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  • Book review: Computational propaganda

    Book review: Computational propaganda

    Oxford Internet Institute is a go-to-zone whenever I need some knowledge about cyberspace, cybersecurity, Internet research or many other topics. It’s a fascinating interdisciplinary institute, blending what is called social data science, data science with social science (sociology or political science for instance), looking at algorithms, artificial intelligence, disinformation campaigns large scale. They have a score of PhD-students and scientists doing very interesting and exciting research. Occasionally, the scientists release books, such as this one: Computational propaganda: Political Parties, Politicians, and Political Manipulation on Social Media, edited by Samuel C. Woolley and Philip N. Howard. The book comprises case studies of digital disinformation efforts (a main focus is certain types of bots) in nine countries, ranging from Canada and Poland to Russia and, naturally, Ukraine.

    Ukraine was hit several times on a large scale, both by cyberattacks and computational propaganda. The Russians used bots of various kinds: impact and service bots, amplifiers, complainers and trackers. Research found that civil society drove the response, which was decentralized, in contrary to the centralized focus and power of the Russian attackers. Computational propaganda was used to manipulate opinion, sow discord, discredit various Ukrainian actors and support others.

    Russia is surprisingly interesting. It was, until about two weeks ago, a country where VKontakte and Yandex competed with Facebook and Google and were the bigger actors without an askewed market. But most fascinating is that the blogosphere, and parts of social media, rely on good reporting, which results in well-built fake news. In the blogosphere posts needed to have well-founded arguments and evidence “right away, preferably with detailed, often highly technical, reports on the matter”. If that failed, hackers were brought in to expose personal mails and grievances which could be exploited against journalists or the political opposition. It meant that evidence was very important. Since 2011 the situation has deteriorated though. Perhaps the abovementioned is why the Putin regime now has completely limited access to social media, to foreign sources of information, forbidden any reporting on the war, because evidence is not to be found, not to exploited by journalists or the opposition?

    As mentioned, bots are used in various ways on the Internet, and comprise a fairly large focus in several chapters, one reason being “bots […] can operate at a scale beyond humans”. In the chapter on Canada, election interference becomes an issue in the illusive question “how can free speech be weighed against foreign interference?” How can national authorities and legislation know a foreign actor isn’t buying bots to spread information in an election, or even know parties or affiliates aren’t using bots or cyborg accounts (humans and programs together) to affect the election? Julia Slupska wrote purposefully about this, discussing the fine lines of foreign interference in elections, national sovereignty, freedom of speech, the right to reflect and make choices on our own, and how liberal democracies made attempts to limit digital interference with elections. Bots complicate online speech drastically, because anyone can use bots and cyborg accounts: parties, citizens, companies, organizations. And who is to say who is a citizen, by the way, and who constitutes a foreign interest?

    Taiwan has tried media literacy as a way to counter desinformation compared to, for instance, Canada. In both countries “positive” bots are deployed to fact-check news (which, by the way, is how some journalists work, by deploying bots to check facts before publishing news).

    Zeynep Tufekci has written about activists and the same conclusions about them can be drawn here: human rights activists and alike are targeted and trolled with, especially public ones. When the Euromaiden protests broke out in 2014, activists were instantly barraged, with harassments and threats raining down on them. Fake accounts, bots and foreign interests makes it very difficult to know who exactly is behind the wall. Still, do people change their opinions, and if so, when?

    Many of the authors have interviewed people inside various companies (PR, software developers, media companies etc), which brings an interesting insight into how fake accounts are set up, bought/sold, how bot networks work, how they track and generate data on social media users, how agenda setting and opinion targeting are really working.

    Three conclusions in, and a fourth from, the book:

    1. Focus on what is said rather than who is speaking.
    2. Social media must be design for democracy.
    3. Anyone can use bots.
    4. For computational propaganda to work, it’s necessary to influence opinion leaders (on social media) and the agenda setting media. Study how Steven Bannon worked before the election to the European parliament in 2019 or watch The Brink.

    If ever you find yourself in need of a deep introduction on computational propaganda, this book is a necessity.

    —

    Night and blur – The Bilinda Butchers

  • Book review: The perfect police state

    Book review: The perfect police state

    This could well be a follow-up to Beijmo’s De kan inte stoppa oss. Instead of Syria as the main stage, the story and its focus is China. As Europe was an outlier in Beijmo’s book, Turkey and the US are the outliers here.

