1) This week, the FBI had a request to surveil a suspected cybercriminal rejected by a Texas judge. It seems ordinary enough so far—the FBI wanted to place surveillance on a suspected criminal, which they probably do routinely. The judge rejected the request, which they also do routinely. The reason this raised eyebrows was that the FBI wanted to create a trojan virus, infect the suspect's computer, and gain control of his webcam to monitor him remotely. In addition to this, the FBI's trojan would also monitor his emails, instant messages, gain access to his documents, internet history, passwords, and photographs, and track his locations. If this sounds like near-criminal activity, the judge agreed. Without basis for physical location, the judge found that he, in good conscience, could not allow the request to go through because, "authorization would allow the FBI to hack any computer in the world." It is scary to think that the FBI has a cyber weapon this powerful, and wants to use it.
2) The Senate and President Obama, backed by the ALCU, have vetoed and rejected the CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) bill (which passed the House), effectively killing the bill, at least in its current form. The White House had stated previously that it would veto the bill if it lacked the necessary privacy protection for citizens.
3) And finally, as the investigation into Boston Marathon bombing begins to wind down, it is interesting to note that, arguably, this attack was truly the first U.S. terror attack of the internet age. A large amount of the information we received in the aftermath of the bombing was coming from Twitter and Facebook. For some, it was easy to ignore the speculative information coming in from Twitter and Facebook as the events unfolded, and for many others, it was not. Several lives were endangered due to faulty reporting from both Twitter and tabloids. But, after the names of the suspects had been announced, information came streaming in about the brothers on a level we have never seen before. For example, within 24 hours, users were able to extrapolate from their social accounts to figure out what their sleeping patterns were. The American public had, at its fingertips, a more complete profile of any terror suspect(s) that we had ever had before—we knew their likes, dislikes, beliefs, daily activities, family history, etc, all within hours. Within minutes of the bombing, social media had high-resolution, clear pictures of one of the bombers (taken from smartphones and CCTV cameras). At the time, he was just another face in the crowd: one of thousands seen in the photographs taken that day. These amateur investigators lacked the training and skill needed to sift through the photos and filter out the noise, and the FBI lacked the resources and sheer volume of information that social media could provide.
The single thread tying all three of these together is the way in which technology is forcing us to handle crime differently, and all three illustrate how, in nearly every way, we are unprepared for this technological wave. The FBI story shows that law enforcement, for better or worse, believes it needs more power to be able to handle crimes, to the point of nearly committing a crime themselves. The CISPA story shows that our legislators are having an extremely hard time determining how to better create laws to curb crime as it relates to technology (and rightfully so, as privacy is a hotly contested issue). And my small social-media op-ed demonstrates a huge gap in public preparedness for dealing with the techno-social ramifications in the immediate wake of a major crime/attack.
Technology is changing the world rapidly. Ten years ago, when I got my first cell phone. I remember how cool it was that there was a camera in the back with a whopping 0.3 megapixels and that with 100MB of storage, I could take nearly 200 photos. I remember thinking that it was a nice gimmick, but I could never take any useful pictures with that thing. I remember the city installing a red light camera on a busy intersection and thinking how cool and weird it was to have cameras watching you occasionally. Ten years later, I can't imagine living in city where I'm not being filmed or photographed at least once at some point during the day—surveillance cameras, red-light cameras at almost every major intersection, smartphones with double-digit megapixel ratings and high quality sensors, and social media tracking your every location. Imagine what the world will be like in 10 more years when everyone has a Google Glass device, or a smart-watch, or some other new device.
It is so interesting, yet also frightening, that law enforcement, law, and society have yet to truly adapt to these changes. We are in the stages of changing, and what we will end up being in 10 years is a complete mystery.
As for next week's topic, I think I have a basic working knowledge of media licensing, network licensing, airwave control, and such. I'd be very interested to know how this sector is on a collision course with the media entertainment/sharing topic we discussed a few weeks back.
Links:
IBT - FBI Spyware
IBT - CISPA Dead
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