Seeking Security, Both Physical and Cyber
Smart City Expo speakers address terrorism in wake of Paris attacks and ask whether the internet has made us more tribal while also providing a breeding ground for extremism.
Security is the hot topic of the day. Given the tragic events witnessed by France’s capital earlier this month, it’s only natural that extremism was on the tip of many a delegate’s tongue at Barcelona’s Smart City Expo World Congress last week.
As our society becomes increasingly digitized, such dark moments in our history have an equally explosive effect on the cyber ecosystems we inhabit online. Social media played host to some intense debate around the fallout from Facebook’s controversial decision to provide a “safe button” for citizens of Paris following the attack, but not for Beirut.
World citizens wrestled with disparate media coverage of terrorist attacks across nations and called for more equality in reporting in the Middle East and Global South. But in addition to these very real aggressions, how vulnerable have we become to modern age cyber threats and more importantly, who is responsible for safeguarding that domain as we move further into the digital realm?
Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs in charge of the country’s Smart Nation Programme, set the tone for a provocative debate on the first day of the Expo by suggesting that the World Wide Web has increased our sense of Tribalism. Has the internet served to divide us further into smaller minorities? It is true, as he said, that no matter your beliefs, “you can always find someone crazier than you” online. Perhaps this has driven us towards a new crisis of identity, where anything is valid and hence nothing dominates, increasing our sense of segregation and improving the conditions for breeding extremism.
ISIS, for one, has made use of the viral nature of social media to advance its terror campaigns. Simon Jenkins, a French reporter for The Guardian who was held captive in Syria for 10 months by forces loyal to ISIS, describes how it struck him how technologically connected and social media-obsessive his captors were. Where the advent of social networking technology and connectivity has given us great gains, it has undoubtedly facilitated extremist influence of a new caliber and strength.
David Talbot, of the Technology Review, describes how the group’s mastery of these mediums has transformed the nature of operations, increasing their reach exponentially in both recruitment and upholding ISIS’s demonic image abroad. He suggests that we need more individual policing of extremist tendencies through online forums, as research has proven peer-to-peer treatment to be “more persuasive than general advertising”.
Digital warfare is no longer something confined to futuristic spy movies. Counter activist hacking group Anonymous recently pledged to enact revenge on those responsible for the Paris killings by revealing the identities of ISIS fighters through Twitter accounts. ISIS, in response, released a combative guide for its members to protect themselves from infiltration.
The danger arises when Anonymous and government intelligence services start working at odds with each other in tracking individuals through these channels; hunting digital jihadists drives them further underground.
It all boils down to this immense digital quagmire in which we now reside, simultaneously exploited by some and championed by others. We need to understand how to safely navigate its treacherous highways.
In an Expo panel on how to achieve more resilient and sustainable cities, Anusha Rahman Ahmad Khan, Pakistan’s minister of Information, Technology and Telecommunications, outlined that there is yet to be a general consensus on standardized definitions of Cybercrime and Security. Be that as it may, our rapid propulsion into the technological era has left us with a highly immature understanding of our Digital Footprint, and the way that we leave ourselves open to privacy intrusion by failing to cover our tracks.
Initiatives such as the Security-in-a-Box toolkit are examples of efforts to re-educate digital citizens in protecting their connected movements from unsavory busybodies and encompasses everything from passwords to malware, encryption and safe social networking. The Security-in-a-Box site provides tactics to minimize your digital trail online and is specifically designed for activists in countries where they are at risk of persecution.
We could all learn a lesson or two, however, about the basics of digital security, activist or otherwise. It’s ultimately up to us to truly grasp the gravity of digital security concerns increasingly posed by the inevitable and total marriage of our environments with technology: to recognize the power of social connectivity and remain vigilant, both offline and on.