    Writer Geoffrey Cain presents himself early as the journalist he is, when travelling Xinjiang in western China, though the main character in the narrative is Maysem, an Uighur who has escaped Xinjiang. Cain introduces “the Situation”, the extreme oppression of Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang and the equally extreme surveillance there created by the Chinese Communist party. Its war on the three evils (terrorism, separatism and extremism) has created an omnipresent surveillance like no other, a dream of predecessors like Gestapo, Stasi and the KGB, much in the form of Sky Net (yes, sounds like Terminator) and Integrated Joint Operations Platform. Purposes are reeducation (brain wash) and genocide (e.g., by sterilization) and to dismantle the entire culture by sowing distrust between every person.

    Cain does a much better job than Beijmo at explaining his sources, his knowledge of things usually hidden, why he cross-checked interviewees, reasons for altering names and how he ended up covering this dire subject.

    Excerpt from pages 6-7 in the book, where Cain watches heavily equipped counterterrorism officers in the city of Kashgar:

    “I casually snapped a photo of the scene with my cell phone, and started to walk away. One of the police officers was wearing sunglasses with a built-in camera linked to China’s Sky Net surveillance database; the camera was connected by a wire to a minicomputer in his pocket. He turned left and glanced at me. If I were a local resident, he could probably see my name and national ID number on his lenses within seconds. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by police. I didn’t know where they came from, or how long they had been watching me. […] It’s likely that I’d been watched from the moment I arrived. Fellow journalists had warned me that my hotel room would be bugged and any laptops or smartphones I left in my room would be scanned. With 170 million cameras nationwide, some able to identify anyone from up to nine miles away, and government devices called Wi-Fi sniffers gathering data on all smartphones and computers within their range, the state probably knew a great deal about me the moment I stepped off the plane.”

    This occurred in 2017, just a couple of years after Beijmo’s story. Much has happened, albeit another country, in technology. It reminds me of the planes with cameras circling Baltimore, recording every vehicle and person in the city, as told by Bloomberg in 2016.

    By retelling Maysem’s story, and the stories of multiple other persons, we’re given a glimpse of the horrible oppression of the ethnic minorities in Xinjiang: reeducation centers, concentration camps, forced labor for Chinese and international corporations, the propaganda emanating from the Communist party, the male watchers allowed to sleep in female Uighurs homes and beds. Technologically, it’s on a totalitarian scale the Nazis could only have dreamed of. Despicable and omnipresent a system, the retelling is haunting, even if it’s not as blunt and violent as in Syria.

    Part in the creation of the surveillance stands the technological giants of China, with an unwitting Microsoft initiating the search for ever better surveillance many years ago. Some of the tech giants are Huawei, Hikvision and Tencent, the creator and holder of WeChat.

    Then, what is the actual difference technologically from our Western societies? Facebook Messenger and Alphabet/Google registering as much as they can about us on any device and with any trackers they can get hold of. Facebook with their glasses, Alphabet with their glasses and their watches. Android as an operating system with Google services installed allowing, by default, unrestrained data collection. Tech companies wish to create AI with our information and sell us as products to advertisers and corporations. In China, the Communist party wishes to create AI and control people in order to create a harmonious society without friction. The Citizen Lab released a report in 2020 named We Chat, They Watch, revealing how WeChat is used to spy on non-Chinese residents and to train AI.

    Cain’s book is a good read, and the seriousness of the issue is written on every page. To follow Maysem’s story, you need to read the book, because I won’t give you any more details. Usually, I don’t bother with graphics or design, but the cover of the book (in hardcover) is appealing.

  • Russian cyberwar in the dark forest?

    Russian cyberwar in the dark forest?

    Russia has been turned into a dictatorship in two weeks. No journalists are allowed to mention the word “war” in combination with “Ukraine”, resulting in several journalists or news agencies shutting down their activity or agreeing to self-censorship. Many foreign journalists are thus going home for fear of their reporting being in conflict with these hard measures.

    Protesters face fines, but also being conscripted and sent to the frontlines of the war, in a very cruel irony. Furthermore, the Russian authorities are shutting down or blocking access to various social media. They still lack the capacity to hunt down everything said and written, so they resort to complete blocking, I guess. Simultaneously they can use Internet Research Agency (IRA) and others to spread disinformation about the war, foreign interventions and try to gain support for this military operation (Z, anyone?). Lastly, they have the opportunity to limit the influence of foreign actors.

    Many are surprised the Russians haven’t attacked, or crushed, Ukraine through cyberwar yet. This was expected regarding all the attacks Ukraina has endured since (at least) 2015: attacks on energy plants, the electric grid, authorities, banks and so on. It was also expected because of the Gerasimov doctrine (Gerasimov happens to be highest ranking military (as I understand it)) in Russia, overseeing the invasion of Ukraine.

