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      in US Politics

      Orion hack exposed vast number of targets – impact may not be known for a while

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      If there is one silver lining to the months-long global cyber-espionage campaign discovered when a prominent cybersecurity firm learned it had been breached, it might be that the sheer numbers of potentially compromised entities offers them some protection.By compromising one piece of security software – a security tool called Orion developed by the Texan company SolarWinds – the attackers gained access to an extraordinary array of potential targets in the US alone: more than 425 of the Fortune 500 list of top companies; all of the top 10 telecommunications companies; all five branches of the military; and all of the top five accounting firms.But they are just a fraction of SolarWinds’ 300,000 global customers, which also include UK government agencies and private sector companies.For now, we only have only confirmation from investigators that the US Treasury and commerce departments were attacked. The hack, attributed to Russian state actors, took the form of a so-called supply chain attack. Rather than directly attacking the US government, the attackers succeeded in compromising the automatic update function built into Orion.That breach provided the foothold the attackers needed to begin monitoring internal emails at the departments. By hacking SolarWind and inserting weaknesses into the Orion software at source, the attackers simply had to wait until their targets downloaded and ran a fake software security update.Thankfully, even then, the full attack was a technically challenging manoeuvre. In order to stay below the radar of the US government’s own security teams, the update was programmed to sit silently for two weeks after it was installed, and then to only upload stolen data in small quantities so that it could be disguised as normal Orion traffic.That, investigators say, means it is unlikely that the perpetrators made the most of the widespread access they could have gained. Rather than exfiltrating untold gigabytes of stolen data to peruse at their leisure, the attackers had to operate in a much more labour-intensive fashion, navigating through the government network as quietly as possible, and only uploading data already presumed to be valuable.At the moment it is not clear how much information was taken, and what other departments and entities the hackers chose to enter.Nevertheless, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an emergency directive late on Sunday night advising all federal civilian agencies to “review their networks for indicators of compromise and disconnect or power down SolarWinds Orion products immediately”. The acting director, Brandon Wales, said the compromise “poses unacceptable risks” to the security of federal networks.The long-term impact of the hack is unlikely to be known for a while, if at all. Although journalists and the public think about the impact of attacks simply in terms of any striking secrets revealed, cyber-warfare tends to have multiple goals.As well as looking for ill-guarded secrets of individuals, this sort of attack can be used to map how organisations work and their structural vulnerabilities, with a view to potentially exploiting them at a later point..More broadly, cyber operations like this undermine confidence in existing security measures and hand a propaganda coup to the country directing the attack.Silently eavesdropping on high-value targets is a labour-intensive job – particularly if the attacker wants to stay hidden, and for now it appears that the temptation to eavesdrop on internal communications at the US treasury and commerce departments was the most compelling.If other customers of SolarWinds do not find evidence that they were under surveillance, they will take solace in the fact that the US government was too big a target to pass up. More

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      in World Politics

      Five Tools We Need to Fight Disinformation

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      According to the GLOBSEC Trends 2020 report, across Central and Eastern Europe, 34% believe that COVID-19 is a hoax designed to manipulate populations. With hundreds of deaths around the world occurring as a result of disinformation related to the coronavirus, the pandemic has demonstrated the critical importance of limiting the impact of disinformation on our societies.

      COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Have Real-World Consequences

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      Only an approach that encompasses all of society can truly improve resilience to disinformation. It needs to consist of five elements, none of which can be neglected if we want to create a healthier information environment. These are: legal instruments on European or national level, disinformation demonetization, responsible digital citizenship, quality journalism and strategic communication. All these elements require cooperation from public officials and state institutions, the research community, civil society actors as well as citizens.

      Basic Rules

      EU member states need to actively contribute to the swift implementation of the proposed Digital Services Act and the European Democracy Action Plan that will establish much-needed boundaries for digital space. Non-members can work to adopt legislation modeled on the European code and collaborate with the EU to set basic rules in line with the principle that what is illegal offline is illegal online. For example, if Holocaust denial is illegal in countries such as Austria or Slovakia, such content should not be acceptable on digital platforms that either have community standards that are not in line with legislation in which these platforms operate or because of a failure to uphold those standards.

      Furthermore, regulation needs to foster transparency and accountability in areas such as content ranking and moderation. These instruments, if implemented properly with all key stakeholders such as digital platforms, the research community, civil society and technology specialists on board, could significantly limit the reach of harmful content.

