criminals outside the United States. The financial and travel ostracism imposed by the Order is an anemic deterrent that needs fortification by Congress commensurate with the national cyber emergency at hand.

The Order should have been applied retroactively to known international bad actors dwelling in Berlin, Shenyang, or otherwise.

Its civil sanctions authorized by the International Economic Emergency Powers Act are not limited by the ex post facto prohibition in the Constitution for criminal punishments.

Moreover, Obama's exemption for hackers operating in the United States was inexcusable. The harm they inflict is every bit as damaging as the havoc wreaked by foreign hackers. Think of Edward Snowden and his co-conspirators in converting a staggering number of NSA documents or files showing spying on foreign persons or companies for personal use or enrichment as well as the unknown destinations of sensitive intelligence information that had near to do with “American privacy.”

Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden appears live via video during a student organized world affairs conference at the Upper Canada College private high school in Toronto, February 2, 2015. REUTERS/Mark Blinch Obama's Order should be lauded for the economic sanctions persons or entities that derive a “commercial or competitive advantage or private financial gain” outside the United States from trade secrets hacked or stolen.

But why the limitation to trade secrets only? And what about the profits of individuals or organizations that publish both private and government owned information in the United States or abroad that is known to have been illicitly obtained — akin to fencing intellectual property?

Examples of the latter include Mr. Snowden, Julian Assange, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and other digital, broadcast, or print media outlets or movie producers. The legal justification for confiscating their profits was sketched by David Bois, renowned attorney for Sony Pictures, in a letter to The New York Times demanding that it refrain from publishing information obtained from North Korea's illegal hacking.

The hacking epidemic would recede if there were no market for selling the fruits of the cyber hacker war booty.

The initial warning left on Sony computers by hackers. GOP



Effective deterrence will require cooperation from foreign governments in the countries where the hackers reside and operate. Germany sticks out like a sore thumb for its recalcitrance and hypocrisy. It views Snowden and Wikileaks as saints to be lionized rather than scoundrels to be condemned.

Prime Minister Angela Merkel feigned outrage at the NSA's eavesdropping on her cell phone conversations. She hopes to induce France to join Germany in developing a “European Network” that would avoid emails and other data automatically passing through the United States.

Imagine the precedent that would set for Russia, China, and other ruthless despots eager to identify and crush dissent and dissidents.

Germany is excluded from the “Five Eyes” alliance of countries on intelligence sharing for good reason. It is an unreliable partner in bringing hackers to justice. Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court, in December 2014, balked at extraditing Turkish national Ercan Findikoglu, who was arrested at the Frankfurt Airport in 2013.

President Barack Obama, right, listen to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, during a joint news conference. AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais The German court worried that the defendant would “receive a disproportionate sentence if convicted” in the United States of hacking over $60 million in a series of raids against credit card companies.

What kind of a sentence did the German court believe would be suitable? Home arrest with Assange at the Ecuador Embassy in London?

Recently, stolen Snowden leaks or hacks have emerged detailing the U.K.’s spying program on Argentina over the Falklands. The timing is hauntingly significant as the Nisman murder and the investigation of the Israeli Embassy and AMIA bombing still are unresolved and have been in the news regarding corruption.

The recent and un-accidental focus on Argentina should have been predictable news as Snowden’s benefactor Wikileaks’ carrier pigeon Israel Shamir, as detailed in Reason Magazine in 2010, has publically denied the Holocaust.

It is unfortunate that the current Executive Order of Obama doesn’t deal with any of the “stolen” American” intelligence cache. The reality is it all ties in.

Obama’s Order is hopelessly vague regarding what genre of hacking will trigger sanctions. It basically gives a free hand to the Secretary of Treasury — which means the Order will be administered more to advance the foreign policy agenda of the White House than to deter hacking from foreign countries.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies thus wrongly applauded the Order as a sign that the days of “free-range hacking are over.” The Order is more like an attempt to cool hell with a snowball.

The situation underscores the urgency of congressional action to define cyber crimes, cyber terrorism, and cyber warfare with specificity; to impose stiff economic sanctions on nations like Germany uncooperative in fighting cyber criminality; and, to make criminal the publication of any illicitly obtained information or classified documents by the electronic or print media or in the least civil remedies to enjoin organizations from publishing.

Great Britain's democracy has prospered with an Official Secrets Act for more than a century, and we should learn from that example.

Congress partnered with the private sector urgently need to bridge Obama’s air-gap in the current Executive Order to avoid an encore performance of the Academy Awards this year heralding Oscar recipients that commercialized on unlawful cyber theft.

Mattie Fein is Founder and President of M22 Strategies, Inc. a research and consulting group focusing on cyber and national security policy. Ms. Fein is currently working on a thesis on cyber counterterrorism measures based on the Reverse Turing Test.