    There are things destabilizing the Internet, such as cyberattacks on authorities, power plants and a virtual flood of spam mail, though nothing (yet) near the total cyberwar between nation states. One important aspect complete havoc has not hit us could be linked to the dark forest theory.

    The dark forest theory is developed by science fiction writer Cixin Liu in the second book of The Three-Body Problem Trilogy (spoiler alert ahead!): The Dark Forest. In my eyes it could be applied here, even if it originally concerns cosmic civilizations. Instead of a dark forest inhabitated by scattered civilizations, we see a planet with many different countries in various stages of cyber capabilites. The three strongest are the US, Russia and China. The former two are in economic war, and the US supports a fourth nation being attacked by Russia militarily. The US also has allies in the form of the Five Eyes (the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) and the EU (which is not a cyber power in itself). On the outskirts are enemies of the US, North Korea and Iran, to keep it simple.

    Russia attacks Ukraine and the US declares its support of Ukraina, all in concert with the EU. The Five Eyes have exposed the Russian planes for months and boosted the Ukrainian defense for years, both military and the cybersecurity. All eyes are focused on Ukraine and Russia. So, to apply the dark forest theory here, all nations are separate persons sitting or standing next to a tree each, in a dark forest. Every single one is a hunter and game at the very same time. (Even if, for instance, the US, Russian and China are comprised of several agencies and authorities (and companies) each, they are reduced to one person here.) The nations/persons have all surveilled and hacked one another for years now, so they know pretty well who sits or stands next to a tree, and about where that tree is situated. Now they are poised for stronger, more devastating cyberattacks than ever before, perhaps on such a scale that it can cripple an entire person for years to come. And they can’t afford more than one chance, here meaning they have three choices:

    1. Sit/stand still
    2. Shoot
    3. Run

    The first implies trying to hide and remain, in best case, undetected, or it means remain vigilant but inactive.

    The second means attacking, thus revealing and exposing themselves by standing up and shooting. Everyone in the dark forest will instantly hear the shot. The closest, or most able, will even see the shot, perhaps even the shooter.

    The third means trying to relocate and, if succesful, hide behind another tree. It entails standing up, running, avoiding being shot and hiding behind another tree, hopefully not to close to another person.

    Unlike a real person, Russia can cause some minor disturbance for others, just like other nations might cause small disturbances, because they are comprised of so many smaller actors within themselves. But still, the nation has only have one single chance of doing something powerful: taking down an opponent/enemy.

    What upsets the dark forest theory here is allies. In the original dark forest theory there is no such thing as ally or friend. Everyone is a mortal enemy. Russia has no allies to speak of. The US is in a group of five, and aligned beside them are friendly allies, such as France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. Let’s say Russia chooses to attack the US, wreaking havoc in revenge for the support of Ukraine. They can take down some agencies, companies, municipalities and cripple many others. But since the Americans aren’t all situated in the US, many cybercapabilites will remain (the opposite is also true, though the Russians have fewer capabilites abroad). And most importantly, the allies will definitely attack Russia in turn. Since Russia has no allies, they will be the quarry.

    To speak with dark forest theory: Russia can choose to shoot. But they cannot run to another tree. They will turn from hunter to game the moment they reveal themselves. They will be fatally shot and destroyed by all the other hunters in the forest (especially considering how strained their other capablities are: military, economy, clout). That’s why I believe (and I could be very wrong) there has been no cyberwar to speak of so far (that we’ve seen). Russia simply cannot attack without being completely destroyed.

    Another main reason for this is the approach formulated by former secretary of defense Jim Mattis. In 2018 he outlined a new approach by the US in case of a major, devastating cyberattack: to consider such an attack as a nuclear attack, thus reciprocate with nuclear weapons. This is something the Russians know. Of course, this concerns an attack on the US itself, but where to draw the line when cyberattacks on one actor can spread unintentionally to others?

  • Book review: De kan inte stoppa oss

    Book review: De kan inte stoppa oss

    Mattias Beijmo is a Swedish public speaker, opinion writer and analyst focused on technology and its implications for privacy, democracy and society. In the book They can’t stop us, Beijmo tells us a story of the Arab spring mainly through the lens of two young Syrians. Bassel is the outstanding tech-savvy guy with a promising, global future. Noura is the aspiring jurist, defending human rights in a dictatorship. Both want more, but none of them are prepared to leave Syria, despite the looming protests and clashes with police and security forces.

