Why the NCA Really are Like Your Parents
Yesterday there was much consternation on Twitter about the UK’s National Crime Agency and their list of signs to watch for in case your beloved little Johnny or Johanna is engaging in cyber crime. The list is farcical, appearing to be written by a parent who is more than a little clueless. An embarrassing parent that also still likes to say ‘cyber’ a lot…
That excerpt is from this page on the National Crime Agency’s website. Let’s start with the easy ones, numbers 1 and 3. Anybody with a teenager will appreciate that this suggests every teenager in the UK should immediately be placed on a watch-list. They describe the normal state of being for that age group. We can also add in number 5 - most teenagers really don’t like being quizzed about anything to do with their lives. They are secretive, primed emotional bombs just waiting for the touch paper to be lit. For good measure, let’s add number 7 into this same argument. Teenagers are awkward beasts, full of contradiction and easily offended. At times they feel isolated, whether rightly or wrongly, and may listen to whatever passes for The Smiths or The Cure these days whilst encamped in their rooms. But whilst all kids feel isolated at times we also have to accept that some are just happy in their own heads. I was and so is my daughter.
Number 4 resonates for me personally. Armed with a trusty Amiga 500 and no Internet, I earned money using my computer. This was the golden age (read: it’s not as magical now as it was when I was a kid) of the public domain and shareware software movement, where companies would produce catalogues of disks you could buy with free to distribute software on them. So I did. I collected them, culled the good stuff, added my own things (images, ‘demoscenes’ etc.) and created themed disks of my own. I was kindly given a little money by my parents to buy hundreds of blank discs, and I advertised in magazines with lists of the disks available and the humourously low prices I was charging. All by cheque through the post. Did my parents really know what I was doing? Not at all, their eyes still glass over if I even attempt to get anywhere close to something technical. The real point is, and it’s something I will always be eternally grateful to them for — they encouraged me. They didn’t have the skills so they helped in the only way they could, by trying to make sure I had access to computers that I would sit in my room tinkering on for days at a time, teaching myself to code. I appreciate immensely how often they went without so I didn’t. Computers weren’t cheap.
Having said that, this point is probably the only one on the list with some real validity, although it’s not exclusively tied to online activity. Whatever the circumstance, if my children suddenly appeared to have disposable income I couldn’t explain I would want to know why. My parents did when I started drawing graffiti on stickers and selling them for 5p a pop at school. Completely legitimate commerce, but my parents justifyably wanted to know how I could suddenly afford all the magazines I was buying. So I explained. I’m not sure I really satisfied the “Why?” part though - getting parents to understand why people would pay for something they see no value in personally is a hard sell. I expect earning money through Youtube would engender the same kind of response in many parents these days.
On number 6 I don’t know where to start. We all stream ever higher volumes of media online, which is much more likely to make an impact on any allowance you have.
“You’ve used all the broadband allowance, I’ve been told this might indicate that you’re engaged in cyber crime.” “No Dad, I’ve just been binge watching 40 seasons of Vampire Diaries.”
The idea that cyber crime would require high bandwidth on your home broadband connection is amusing. Nothing the NCA lists as ‘cyber crime’ on the same page that screenshot comes from would (a) require enough bandwidth to raise flags or (b) if it did, like a DDoS, you wouldn’t be doing it from your own network anyway. The fingerprints would likely be small and anybody engaging in such activity would have taken precautions. If they have the skills to perform these crimes, you can be sure they’ve thought of how to try to cover their tracks. (Note: the NCA page doesn’t include distributing copyrighted media without permission, something that could possibly have a tangible impact on broadband allowances, although I’m still not convinced.)
“Are they interested in coding? Do they have independent learning material on computing?”
So, what about this last one? In case you haven’t already realised, this is the point that all the focus has been on. Read it. It’s certifiably insane. The suggestion is that if a child has an interest in learning to code, and is making the effort to ingest as much knowledge about the subject as they can through their own research, then it’s a red light to potential cyber crime. That describes me from about the age of ten onwards and I didn’t have the vast library of the internet from which to learn (oh how I wish I had - Encyclopaedia Britannica didn’t really cut it). My magazine reading material was certainly independent - I went to the shop to buy them and I doubt my parents ever even opened the covers of one. I also learned in my lunchtime at school on the BBC Micros. I don’t believe a teacher was present watching over me, they just let us into the room every day. Mind you often we ended up playing Elite. But I didn’t turn into a cyber criminal and nor did any of my friends who were likewise inclined. At least, not that I’m aware of but then they would deny it, wouldn’t they.
At a time when there are a host of exciting educational opportunities for children to learn about coding - Coderdojo, everything Raspberry Pi, Scratch etc. - to suggest that engaging in such activity could lead your little angel down a path to cyber crime is disingenuous. Sure one or two might, just like one or two bankers might be… hold on, that’s not a good analogy, is it. You get my point, however.
There’s a common theme in the modern world that this NCA list feeds into - tar everyone, fear everybody, trust no-one. The possibility that a very small minority will be up to no good is no reason to give a set of such vague rules and expect anybody to apply them realistically. But, as we all know, this appears to be the way in all manner of things - better to be safe than sorry, better to mistrust than accept, better to treat everybody as a potential threat than risk the tiny minority running amok. Even, in this case, if it means encouraging parents to discourage their children from learning, or make them feel guilty and under observation for doing so. Almost like it’s not normal. Here the words of Bill Hicks succinctly express the ludicrous nature of such a situation.
“What you readin’ for?”, Bill Hicks
So, the chances of little Johnny or Johanna turning into a cyber criminal are tiny. The chances of them gaining knowledge that opens a world of possibilities in the future is infinitely higher. Nurture it, unless they insist on using the word ‘cyber’ all the time. In which case, come down hard.
Header image from Unslpash. You can also find this post on LinkedIn here.
