Category Archives: Internet

Britain, Government, Internet, National Security, Politics, Society, Technology

Put social media bosses in the dock

INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Intro: Lies and disinformation on social media is fuelling violence and the breakdown of society

The violent thugs and bigots rampaging through the streets of UK towns and cities in the dreadful days since the Southport killing of three young children deserve severe punishment for their appalling crimes.

The giant businesses that enable the lies and exaggerations that fuel the riots should also be in the dock – as should the people who own them.

For the online anonymity they facilitate allows anyone in the world the chance to say anything they want, however incendiary, and to escape responsibility.

Built into the internet from its inception decades ago, anonymity is hugely profitable for tech billionaires, but the horrendous price for this free-for-all is paid by the rest of us: mostly law-abiding, peaceful people who respect the truth. Internet anonymity is the default setting when you set up an email address or a social media account. You can pretend to be anyone, anywhere.

The anarchy and chaos unleashed after Southport highlights the danger. An anonymous account on X (formerly Twitter) called Europe Invasion first spread the incendiary lie that the suspect in the stabbing case was a Muslim immigrant. That post – completely invented – was viewed a staggering six million times.

We have no idea who is behind Europe Invasion, with its relentless and misleading crimes, and doom-laden commentary about ethnic strife. It gives no contact details or any other explicit clues about its funding, staff, location, or aims.

For those who have spent decades dealing with Russian disinformation, it may well smell and look like a Kremlin propaganda outlet in an attempt to sow dissension and mistrust in Western societies – a Russian tactic for many years.

Moscow has unwitting accomplices. Look at the man in charge of X, Elon Musk. A self-declared “free speech absolutist”, Musk closed the departments responsible for dealing with disinformation when he first acquired Twitter. And he has made it far harder to report abuse. The result has been to intensify the toxic mischief coursing through the veins of our democracy.

When Musk took-over the ailing Twitter platform two years ago, accounts with verifiable owners still benefited from a “blue tick” – an award which prevented pranksters and fraudsters impersonating public figures, mainstream media outlets, and businesses. Not any more.

One of Musk’s first moves was to offer blue ticks to anyone willing to pay for them.

That’s why, at a cursory glance, Europe Invasion looks like a regular media outlet – with the “blue tick” stamp of authenticity for which someone, somewhere, has presumably paid. Musk has also lifted the ban Twitter had imposed on such divisive figures as the far-Right firebrand Tommy Robinson who has been blamed for helping fuel violent disorder with his social media posts.

Musk contributes directly to the toxic atmosphere he has helped create. Adding insult to injury he is now embroiled in a war of words with Sir Keir Starmer saying that “civil war is inevitable” in Britain.

The sensible citizens of our land will conclude Musk is not just the wealthiest man in the world, but also the silliest. He knows nothing about this country – and is not ashamed to show it. But among his 200 million followers there will be many who believe him, with untold consequences for this country’s image abroad, and stability at home.

There is even a greater danger to our national security. The internet is the central nervous system of our civilisation, used in everything from finance to health care and transport.

It is horribly susceptible and vulnerable to carelessness (as we saw recently in the massive global disruption from a faulty software update). Yet it is being attacked by malevolent state actors such as Russia and China.

The reason for our plight is simple: greed. Checking identities costs money. So too does nailing lies, running a proper complaints system, and installing proper security.

For the tech giants, it is far simpler to let chaos rip, and watch the profits roll in.

Yet the answer lies in our own hands – and those of our elected politicians in parliament.

As a first step, our regulators and lawmakers should demand that tech bosses immediately remove material that constitutes incitement to riot. Unless they do that, they are aiding and abetting serious crimes.

The tech giants’ titanic lobbying efforts have cowed politicians for years. Curb the internet and you hamper innovation, the argument goes.

But the price now is too high. An American court has just handed down a landmark ruling that the online search giant Google is a monopoly that systematically crushes its rivals.

We need the same spirit here in the UK, with the media regulator OFCOM and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) working together to curb the power of these monstrous companies.

They behave like medieval monarchs, treating us as their digital serfs. It is high time to remove their neo-feudal protections and privileges and make them legally liable for the extraordinary harm they do.