    As the clashes turn into a looming civil war, in the mezzanine of severe oppression but not outright war, Bassel and other democracy protesters receive help from hackers internationally. One group is based in Sweden, named Telecomix. They do their best in helping protesters avoid surveillance and tracking. Unfortunately, another Swedish presence presents itself to the Syrian dictatorship – Ericsson (also other companies). They can help track people. And so, the technological war also begins.

    Another of Beijmo’s intention is to reveal digital weapons, or should I say how seemingly benign digital equipment can be turned into weapons with devastating effects, especially for people who believe in democracy, freedom of speech and human rights.

    In recent years, Swedish media has disclosed how several more Swedish companies sell equipment to dictatorships in Belarus and Myanmar, with the purpose of surveillance and tracking of dissidents. Some scenes from the book are imprinted on my mind. And dare I mention, they are not happy. Reading it (it only exists in Swedish though) might give you cold shivers down your spine again and again. But if you’re a proponent of democracy, or at least prefer living in a democracy, you should read it.

  • State of the world after one week of war in Ukraine (Revised May 5th)

    State of the world after one week of war in Ukraine (Revised May 5th)

    It’s been one week of war now. One week of immense sorrow. One week of reading more news than ever before in such a short time: Zelensky, Putin, Kiev, Kharkiv, Cherson, Territorial Defense Unit/Brigade, women signing up for frontline duty – the list in my dreams and nightmares go on and on.

    To follow the news, is to me like watching a shockwave of power and momentum in real time, the epicenter being Washington DC. From that epicenter comes an immense wave of power in the shape of diplomacy and soft power, flowing in all directions simultaneously. Many countries are caught in the flow, some resist. I’ve read news, especially after president Joe Biden’s speech to the congress, that the USA is not standing in the frontline this time, defying the prevalent thought that Americans are always at the forefront in confrontations, leading the “free world” towards a new goal. That they are weaker now. I couldn’t disagree more. Biden and Blinken (and so many others) have done a marvelous job of outing the Russian plans, playing the game of spies against spies. They remind me of president George H.W. Bush and James Baker III when they saw the Soviet Union and its’ satellite states collapse: seem unaffected outwardly while being busy and occupied with diplomacy and behind-the-scenes actions to make sure the system collapses as smoothly as possible. Biden and Blinken are using the goodwill of being right about Putin, and the badwill of Putin and his actions, to amass the strongest economic and political alliance in history. The goal is twofold.

    Firstly, the US is intent on destroying Russia as a great power once and for all by isolating them from the rest of the world as much as is possible, daring Putin to let Russia become a vassal state of China. Since China is extremely much stronger than Russia, those bilateral negotiations and relations will not be in Russia’s favour, ever. The wolf warrior diplomacy will put Putin at China’s mercy, no matter the nuclear weapons. Russia is in decline in almost all ways, whereas China is now becoming a super power stronger than the Soviet Union ever was.

    Secondly, when Russia is weakened and the debris is left in Siberia, the US will turn to China. Aligned beside them will be the European union with all its economic might, now stronger militarily than ever before, South Korea, Japan and many other countries, especially in South East Asia. The goal here is to force the Chinese to negotiate on the Western terms, to stop the wolf warrior diplomacy and make them see that a war on Taiwan is out of the question. The hegemon (the US that is) will remain in its’ place.

    That notorious Russian security meeting last week had me thinking a few things. One: Putin seemed affronted and angry. Perhaps because all his secret plans had been thwarted, that communications had been constantly intercepted and used against him by the Five Eyes. There might be leaks even. Two: Democracy in Ukraine must not last. A democratic country which succeeds where his authoritarian, semi-dictatorship country fails is never to be tolerated. Three: It seems his friends there didn’t agree with him. Perhaps they’re more well-informed about the risks they’re taking, both by attacking Ukraine and by saying no to Putin. Catch 22. But it angered him and all things considered made him make the decisions to attack.

    Perhaps there are many other reasons I/we don’t know and may never know. Still, I presume there are some strong disagreements in the Kremlin leadership.

    The response to the Russian invasion and attack has been stronger than I ever imagined. In the way of the reception of (and preparation for) refugees, which could have been a goal for Putin: let enough refugees into the EU and it might crumble, since the last refugee crisis in 2015 put the union through some serious hardships, and help right-wing extremists in France into power. In the way of swift (no pun intended) economic sanctions. In the way of military aid, like in Sweden, where the government and (now) all parties have decided to send weapons to a warzone for the first time since 1939. That says something about the threat European countries feel, disregarding all these foolish claims that Russia is threatened by every Western country, giving Russia the right to decide who should cooperate with who.