      Defunding Disinformation

      According to the Global Disinformation Index, the estimated yearly profit generated by disinformation websites come to $235 million, propelling disinformation actors to incredible influence. Legal instruments can help disrupt the economy of disinformation by ensuring that ad agencies will not be able to place ads on sites spreading fake news, hate speech and conspiracy theories. Google already announced that it will defund ads on webpages promoting COVID-19 conspiracy theories. However, implementation of this policy is questionable due to a lack of transparency measures and standardized monitoring. Similarly, social media platforms should not be allowed to place ads next to hate speech and disinformation.

      In this effort, civil society organizations have been paving the way, with projects such as Slovakia’s konspiratori.sk, Czech nelez.cz or, in the US, the Anti-Defamation League’s Stop Hate for Profit. They are based on raising awareness of disinformation outlets while inviting companies to opt out of placing ads on such channels. Freedom of speech does not mean the right to profit from disinformation. Demonetizing disinformation would lead to an immediate improvement in the quality of the information environment as it would limit the reach of disinformation by removing economic incentives that drive it.

      Responsible Digital Citizenship

      Many citizens have been caught unprepared for the radical changes to information consumption and production in the wake of the information revolution. Without the necessary education and skills, users often share content without checking their sources, unaware of the fact that they are unwittingly helping to spread hate and false information. We all need to accept the fact that responsible citizenship extends to online sphere as well.

      It is crucial to include the concept of responsible digital citizenship for all age groups in teaching curricula starting from elementary schools. Similar training could be implemented in employment onboarding schemes. It should cover all aspects of digital footprints such as personal data protection, norms of online conduct and the consequences of sharing malign information among our communities.

      Quality Journalism

      Another factor in the disinformation equation is that quality journalism has suffered globally in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and with the rise of social media. Independent journalism needs to be systematically supported, possibly by taxing tech giants and using a portion of that money to fund media resources. As one of the cornerstones of functioning democracies, the demise of local outlets is highly worrying. Support for local news and the protection of investigative journalists from threats and attacks would work as a strong antidote to the increasing dissemination of toxic content.

      Strategic Communication

      Often, state administrations and European institutions suffer from an inability to communicate their messages in an accessible and engaging way. It is of the utmost importance that all state institutions, from regional to federal, proactively communicate their activities and benefits to citizens because in the absence of such communication, an information void is created that can be easily abused by malign actors.

      Strategic communication is the go-to tool when striving to build trust with constituencies. Such trust will also likely be the determining factor in the relative success of overcoming the pandemic, as people’s willingness to get vaccinated against COVID-19 correlates with trust in public institutions.

      Regulation and demonetizing disinformation are reactive steps that address a social wound that has been left untreated for too long. But proactive measures of fostering responsible digital citizenship, supporting quality journalism and conducting efficient strategic messaging will help increase democratic’ resilience to influence operations. Even partial progress in each of these five domains would lead to massive improvements in the quality of our shared information environment.  

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      US treasury hacked by foreign government group – report

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      Hackers backed by a foreign government have been monitoring internal email traffic at the US treasury department and an agency that decides internet and telecommunications policy, according to people familiar with the matter.“The United States government is aware of these reports and we are taking all necessary steps to identify and remedy any possible issues related to this situation,” said national security council spokesman John Ullyot.There is concern within the US intelligence community that the hackers who targeted the treasury department and the commerce department’s national telecommunications and information administration used a similar tool to break into other government agencies, according to three people briefed on the matter. The people did not say which other agencies.The hack is so serious it led to a national security council meeting at the White House on Saturday, said one of the people familiar with the matter.The hack involves the NTIA’s office software, Microsoft’s Office 365. Staff emails at the agency were monitored by the hackers for months, sources said.A Microsoft spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The hackers are “highly sophisticated” and have been able to trick the Microsoft platform’s authentication controls, according to a person familiar with the incident, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the press.“This is a nation state,” said a different person briefed on the matter. “We just don’t know which one yet.“The full scope of the hack is unclear. The investigation is still in its early stages and involves a range of federal agencies, including the FBI, according to the three people familiar with the matter.The FBI, homeland security department’s cybersecurity division, known as CISA, and US national security agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      in US Politics