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Cyber security, Economic, Government, Internet, Society, Technology

CrowdStrike: The risk is ours

INTERNET SECURITY

THE bleak lesson from the devastating global computer breakdown on Friday 19 July – which grounded flights, crashed payment systems, crippled NHS surgeries and hospitals, disconnected phone lines, and knocked media outlets off air – could have been even worse. With no end in sight, this malfunctioning has been dubbed the “digital pandemic” and has already incurred colossal costs in time and money.

To those unversed in the intricacies of computer technology, the speed and extent of the disaster are almost incomprehensible. Surely, many will say, computer systems should be designed to avoid crashes on this scale at all costs. We would not accept planes, trains, or automobiles that dysfunction so badly.

But the truth is when it comes to computers, we accept inherent levels of risk that would be utterly intolerable elsewhere. The technology companies’ profits soar and, when things go wrong, we – the digital serfs of this brave new world – must humbly accept the cost and inconvenience that our masters inflict on us.

To appreciate the scale and complexity of the problem, consider this thought experiment.

Imagine if we allowed almost every traffic light in the world to be made by the same manufacturer. Worse, imagine that all of them were made with a remote-controlled switch that turned them to red. And – catastrophically – that a simple error at the manufacturer or one of its suppliers could trigger this switch all over the world.

Traffic would be instantly gridlocked on every continent. To repair these traffic lights, technicians would in many cases have to dismantle them and fiddle around in the works.

That, in crude terms, is the story of CrowdStrike in this computer breakdown and collapse. Most computers in the world use Microsoft – which makes the ubiquitous Windows operating platform, as well as Word, Excel, and the Teams video-calling system. Many Microsoft customers also rely on other software – in this case the Falcon Sensor program provided by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

Security software protects computers from attack, typically by screening incoming data to ensure that it does not include “malware” – malevolent programs that steal data, freeze computers, or scramble their contents.

To work properly, these programs must operate unhindered on our computers, phones, and tablets. And to protect against new threats, they must update regularly – and automatically. In this current incident, one of the automatic software updates from CrowdStrike contained a simple, devastating error. Automatically installing on computers that run Windows, it crashed affected devices, triggering a page containing Windows’s error message – the so-called “blue screen of death”.

The result: the world suddenly had to switch to cash payments and handwritten boarding passes, while shops were forced to shut, medical appointments cancelled, and aircraft at airports grounded.

It is little comfort that George Kurtz, the co-founder and chief executive of CrowdStrike, says he is “deeply sorry”. Fixing the problem will not just take hours, but days or even weeks. At best, computers will need to be switched on and off again, allowing a new update to install. At worst, affected machines will need hours of specialist attention.

Nor will it be any comfort to furious customers around the world that CrowdStrike’s share price has crashed, knocking £10billion off its £65billion capitalised market value.

It could have been far worse.

This does not appear to have been a cyber-attack by a foreign power. Microsoft systems in countries all over the world, including Russia and China, were affected.

Nor was it the work of cyber-criminals. The faulty update did not scramble our databases, leaving us open to ransom demands from crime gangs in return for a key to recover our information.

Nor – unlike many recent cyber-attacks – did it whisk our most precious private information away to the Chinese Communist Party’s spy services in Beijing.

A far worse – and narrowly avoided – cyber-attack earlier this year could have given our enemies the master key to hundreds of millions of computers around the world, enabling them to wreak deadly havoc. Known in tech circles as the “xy” attack, it involved a little-known but ubiquitous program that compresses data to improve efficiency.

This attack, probably the work of Russian spies, was uncovered and stopped by chance at the last minute. And because in the end the damage was minimal, it attracted almost no public attention.

That was a near-miss. Far worse was the SolarWinds attack, exposed in 2021. Hackers – almost certainly Russian – bugged an update issued by Microsoft for a widely used program. The targets were Western (chiefly American) defence and other government networks. The cyber raid also exposed data from the U.S. Treasury, Justice, and Commerce departments, and thousands of Wall Street’s top companies.