    It seems Emanuel Macron has been right all along, preaching about a stronger military force within the European Union, that the EU must be able to tackle things on its’ own. I’ve concurred before and I do it again. Thank you, Putin.

    I’ve heard politicians call for the extradiction of all Russian citizens from Sweden, which is an absurd proposal. To extradict people seeking asylum, a new life, or any other reason, for just being Russian citizens is against logic, against reason and won’t do the cause for Ukraine, for democracy any good. It’s rather to revert to the historical mistakes of old (and new): the internment of people with Japanese heritage in the US during World War II, the hatred towards Germans in the US during World War I. It smells of racism. There’s also the usual fallacy of thinking of citizens of one country being potential spies or weaknesses. As if Swedish citizens couldn’t be traitors or damage our country (the same goes for any country). The worst traitors and spies are usually found within a countries own population.

    Other very disturbing news, unfortunately not unexpected though I hoped for better: African students and migrants being treated very poorly by Ukranians and Poles. Considering how quickly and forcefully Poland organized a reception for millions of Ukrainians, and how forcefully they opposed refugees from Syria and the Middle East in 2015, I’m not surprised. Somehow, though, when you read news about all the heroic, fantastic deeds of the Ukrainians, one expects them to be saints in every way. That is never true for any people. The situation is so dire and awful, blatant racism in the form of refusing help and aid to Black people is sad, disturbing and wrong. People fleeing the war should receive help, no matter their origin or citizenship.

    People claim the Russians will win. Define win and victory, I say. Historically, the Russians haven’t fought a war without severe losses and/or humiliation in modern times. The Russo-Japanese war ended in humiliation and defeat. World War I ended in humiliation, defeat and system collapse. Russia was defeated by Poland in 1920. World War II was “won” by the death of millions of soldiers and inhabitants, in numbers perhaps more than any other nation ever. Afghanistan ended in humiliation. And so did Chechnya. The United States has the most powerful military the world has ever seen. They can deploy troops everywhere and have ousted many regimes for more than a century now, in some spectacular and extremely efficient ways. But even they have severe problems occupying countries. If the great historian Putin had read real history he would know how some of those occupations ended.

    So how can Russia possibly win? If the rest of the world lets them fight there by turning a very blind eye and by turning everything in Ukraine, the very country he was supposed to save, to dust and smithereens. By turning Ukraine into Stalingrad, which is very ironic, in a twisted, bleak way. By letting Russian men die in the hundred of thousands, and Ukrainians in the millions.

    I sincerely hope I won’t be writing any more about this war again, that it is over next week, but it seems a faint and vain hope. I would like the war to stop any minute, no more people dying, whether they be citizens in Ukranian cities, towns and villages preparing to fight and die for their freedom from Russia, or young Russian soldiers lying dead on the ground, covered by snow.

  • Book review: The Perfect Weapon

    Book review: The Perfect Weapon

    The New York Times has journalists (often called reporters, correspondents or writers) devoted to dedicated, limited subjects/topics, such as White House correspondent, lead consumer technology reporter, or national security correspondent, like David E. Sanger. He happens to be a colleague of Nicole Perlroth, author of This is how they tell me the world ends [min egen länk], and this book a kind of sibling. While she covers cybersecurity and digital espionage, he mainly covers national security, and one must read the book with that perspective.

    “The Perfect Weapon is the startling inside story of how the rise of cyberweapons transformed geopolitics like nothing since the invention of the atomic bomb” it says on the back cover, and Sanger dives into cyberweapons and their implications on national and international security. American-Israeli Operation Olympic Games is the starting shot of cyberattacks on nation-states about 15 years ago. Preparations of Operation Nitro Zeus, of which I knew nothing previously, was the second, although it was never deployed. In short, Nitro Zeus was supposed to entirely shut down Iran if the US needed to bomb the country in case of attacks on Israel, by infiltrating virtually everything digital in Iran.

    Sanger explains some of the cyber warfare infrastructure of the US, such as TAO (Tailored Access Operation) and US Cyber Command, as well as the immense offensive capabilities of the US. Then he explains the infamous (and famous?) Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee is covered, unflattering as it is in his depiction of incompetence, laziness and inertness. Likewise depicted is the very serious hack of the Office of Personnel Management, when China took personal data on approximately 21,5 million American citizens (an astounding amount of personal data on people with security clearance) and 5,6 million fingerprints of important personnel in the US.