      Facebook faces antitrust allegations over deals for Instagram and WhatsApp

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      Facebook is expecting significant new legal challenges, as the US Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of attorney generals from up to 40 states are preparing antitrust suits.
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      Although the specific charges in both cases remain unclear, the antitrust allegations are expected to center on the tech giant’s acquisition of two big apps: a $1bn deal to buy the photo-sharing app Instagram in 2012, and the $19bn purchase of the global messaging service WhatsApp in 2014. Together, the buys brought the top four social media companies worldwide under Facebook’s control. The purchases would constitute antitrust violations if Facebook believed the companies were viable competitors.
      At the time of its acquisition, Instagram had 30 million users, and, even though it was growing rapidly, it wasn’t yet making money. WhatsApp boasted more than 450 million monthly active users when it was acquired. “WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people,” Zuckerberg said in a statement at the time.
      The FTC cleared Facebook for the acquisitions when they occurred, and the company is hoping to leverage those approvals in mounting a defense. Facebook executives have also argued their company has helped the apps grow.
      But Facebook has come under greater scrutiny since the deals were done, and the FTC launched a new investigation into the potential antitrust violations in 2019.
      The FTC probe will build on findings from a separate inquiry conducted by the US House Judiciary subcommittee, which released millions of documents that appeared to show that Facebook executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were concerned the apps could become competition, before aggressively pursuing them.
      In one 2012 email, made public through the House investigation, Zuckerberg highlighted how Instagram had an edge on mobile, an area where Facebook was falling behind. In another, the CEO said Instagram could hurt Facebook even if it doesn’t become huge. “The businesses are nascent but the networks are established, the brands are already meaningful and if they grow to a large scale they could be disruptive to us,” Zuckerberg wrote. Instagram’s co-founder also fretted that his company might be targeted for destruction by Zuckerberg if he refused the deal.
      The FTC is expected to vote on a possible suit this week. Three of the five-member commission are believed to be in favor of the move, including chair Joseph Simons, who is expected to leave the agency before the new Biden administration is sworn in, Politico reported.
      Commissioners also have to decide where to file the suit: in federal court, which would leave the outcome to a judge; or in the FTC, where the commission could ultimately decide.
      The suit expected from the bipartisan coalition of states is headed by New York attorney general Letitia James. While details of their complaint are also scant, several states’ top law enforcement offices launched probes into Facebook’s acquisitions last year, adding to the pressure put on the company by federal regulators.
      Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.
      Facebook’s possible legal challenges come as a growing number of US lawmakers are arguing that companies including Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple have amassed too much power and should be reined in.
      These companies “wield their dominance in ways that erode entrepreneurship, degrade Americans’ privacy online, and undermine the vibrancy of the free and diverse press”, the House judiciary committee concluded in its nearly 500-page report.
      “The result is less innovation, fewer choices for consumers, and a weakened democracy.”
      President-elect Joe Biden, too, has been critical of the tech companies. “Many technology giants and their executives have not only abused their power, but misled the American people, damaged our democracy and evaded any form of responsibility,” said Biden spokesperson Matt Hill to the New York Times. “That ends with a President Biden.”
      In May, Facebook took over Giphy, a hugely popular moving-image app, with plans to integrate it with Instagram. Late last month, the company also announced plans to acquire Kustomer, an e-commerce app.
      “This deal is about providing more choices and better products for consumers,” a company spokesman said in a statement to the New York Times. “The key to Facebook’s success has always been innovation, with M&A being just a part of our overall business strategy, and we will continue to demonstrate to regulators that competition in the technology sector is vibrant.” More

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      in US Politics

      Has political consensus become a pipe dream? | Letters

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      Perhaps the liberal democratic managed capitalism desired by Martin Kettle did exist in the 1950s, including the new welfare state in the UK (The toxic polarisation of our politics can be reversed, but it will take humility, 26 November). It didn’t prove robust – the Conservatives moved to the right and embraced free-market capitalism; regulation exists but is weak and largely captured by “experts” from the relevant market sectors.It is difficult to see how the idealised consensus can be created today, especially within one state. Multinational companies moving activities to poorly regulated locations and tax havens means that regulation must be multinational. The EU is attempting to regulate and tax tech and online firms, cooperation with which the UK has abandoned. The replacement of Donald Trump by Joe Biden doesn’t mean that economic nationalism will go out of fashion.Kettle is right that respect for the truth is indispensable. The problem is that honest conservatism has gone and, internationally, the right has adopted untruth as a weapon. This approach will continue as it has proved successful. Trump has lost the election, but the size of his vote and support for his untruths demonstrate just how successful.Talking – and listening – to each other in a truthful and respectful way is a good thing, but it needs that approach from all parts of the political spectrum. Kettle implies that such consensus-seeking would inhibit the left from offering radical solutions to our problems, because that may destroy any consensus. Is that how democracy works?Doug SimpsonTodmorden, West Yorkshire• Martin Kettle rightly highlights polarisation and the growth of the “I” society since the 1960s. Surely it is no coincidence that this coincided with a digital revolution that changed all our lives? Last year, I revisited California 50 years after doing an MBA at Stanford University. The wealthiest state in the world has failed to solve homelessness in the streets or congestion on the roads. Black people have been displaced by escalating house prices.All the talking and listening in the world will be of little value unless governments get control of the land and finance needed to build a fairer society. We should be using technology to map inequalities and invest in bridging the gaps rather than consoling ourselves with webinars and games.Dr Nicholas FalkExecutive director, The Urbed Trust• It is possible to share Martin Kettle’s hope for a less divided America without romanticising the 1950s. One need only recall those who left for Europe when “cooperation” was not shown to their differing political beliefs. The 50s also saw the enlargement of the attorney general’s list of subversive organisations. A loyalty oath was required by anyone wishing to enter a graduate programme or benefit from a scholarship, and the House Committee on Un-American Activities destroyed careers. Dwight Eisenhower was no Donald Trump, but neither was he a hero to those not in the political mainstream.Susan ZagorLondon• On reading how Labour’s general secretary has banned local parties from discussing the loss of the whip from Jeremy Corbyn (Report, 27 November), I was reminded of how Joseph Stalin tried to make Leon Trotsky a non-person in Russia. It is marvellous where the party leadership takes its inspiration from.Terry WardWickford, Essex More