The internet has become the central nervous system of our civilisation. Yet it was never designed or intended for this. It was built to promote academic cooperation and technological innovation, not global security. It is wide open to abuse by pranksters, fraudsters, and rogue states.

A handful of operating systems and software that updates remotely and automatically create a sitting target.

We would hardly accept such a concentration of risk in other walks of life, especially if we had no control over the decision-makers in such systems, and almost no redress if they made mistakes. With most other products and services, you can sue the provider if there’s a malfunction – and gain additional compensation for any damage caused. Not computers.

Unlike other parts of our technological universe, computers, phones, and software are not sold with proper guarantees. The manufacturers can shrug at their products’ shortcomings.

Buried in the terms and conditions are clauses that exempt the manufacturer from almost all liabilities.

One might well ask how on earth we got to such a parlous state of affairs.

One reason is greed: tech giants like their profits. They lobby hard for their privileged status, just as they do for the right to sell our attention to online advertisers – and to resist demands for proper age verification on social media platforms like TikTok.

But a deeper reason is that we have been naïve and complacent in our headlong embrace of new but untrusted technology. We have prized innovation and convenience ahead of security.

These risks, we were told, were the price of admission to the brave new world of computer wizardry. Maybe. But we are paying heavily for it.

In the case of this cyber meltdown, the culprit was carelessness. But suppose the perpetrator had been some rogue regime, perhaps distracting us at a moment of geopolitical tension?

Imagine that this outage had stopped the trains running, frozen all cash machines and, for that matter, turned all our traffic lights to red – or worse, green.

We would have nobody to blame but ourselves.

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Britain, Economic, Government, Internet, Technology

5G and why we need it

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

5G

5G is the “fifth generation” upgrade to mobile telecommunications. It does not consist of a single new operating system but a “systems of systems” that will dramatically increase data speeds to such an extent you’ll be able to download a movie in just three seconds. It will also increase internet capacity a thousand-fold when it’s fully operational.

There is a big difference between 4G and 5G capabilities. 4G, like all the ‘G’s before it, is principally designed for smartphone browsing. 5G, however, is far more ambitious, linking together all kinds of devices, from household appliances such as fridges and washing machines to cars and electricity meters.

It is supposed to create what has been termed the “internet of things”, where everything we use in our day-to-day lives can be controlled remotely. For example, you could use the 5G network to control your washing machine from the other side of the world. It could also speed up the development of driverless cars by allowing vehicles to interact with each other.

5G will become increasingly relevant with a pressing need for it. In its strategy document for 5G rollout, published in 2017, the UK Government predicted that global data traffic would grow from 3.7 exabytes (3.7 billion-billion bytes of information, where one byte is equivalent to a short email) in 2015 to 30.6 exabytes in 2020. That’s the same as if the number of passengers on London’s Tube network grew by 53 per cent every year. Without an upgrade, existing systems face being overloaded.

There are also government policies which are dependent on 5G. If we are to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 – the ambitious target which was unveiled by former Prime Minister Theresa May last summer – then we will need to make much smarter use of the electricity grid. The 5G network would allow household appliances like fridges and electric car charges to switch in and out of the grid when needed.

There are risks with 5G. An “internet of things”, where every appliance is interconnected, provides new opportunities for hackers to interfere with electronic systems. They could potentially seize control of vehicles and cause them to crash, or by hacking smart door locks to gain entry to households.

Hostile nations could exploit 5G to try to disrupt our utility supplies, nuclear plants or airports. There are also serious privacy issues as 5G will make it easier for governments and corporations to track our lives one click at a time. But there are also considerable advantages – 5G networks involve far more secure data encryption. So, while there will be more appliances for hackers to target, doing so won’t be easy.

 

WHOEVER builds the 5G grid, or supplies equipment for it, could potentially plant bugs to allow interference with the network or enable mass surveillance by accessing data.

Huawei has repeatedly denied that it is an arm of the Chinese state, but as a Chinese company it is vulnerable to the control of a dictatorship with an appalling human rights record.

We wouldn’t allow a Chinese company to supply fighter jets for the RAF, goes the argument, and therefore we shouldn’t allow one to supply vital communications infrastructure.

