Power and Leverage in the XXI Century

Power and Leverage in the XXI Century Nordic Perspective Jyrki J.J. Kasvi Parliament of Finland Committee for the Future Wikimedia Commons

Committee for the Future
The first committee for the future in the world!
Established in 1993 in the middle of a deep national recession
Initiative by the members of the Parliament (167/200)‏
Does not take actively part in day to day legislation by choice
Issues statements on law proposals from futures perspective
Prepares Parliament’s replies for Government’s Futures reports concerning national long-term development
e.g. Finnish population policy
Responsible for parliamentary technology assessment
e.g. Information society, gene technology, RFID, future of health care
Brings into political discussion longer term (10-100 yrs) issues and perspectives
” A parliamentary think-tank”

New glocal identities
Traditional local social networks are becoming closer
” Mobile tribes” are constantly online, communicating
Virtual societies weaken the meaning of time and place (facebook, LinkedIn)‏
The concept of privacy is changing as we distribute private information to our personal networks (twitter, flicker, …)‏
New global social networks are spreading around the world
Global network cultures of like minded people, sharing the same values and interests and interacting in the Web (Open source movement, Greenpeace, Al Qaida)‏
Geographical borders lose their meaning as social barriers (Habbo, 2nd Life)‏
New interactive participative media create new social cultures
Network cultures, even network nations are replacing geographical borders, languages or history as a basis for identity

18.6.2010 www.kasvi.org Asymmetric world
Asymmetric values, crises and conflicts
Global network cultures vs. Nation states
WWF Rainbow Warrior vs. French secret service
Al Qaida vs. Western world
Local conflicts spread around the world in the web
Completely virtual internet conflicts
E.g. civil rights activists vs. hate groups
Memes create spontaneus uncoordinated citizen movements
Philippines in 2001: An SMS - "Go 2 EDSA. Wear Blck"
Asymmetric costs of cyber warfare
Attack is cheap, defense is expensive
A limitless number of targets to defend while a single security lapse is enough for the attacker
Even identification of the attacker may be impossible

(R)evolution of warfare
Wars are fought for/with/against the most valuable assets of the time:
Agrarian: fertile land and people
Industrial: (and) raw materials and industry
Information society: (and) information and information systems
Value society: (and) values, reputations, brands, ?
(Hannu K. Kari, National Defence University)‏

New targets
Military information systems
U.S. 1997: The Eligible Receiver military exercise
Irak 2003: ”If we run out of batteries, we are screwed”
Afganistan 2008: Taleban tapping on Predator video feeds
Internet infrastructure
Estonia 2007: Web War One
What if they had had an Internet election at the time?
Protected, secured and separated networks for critical systems
Data and information
Manipulation and destruction of public and corporate databases
Weakening the capability to make decisions and to act on them
Information integrity, usability and backup
Values and attitudes
Influencing people’s motivation and attitude
Open, transparent society

New enemies
Originally teenage hackers
For fun and prestige (pranks, “accidents”)‏
Easy due to good-for-nothing security of the systems
Now it is well paid professional crackers
Orgnised crime (extortion, fraud, phishing, ...)‏
Activist movements (sabotage, information manipulation)‏
Terrorist organisations
Al Qaida has its own Internet forces creating and distributing tools for propaganda and recruitment, intelligence gathering, encryption and steganography and Internet attacks
Global corporations (industrial espionage)‏
Espcially defence industry has ties to national intelligence organisations
Military forces and national intelligence organisations
PLA of China (and Finnish army) have their reasons to use Linux
Crowdsourcing hacktivists
A major role in the 2007 attack on Estonia

Are we there yet?
About 120 countries have developed internet weapons that can be used to attack the information systems of the finance markets or public authorities of other countries (McAfee 2007)‏
10 million bots are used to distribute malware and spam every day (Panda Labs 2008)‏
The annual take by theft -oriented cyber crime is estimated to be as high as 100 billion U.S. Dollars a year (CBI’s Conference on International Police Cooperation against Cyber Crime 2009)‏
Are our authorities and laws there yet?

Yes, we _are_ there already
2003: Slammer (376 bytes) crashed Davis-Bessen (Ohio) nuclear power plant safety system, Seattle 911 and Bank of America ATM’s
2006: striking city employees hacked into Los Angeles traffic light control system and caused a traffic jam that lasted for days
2006: Iceman broke into several underground services trafficking stolen credit card information, stole the info and set up a service of his own
2008: Chip card readers were tampered with in the factory so that they sent card information to Chinese and Pakistani criminals in addition to credit card companies
2009: GhostNet – Someone in China spied on government, corporate and media information systems in 103 countries

Out of the frying pan – into the fire
Rfid passports may actually undermine security
Also criminals and terrorists know how to read rfid chips
Rfid passports of many countries have already been broken and data altered
Telecom data retention may actually be dangerous
Colombian drug cartels have used telecom data to identify informers
Azerbaidžan police interrogated citizens that had voted Armenia with their mobile phones in the 2009 Eurovision song contest
Child porn filtering may actually help pedophiles
Filtering is very easy to circumvent
Filtering lists are relatively easy to analyse to find child porn
Actions aimed to improve safety and security may actually make the situation worse

Nordic perspective
Nordic countries are information society forerunners. We are setting an example for the rest of the world!
Compact homogenous societies are easy to manage
Finland was an ideal test bed for gsm technology
Among the first ICT dependent societies
Culture of technological and social data security
Civil rights like privacy and freedom of expression are respected
Even against security or economic interests ... usually
ICT is used to support social inclusion and transparent government
Good defence against value attacks
Rule of law is respected
FRA and the privacy of Finnish emails)
Of course there are alternative examples
30.000+ Internet police and the Firewall of China

Digital value questions
Democracy = privacy + freedom of speech
Right to get information freely and without tracing
Right to express oneself without fear of retribution
e.g. the background of the Finnish Constitution 100 years ago, when censorship of critical papers lead to civil unrest and political terrorism.
Right for personal privacy is being questioned
Retention of telecommunication vs. retention of mail communication data
Right for freedom of speech is being questioned
Anonymity in a demonstration vs. anonymity in Internet discussions
Discussion about drug manufacturing tech. vs. copy protection tech.
Control encourages counter culture
The Finnish “video law” inspired the most sophisticated splatter movie culture in the world, based on a huge number of smuggled and copied ultra violent video tapes

The home front (literally)‏
Your daughter has a new boyfriend, and you have access to a database with his crime/credit/health/insurance/loyalty program information. Would you take a peek?
Never!
Only if there was something suspicious with him
Of course!
I have already done something like that

Sukupuolten välinen digikuilu? Discussion? U.S. Army Photo

Power and Leverage in the XXI Century

by Jyrki J.J. Kasvi on Jun 18, 2010

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 1

Statistics

Power and Leverage in the XXI Century — Presentation Transcript