    Barack Obama managed to accomplish a kind of truce with Xi Jinping after attacks, which lasted until the Trump administration chose trade war with China. In his now famous annual address on New Year’s Eve for 2018, Xi Jinping had two books on artificial intelligence on display, carefully chosen as symbols of ambitions and interests of the Communist party the coming years. Some believe the data stolen from the US is a way to train AI, mapping both people and country.

    What the US taught its adversaries through cyberattacks and cyber espionage was how imperative this capability is, at a low cost to boot. North Korea was not a power to be reckoned with before American meddling, but now it is, just like Iran. Instead of limiting attacks and espionage to state organizations, adversaries attack and or spy on civilian (or soft) targets: municipalities, companies, large corporations, journalists, politicians, activists.

    Sanger also draws conclusions I have barely encountered before, however logical they are once read, stemming from his focus on national security. In the trove of data Edward Snowden collected and shared with a few chosen people was information on how the National Security Agency (NSA) installed their own equipment in companies’ products (like Cisco). This, not the ways NSA accessed the tech giants’ servers to spy on its own population, was the real important find. This damaged US national security and has had very serious implications in geopolitics. One aspect of this is the trade-technology-war between the US and China. Why would Americans let Chinese companies build infrastructure in the US when they knew exactly what they themselves would do, were they to build infrastructure in China? And why would the Chinese not attempt to build backdoors and make attempts to spy on the Americans at every turn, when it was proven the Americans did exactly this?

    Like Perlroth, Sanger concludes that the US is mostly to blame itself. It showed the world cyberweapons are useful. It amassed the most encompassing espionage apparatus ever, with amazing offensive capabilities. But it cannot defend itself. The US is wide open for most attackers.

    Since the release of the book, Joe Biden has become president and his administration has showed a much more ambitious approach of beginning to cybersecurity than his predecessors. The administration is deeply engaged in cyber defense and security, making it a priority in the infrastructure bill (cyber is mentioned 319 times in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act), participation in conferences and speeches. The lid is off.

    Seldom have I come across a book so outstanding and worthwhile, it’s absolutely teeming with information on cyberweapons and warfare. If you’re to choose one book to read on these topics, it’s The Perfect Weapon. Besides, how could I not like a book with chapter titles like From Russia, With Love and Pandora’s Inbox?

  • Book review: Twitter and tear gas

    Book review: Twitter and tear gas

    Occasionally I acquire a book that simply gives me goosebumps and a joy to read. I feel honored to even hold the book in my hands. Reluctantly I put the book away and the withdrawal symptoms come. An anxious sensation sets in, preventing me from reading the book too fast, because what then will I read?

    Zeynep Tufekci is the programmer turned sociologist, the associate professor studying technology’s impact on social movements, protests and surveillance capitalism. She’s also a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, the Atlantic and other places, with an amazing sense for systematic thinking. In 2017 she published the book Twitter and Tear Gas – The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. It’s a delight to read.

    She studies social movements, usually anti-authoritarian ones, and combines this with social media: how does social media impact movements, their organizations, their decision-making, their goals? Examples are given from Tahrir square in Cairo, Egypt, Gezi Park in Istanbul, Turkey, the Occupy movement and Black Lives Matter. As a sociologist she turns to social media and field studies, meaning she actually spends time with activists in the streets and public spaces.

    One advantage of networked protests using social media is the rapid ability to organize people. Movements can mobilize and organize as fast as the police. People who never organize or even utter a words in defiance can quickly mobilize, which is another advantage. One disadvantage for movements is that the algorithms governing social media are out of control, and can easily become a hindrance to lbtqia+-activists or other political activists who cannot be anonymous or are targeted with hatred and threats. Social media is a corporate-owned public sphere, flawed compared to the coffeehouses and tea-houses of old. No matter how much software developers at Google or Facebook sympathize with activists in, say, Turkey, the system they work for is manipulated and turned against the activists.

    Another part of the book delves into how regimes and governments strike back, by attempting to control the public (digital) sphere. Responses from the governments in Russia, Turkey, Egypt and China are presented. They can actively drown movements and activists in hatred, threats or misinformation. There’s also the risk of omnipresent surveillance of any political comment on social media.