Former national security adviser Lord Ricketts has dismissed the fears, however, saying: “I personally think we can find a solution which does allow them to have some role.”

Another serious concern is what it would mean for Britain’s role within the “Five Eyes” network of security partners – the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Britain – who frequently exchange intelligence. Canada has yet to make a decision, while New Zealand initially stopped Huawei providing 5G equipment but has since said it has not imposed a complete ban.

The United States is worried. Donald Trump doesn’t trust Huawei to build even the smallest part of our 5G network and the US has warned that it might be reluctant to share intelligence with the UK if we utilise the services of the Chinese company – although MI5 chief Andrew Parker recently claimed that this is an unlikely consequence. Some analysts have argued that the US is only saying this as a protectionist ruse in its ongoing trade war with China.

Yet, that doesn’t explain why Australia, too, has banned Huawei from building its own 5G network. The chair of Australia’s intelligence and security committee, Andrew Hastie, claims it is a question of “digital sovereignty”, while his colleague James Paterson points out: “Successive Australian governments banned Huawei from our broadband and 5G networks with very little controversy.”

In any case, no US company currently makes 5G network equipment. Instead, the US is considering subsidising Swedish firm Ericsson and Finnish company Nokia in order to help develop its own 5G network. In the US, T-Mobile has already switched on a slower version of its 5G network, claiming it covers 200 million people.

Some of our other allies are also refusing to denounce the Chinese firm. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is reluctant to ban Huawei, fearing retaliation against German companies exporting to China. France, too, has said it will allow Huawei to build parts of its 5G network.

Under Theresa May’s premiership, the government announced that Huawei would be allowed to provide equipment for the periphery of the 5G network, such as masts, but not the control systems at the core of the network. The security services – MI5, MI6 and GCHQ – claim that the risk to 5G from using a Chinese supplier is manageable.

But one complication that will need to be resolved is that our existing 3G and 4G telecoms networks already contain equipment manufactured by Huawei. In 2005, for example, BT signed a contract with Huawei that allowed it to connect customer lines to the main part of the network.

The UK Government announced this week that it is to stick to its existing policy, which is to allow Huawei to build communication towers and other peripheral equipment for the 5G network but ban it from the core parts of the network (such as military intelligence). Measures were also announced to reduce future reliance on China’s involvement by imposing a 35 per cent cap on Huawei’s share of the market.

Our Government claims that Huawei has such a technological head-start in creating 5G equipment that shunning it would delay the introduction and considerably increase costs. Alternative, though significantly more expensive, suppliers are ZTE, which is owned by the Chinese government, Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung (South Korean) and Viettel (owned by the Vietnamese military). The actual cost to the Government of Huawei’s input into 5G is unknown, as is the time frame. Restricting Huawei’s involvement would have delayed the launch of 5G by up to two years and cost the economy between £4.5billion and £6.6billion, according to a 2019 report by the telecoms industry body, Mobile UK.

We could have decided to upgrade the existing 4G network which would have given extra capacity for now. But, in the long run, that would have led to Britain lagging behind in telecommunications.

The pros and cons of using Huawei

Advantages –

. Banning the Chinese would reduce the number of companies supplying 5G, decreasing competition and leading to a rise in costs for consumers.

. Whitehall officials have also said it would cost the UK economy tens of billions of pounds in the coming years, from the lost opportunity of the productive gains of using 5G.

. There would also be a cost to companies who have started to roll it out across the country.

. Officials have warned that by barring Chinese involvement could slow down the rollout of 5G by up to three years.

. Huawei’s exclusion would likely damage relations with China, where Britain is also seeking to strike a post-Brexit trade deal.

The Risks –

. The U.S. says Huawei could be used as a back door for spying by the Chinese state.

. Critics have also warned China could use its access to Britain’s data network to shut down critical national infrastructure.

. There are fears the UK could lose its intelligence sharing relationship with countries such as the US and Australia, who have warned against allowing Huawei anywhere near their networks.

. Members of the US Congress have also threatened to block a future post-Brexit trade deal if the UK pushed ahead with using Huawei.

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