That is Intelligence, not war. Is the CIA out killing people with these cyber activities? War (at least the type the war powers act refers to) trying to kill people.

Not as bothered by us hacking our enemies as I am that they're collecting unneeded data on every American.

Agreed CF. Especially as the CIA's directive explicitly denies them the right to operate on American soil.

In most places, attacking a country's infrastructure/economy is considered an act of war. Perhaps this is a more blurry line than 'police actions' but if/when other nations retaliate in kind then we'll have a bunch of undeclared wars going on which simmer away until... i dunno.

But that is, i suppose, an aside.

A police action in Korea wasn't trying to kill people, i had a specific goal of preventing the Korean Communists from taking over and running the entire peninsula...

@Draugnar

If your anger is to have any teeth, I'd like to remind you that it's rather easy to take effective action on this particular issue.

http://www.restorethefourth.net/events/

There has been a cyber "war" going on for years. It's only recently, with documents like the Mandarin Report, that people are starting to realize just how widespread the efforts to obtain information have been.

If you have some technical skills you can set up a honeypot on a server you own and start entering some commonly trafficked sites. I've had a few friends do this, and a significant portion of the penetration attempts occur from China, India, and Southern Africa, but there's a decent number of attempts from the United States as well.

@orathic, the reason that these acts aren't considered war is the same reason you cannot declare war on Pakistan or other countries that house terrorists. Even though you can be pretty sure the governments are condoning the actions of the hackers there is no way to prove it. Counter-digital forensics is years ahead of the digital forensics measures. The other issue is that nearly every country is participating in penetration attacks against other countries. No single country can declare war on any other since they are guilty of the same crimes.

@jmo - fair point, but 'because everyone is doing it' does not a justification make.