Power and Leverage in the XXI Century

Power and Leverage in the XXI Century

Nordic Perspective

Jyrki J.J. KasviParliament of Finland

Committee for the Future

Wikimedia Commons

18.6.2010 www.kasvi.org 2

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 418.6.2010 www.kasvi.org 4

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?a) Never!b) Only if there was something suspicious with himc) Of course!d) I have already done something like that


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Power and Leverage in the XXI Century