In recent weeks the
governments of Britain, Israel, the US, Japan, India and China have reported alleged
cyber attacks by foreign militaries, hackers, and malicious software like Duqu, a virus similar to the Stuxnet cyber
weapon constructed by Israel and the US for
use against Iran’s nuclear program.
Here in Canada I see this one a fair bit.
Although the nature and
origin of the attacks or even whether they took place at all cannot be
independently confirmed, the supposed threats are being used to propose
punishing new legislation aimed at stifling internet freedoms and are igniting
new rivalries in what many see as the battlefield of the 21st century:
cyberspace.
In the US, a report to congress by the
National Counterintelligence Executive is touting cyber-espionage as a major
threat to the American economy. In a section entitled “Pervasive Threat from
Adversaries and Partners” the report reads:
“Chinese actors are the
world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage” and
“Russia’s intelligence services are conducting a range of activities to collect
economic information and technology from US targets.”
In the wake of the
report, DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency tasked with
maintaining the US military’s technological advantage, has asked for a 73% funding increase in
fiscal 2012, from $120 million to $208 million. Meanwhile, China has lashed out
at the report, calling such allegations “irresponsible.”
Now, governments around
the world are using fears over cyber attacks as an excuse to crack down on the
internet freedoms of their own populations.
Last month, China vowed a crackdown on
social media websites and microblogs as a response to increased boldness in
Chinese bloggers in criticizing the government. Beijing’s poor response to the
high-speed rail crash in Wenzhou earlier this year led to such an outpouring of
abuse on the internet that the story was picked up by China’s mainstream
broadcasters.
A statement from the
State Internet Information Office is vowing that such criticism will not be
tolerated however, with Xinhua reporting that three of the offending bloggers
have been punished by local authorities.
Just days after that
announcement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that it’s considering
using social media to track and survey its own population. DHS Undersecretary
Caryn Wagner said that the government fears social unrest like that seen in
Tunisia last December and wants to use social media services like Twitter to
monitor its own population. Last January, Senators Lieberman and Collins renewed calls to give the president a
kill switch over the internet to protect the government in times of emergency,
a call echoed by Senator McCain last
July.
Last week, British Prime
Minister David Cameron spoke of the need to strike a
balance between cyber security and freedom of speech. Speaking at a London
cyberspace conference, he renewed British calls for an international framework
for cyber security.
Internet security expert
Eugene Kaspersky, speaking at the same conference, defended his own idea for internet passports as a requirement for
logging on to the internet and an internet police force for cracking down on
unwanted behaviour, adding that countries that did not agree to such a
framework should simply be cut off from the internet.
Kaspersky is not the only
one arguing for a so-called passport or license to access the internet. In the
past, the idea has been proposed by Craig Mundie,
Microsoft’s chief technology officer, and the White House drafted a proposal
earlier this year encouraging the private-sector development of an Internet ID.
Critics say that such a
plan would be the end of the internet as we know it, making legitimate
political protest and government crticism impossible. In a scathing
critique of Kaspeserky’s proposal, security technologist Bruce Schneier
lashed out at attempts to end anonymity on the internet:
“Universal identification is impossible. Even attribution ~ knowing who is responsible for particular internet packets ~ is impossible. Attempting to build such a system is futile, and will only give criminals and hackers new ways to hide,” he wrote.“Attempts to banish anonymity from the internet won’t affect those savvy enough to bypass it, would cost billions, and would have only a negligible effect on security.”
Check out your Windows system files, if you know how to do it. There is a programming file there which is dated 1980 called "cipher." It is representative of the mind boggling (on purpose) amount of time and effort that Bill Gates, under the direction of IBM, put into making your whole computer readable to those who have the keys. The best way around it is Linux, if you know how to use that Operating System.
ReplyDeleteWindows is the biggest spy apparatus ever conceived.