    But social movements don’t necessarily fail and when they fail, the faults may be their own or indirectly caused by social media and the (sloppy) usage of Internet. In comparison to the Civil rights movement, which Zeynep covers also, the new social movements tend to lack some very important aspects: organization, decision-making and goals. She gives the reader different detailed examples, which I will not delve into here, of how movements work for change. However, they often lack a clear set of achievable goals they can organize around and compromise about. Since they lack a clear decision-making structure, they are unable to discuss, vote and compromise. If a government actually is ready to negotiate, what is the movement going to negotiate about? And how are they to discuss the offers made by the government? Can they even measure how close or far away their goals are? If they are too far away, will people abandon the movement, and if they are too close, do they take “victory”/change for granted?

    All in all, this book is a pleasure to read. Zeynep presents theories, how algorithms work, how decision-making is made (or unmade), how movements begin and where they fall asunder, how governments respond and so much more. If you’re ever interested in networked protests, social movements and the Internet – this one is a must.

    Massive Attack – False Flags

  • Book review: This is how they tell me the world ends

    Book review: This is how they tell me the world ends

    What is a zero-day? You may have heard news involving zero-days or zero-day exploits without actually reading those words, or you actually have read about zero-days, such as the Pegasus Project and the NSO Group? Someone clicks on a link in a text or message and voila! they’re hacked. The device is spied upon and/or controlled by someone else. Apparently, this someone doesn’t even need to click anymore. An unseen text or message is sent to your device and it’s no longer really yours anymore.

    Nicole Perlroth is an American journalist focused on cybersecurity and digital espionage and did recently release her first book, This is how they tell me the world ends.

    A zero-day is an unknown (security) flaw in software, like an operating system or program. This flaw can be exploited by someone, most likely to hack into this operating system or program. Mostly she writes about the invisible market and marketplace for zero-days, “the blood diamonds” of the security trade coveted by actors: nation-states, companies, developers, criminal networks. There are terrifying aspects to these exploits, some of which I’ll never tell friends or family, involve developing really nasty spyware or weapons to sabotage elevators, cars, jet fighters, the electric grid, power plants and you name it. A well-planned attack can send a country back to the analogue age. A well-planned and well-executed attack can annihilate enough date to destroy the state itself.

    Perlroth’s way of writing is that of a thriller and she revels in it. I find it refreshing, though I think the reader needs to be aware of how she portrays the people she meet, talks to, the details they reveal to her. There’s no protagonist to save us from impending, lurking doom. Instead Perlroth is present, almost like a character in this real-life thriller guiding us through how Ukraine has been attacked by (terrifying) NotPetya, the (fascinating) Project Gunman, (the amazing) Stuxnet – it’s all here, like classic novels. How China breached Google, the perpetual Russian intrusions and the Shadow Brokers stealing the arsenal of National Security Agency (NSA) are also told. She traveled to Ukraine to witness repercussions of cyber warfare. She talked to former bosses at the NSA, American secretaries of defense, the Finnish president, companies attempting to create a proper market for zero-days (or the fixes of them), mercenary coders working for the United Arab Emirates, Argentinian hackers in Buenos Aires. She went to congregations with men selling zero-day exploits, encountering the fucking salmon – that which should not be brought into the light.

    What she finds is also an expanding interest for zero-days, the intelligence and security agencies desire to breach cybersecurity of hostiles and friends, and nation-states willing to arm themselves with digital weapons. Details may be missing, words exaggerated, but I can accept them. Writing for laymen is difficult and overall it’s the sum of the parts that matter: the system, the sophistication, the evolution.

    Writing about tech can easily evolve into thrillers because of technical details, opaque and mystified to most people, and the thrill of spies and people lurking in shadows, forbidden spaces. I’m not one to read thrillers, but this thriller-like book I like. It’s long, intriguing, exciting, disturbing and in the shadows lurk horrible things that do happen and can happen. And if you happen to be interested in the zero-days market, there’s virtually no other book to read. So, go ahead.

    You – Regard, Troye Sivan & Tate McRae

  • A book that changed my life

    A book that changed my life

    Most of can relate to, and reminisce, a moment in our life when we made an important choice, when we reach a subtle decision point. Not long ago I was on my way out of a bookstore when I suddenly caught the attention of a book I had seen before, but disregarded: Deep Work by Cal Newport.

    In short, Newport argues that more and more people are losing their ability to focus on one single thing – deep work. Deep work is related to learning and doing an excellent job: being able to learn things very well and also performing them very well without being distracted. Part of his statement, if you want to call it that, is that people who know how to focus and deep work are the ones with higher status and salaries. They will, most likely, be more exempted from rapid changes in the marketplace/workforce and constant job insecurity. People who can deep work are able to work with machines, programs and will always be better at learning even more new things. They are versatile.