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      in US Politics

      If you think Biden's administration would rein in big tech, think again | John Naughton

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      Before the US presidential election I wondered aloud if Mark Zuckerberg had concluded that the re-election of Trump might be better for Facebook than a Biden victory. There were several reasons for thinking this. One was the strange way Zuckerberg appeared to be sucking up to Trump: at least one private dinner in the White House; the way he jumped on to Fox News when Twitter first placed a warning on a Trump tweet to say that Facebook would not be doing stuff like that; and the majority report of the House subcommittee on tech monopolies, in which it was clear that the Democrats had it in for the companies.But the most significant piece of evidence for the belief that a Biden administration would finally tackle the tech giants, and Facebook in particular, came in the long interview Biden gave last January to the New York Times, in which he was highly critical of the company.“I’ve never been a big Zuckerberg fan,” Biden said. “I think he’s a real problem … I’ve been in the view that not only should we be worrying about the concentration of power, we should be worried about the lack of privacy and them being exempt, which you’re not exempt. [The New York Times] can’t write something you know to be false and be exempt from being sued. But he can. The idea that it’s a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms.” As readers of this column know only too well, section 230 of the 1996 US Telecommunications Act is the clause that exempts tech platforms from legal liability for anything that users post on their platforms. It’s the nearest thing social media has to a kill switch. Pull it and their business models evaporate. Trump had been threatening to pull it before the election, but he lacked the attention span to be able to do anything about it. Biden, on the other hand, had already talked about it in January and would have people around him who knew what they were doing. So maybe we were going to get some real progress in getting tech giants under control.And then he gets elected and what do we find? Biden’s transition eam is packed with tech industry insiders. Tom Sullivan, from Amazon, is earmarked for the Department of State. Mark Schwartz, also from Amazon, is heading for the Office of Management and Budget, as are Divya Kumaraiah from Airbnb and Brandon Belford from Lyft, the ride-hailing company. The US Treasury gets Nicole Isaac from LinkedIn, Microsoft’s department of spam, and Will Fields, who was Sidewalk Labs’ senior development associate. (Sidewalk Labs was the organiser of Google’s attempt – eventually cancelled – to turn Toronto’s waterfront into a data-geyser for surveillance capitalism.) The Environmental Protection Agency, a body that Trump looted and sidelined, gets Ann Dunkin, who is Dell’s chief technology officer. And so on.Well, I thought, perusing this sordid list, at least there’s nobody from Facebook on it. How innocent can you be? Politico reveals that the joint chair of Biden’s transition team, Jeff Zients, is a former Facebook board member. Another former board member is an adviser. And two others, one who was a Facebook director and another who was a company lobbyist, have, according to Politico “taken leadership roles”. And then, to cap it all, it turns out that Biden himself has a friendly relationship with a guy called Nick Clegg, who was once a serious politician and now doubles as Mark Zuckerberg’s bagman and representative on Earth.Truly, you couldn’t make this up. And just to add a touch of satire to it, the woman who is now a heartbeat away from the presidency, Kamala Harris, has a career-long record of cosying up to Silicon Valley. She participated, for example, in the marketing campaign for Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg’s anthem of capitalist feminism, even though at the time Harris was California’s law enforcement official most responsible for overseeing Facebook. As the state’s attorney general, she took a semi-comatose view of the way the big tech companies were allowed to gobble up potential rivals and bulldoze their way into new industries. Facebook’s controversial acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, perhaps the most obvious anti-competitive mergers in the short history of the tech industry, happened on her watch and triggered no regulatory reflex. If Silicon Valley could be said to have a darling, then Ms Harris is it. And all those campaign donations from tech companies and moguls may turn out to have been a shrewd investment after all.Given these sobering circumstances, how should we calculate the odds of a Biden administration taking on the power of the tech giants? The answer: slightly better than those of a snowball staying cool in hell. But only slightly.What I’ve been readingIs 2020 just a taster?Graeme Wood has written a riveting essay, titled The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse, on the work of Peter Turchin, a quantitative historian who believes he has discovered iron laws that predict the rise and fall of societies.Birth of an iNationWhat if we viewed tech giants as countries? A thoughtful essay in Tortoise Media considers Apple as a one-party state as secretive as China. But more liberal. Phew!Is less Moore?I enjoyed a lovely post by Venkatesh Rao on the Ribbonfarm blog, about the mindset induced by living in a world governed by Moore’s Law. More

