Cyber security
As if we were caught up in some science fiction B-movie, a war isbeing fought over the control of our souls. As yet,the conflict islittle more than a few light skirmishes - most of us are hardlyaware it is happening - but, in the view of many, some mightybattles lie ahead in our cybernetic future.
Perhaps it is pushing it slightly to conflate the computer atwhich I am sitting with my soul, but not by much. My identity,opinions, political and personal affiliations, preferences,interests, buying habits and guilty secrets are all on a hard drivesomewhere and are machine-readable. At the end of every day, I leavea "digital trail" behind me, rendering me vulnerable to theinternet's danger strangers.
The wildest cowboys of cyberspace have been much in the newsrecently. There is Julian Assange whose copious leaks have posedsuch a threat to global peace and security. At a scruffier level,there is LulzSec, a small but effective group of computer hackerswho have temporarily disabled the websites of the powerful,including the CIA and the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency.
The breathless demonising of these activities suits both thehunters and the hunted. The police and press like to portray hackersas socially dysfunctional obsessives. These people are said to bepsychopathic, weird, often on drugs. They pose a threat to all thatis dear to modern society - Facebook pages, PayPal accounts.
The subversives glory in the panic they create. Their messagesare couched in the language of war, and frequently lapse intoswaggering Hollywood bad-guy prose. "You find it funny to watchhavoc unfold, and we find it funny to cause it," LulzSec posted thisweekend. "We release personal data so that equally evil people canentertain us with what they do with it."
Are you frightened yet? Worse is to come, and this time fromwithin the business establishment. The fact is, our identities havealready been hacked. Every time Google is used, or a websitevisited, or a purchase made, or a message sent, personal informationis being logged, stored, and used.
In a new book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding fromYou, Eli Pariser has some alarming stories to tell. When two friendsgoogled "BP" during the recent oil spill, one received investmentadvice, the other news of the spill. The computer knew the kind ofthing which would interest them.
The same filtering and grading process, creepily known as"personalisation" or the "You Loop", happens with Facebook, saysPariser. Computers are presenting us with a cybernetic version ofourselves, reflecting back what it sees as our preferences andbiases. As Bryan Appleyard has written, "Inside our bubbles andloops, we are watched and examined like lab rats with credit cards."
Set against this subtle and largely covert activity, a bit ofconventional hacking suddenly seems insignificant. Personalisation,if it continues unchecked, means that news and opinions which do notaccord with our own are being steered away from us, deepening thegroove of prejudice every time we go online. The internet, with itsillusion of opening up the world, is doing precisely the opposite.The polarising effect, the ironing out of conversation anddisagreement, will shape our political future.
Which is the more scary, LulzSec or Google? In the end, the old-fashioned medium of language gives it away. The words of thehackers, while sometimes enraging, are those of an alienated, angrygeneration raging against what it sees as a corrupt, money-ledworld. Their corporate enemies communicate as if computers havealready eaten their souls - and they are eager for ours to meet thesame fate.
terblacker@aol.com
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