    He names different people who have learnt to focus intently on one task at a time, such as Carl Gustav Jung, Mark Twain, Bill Gates, J.K. Rowling and Theodore Roosevelt. My favorite is a man changing career to become a software developer. He chose to isolate himself for a while and studied only books on programming and later became one of the best students at a devcamp.

    Network services, such as texts, mails, instant messages, blogs, microblogs cause time to be fractured into tiny incoherent pieces. I mean, is sending mails really work? Are we paid to send and receive mails about virtually anything? Who in their right mind pays us to spend time on Facebook, unless it’s explicitly in my job description?

    Whenever I think of work today, I picture myself with my back to a mound or a hill. Right behind me is a small tunnel venturing into the hill. I’m able to see the end of it clearly, as well as people there. In front of me is green, billowing hills basking in wonderful sunshine with a clear blue sky as background. Behind me, through the tunnel, I can hear the noise, the hysteric conversations and shouts, the endless chatter, though if I just relax that all goes away.

    This is also how I describe my state of mind to people who ask me how I feel and what I do when there’s stress and pressure. I don’t imply I never feel lost or stuck in between chores, but it rarely happens and I can simply turn it off by taking a deep breath. But the difficulty is not I. Instead it’s everyone else stuck on the other side of the tunnel, the hill. The people who so dearly want to be heard, who scream out their importance, who spam me (and others) with mails, phone calls, messages of various kinds, who so desperately want a response, a reaction. I find it sad and somewhat shocking I was once there too, and my greatest issue is explaining this to people who actually are so plainly stuck, that I’m no longer one of them. I don’t long for their hysteric communication, their endless chatter, their constant flow of mails at work, mails with no relevance or coherence. It pains me people are unable to actually communicate properly, because they lack the insight to their own problems.

    Newport doesn’t have a one-way ticket for everyone and he concentrates on people working in office, in the service sector, with computers. Thus, it’s hard to read this book and apply most of it if you’re a nurse, a bus-driver or preschool teacher. He introduces several methods and techniques dependent on work, children, age and the like. I won’t go into more details, except for some basic rules:

    • Don’t work during evenings
    • Don’t work during weekends
    • Don’t work on holidays
    • Walk or jog a lot
    • Don’t spend much (or any) time on social media

    Basically, it’s one of the most useful books I’ve ever read. It’s rather short, easy to read and brimful of tips and tricks for creating a better prerequisites for life, not just work. He gives you useful tips on how to actually convert your everyday work into an experience where you actually benefit more than you possibly thought possible.

    Back to my bed – Elderbrook

  • Reasons and responsibilites to protect personal data

    My essay is finished. The subject was how the Swedish government wrote about personal data in two strategies, namely the so-called Digitalization strategy and the National strategy for cyber security. Who is responsible for protecting personal data and what are the reasons to protect personal data? Is there a gender perspective present?

    Personal data is omnipresent and processed by companies, organizations, state authorities, the health care sector and municipalities. Many times for no reason at all or the collection and use concern personal data that should not be processed. Simultaneously, there’s plenty of stories how personal data is harvested or scraped by actors and there’s virtually no chance to know who holds personal data and where it is.

    Reading Swedish news can weekly tell how information and personal data is lost or abused. Personal data is collected on such a large scale, it’s impossible to protect it. Data brokers, governments, authorities, all are involved in this collection, processing and dissemination. What, then, does the Swedish government write about responsibilities and reasons to protect it?

    Why the gender perspective? The report Malign Creativity: How Gender, Sex and Lies are Weaponized against Women Online was issued earlier 2021. One of the conclusions is that online gendered abuse and misinformation is a national security issue by being directed at women (in this case) systematically, resulting in less public participation from women in a democratic society. Much of the abuse is directed by actors from other countries as well. Another is how women’s personal data can be abused and weaponized against them, for instance spreading conspiracies about sex, national, sexual and gender identity.

    Does personal data relate to national security in the government texts, or more to individual security? Can the loss or abuse of personal data threaten or weaken national security?

    My main conclusions are:

    ·  the Swedish government perceives everyone as responsible for personal data, though the individual has the utmost responsibility for his/her/their personal data

    ·  the government is mainly focused on thwarting crimes like child pornography

    ·  the government doesn’t want to centralize processing of personal data

    ·  too strong a state can threaten personal data and individual security

    ·  there’s a sort of built-in contradiction when the government wants public data more accessible for the creation of services by companies (for instance)