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      in World Politics

      The Rise of the Digital Émigré

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      The French word “émigré” specifically refers to people who leave their home country for political reasons, a self-exile of sorts. In that sense, it’s a very different term from “immigrant,” “expat” or “nomad.” In history, émigrés have fled abroad to escape from revolutions in France, the United States and Russia. Many aristocrats escaped war-torn European countries amid the chaos of the Second World War. In the early 1920s, cities such as Shanghai and Paris were havens for émigré communities. Now, a century later, political changes have created a new wave of émigrés. I call them digital émigrés.

      For example, 2020 has brought an unprecedented rise in American citizens leaving the United States to seek new lives abroad. In fact, the number of Americans who gave up their US citizenship skyrocketed to 5,816 in the first half of 2020, compared with 2,072 in all of 2019, according to research from New York-based Bambridge Accountants. 

      Fintech: Embracing the Digital Age in the Time of Social Distancing

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      This trend has been accelerated not only by America’s poor handling of the pandemic, but also the rise of Trumpism and more generalized far-right political attitudes, plus uncertainty about health care and worries about newly emboldened militia groups across the country. Those who leave may include parents looking for safer countries to bring up their children or members of marginalized groups worried about the rise in racist political ideologies.

      Across the Atlantic, a similar dynamic is happening in the UK. Brexit has been a massive push factor for British digital émigrés. The number of British citizens moving permanently to European Union countries rose by 30% since the 2016 referendum. According to research, half of this number decided to leave within three months of the original vote. By now, some will already be almost eligible for citizenship in their destination country, which in some cases takes a minimum of five years.  

      Other Brits fled at the last minute, during the transition period of 2020, while their EU rights were still valid. At the time of writing, some are still planning an escape before the end of 2020. There has also been a 500% increase in British citizens who have taken up citizenship of one of the 27 EU countries. This is a predictable response to the actions of a UK government forcibly removing people’s long-held rights.

      These trends in both the UK and US indicate that people are no longer prepared to tolerate the consequences of damaging political decisions. In the past, it was harder to uproot one’s life and leave for another country. For starters, international moves require having a source of income, which can be challenging to find when you don’t speak the language, don’t have connections and aren’t familiar with the local culture.

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      Fortunately for 21st-century digital émigrés, the rise in remote working, and particularly in doing business online across borders, has provided the necessary freedom to make rapid international relocations. What’s more, the pandemic has boosted this trend by further legitimizing online working, compelling more employers to accept it as the norm. Countries needing immigration have seen the remote working trend as a golden opportunity to attract skilled professionals to their shores. A number of countries, including Estonia and Bermuda, have introduced digital–nomad visas. Others, such as Portugal and the Czech Republic, have special pathways to residency for foreigners who generate income from outside the country.

      In the case of Portugal and, more recently, Greece, generous tax breaks are available for those who make money online. For those countries, the beauty of the setup is that the foreigners’ money can help revitalize the local economy without taking jobs on the ground away from citizens.

      Indeed, the digital émigré trend is gaining such momentum that governments are beginning to take notice. If a large number of educated and skilled citizens leave their country permanently, taking their tax money with them, it could have severe implications for that country’s economy. Perhaps governments should keep this more firmly in mind when they decide to enact policies that deprive people of important rights, such as the freedom to live, work, study and retire across European Union countries. 

      Governments should tread carefully in this “digital first” world, where borderless working is rapidly becoming the norm. Remote working and online business empower digital émigrés to vote with their feet. These highly educated and skilled professionals can easily relocate their entire lives to destinations that more closely match their values, goals and lifestyle choices.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More