In just over a decade, computers and their connection over the worldwide Web have become an essential part of business life and play an important role for families as well. The market in information and goods has become worldwide, a souk that sits on the doorstep of every office and home. Unfortunately, like many souks the Internet attracts thieves as well as honest shoppers. Internet fraud is rising, not just with phony deals and fraudulent business propositions, until recently almost exclusively from Nigeria, but more importantly with identity theft using Keylogger Trojans that are installed invisibly on computers left unattended for only a few moments. It takes only 90 seconds for one of the most common spy programs to install itself, even on computers that have many common off-the-shelf software protection programs. All wise computer users believe that they are protected by the eight-character/number passwords they choose. However, there are software programs widely available that can crack such passwords in just over a minute. Even doubling the password length, though it slows down the cracking program considerably, is no sure defense.
The original hacking community used to judge its prowess by being able to break into US military computers. After all, the original backbone of the Internet, the ARAPNET was a military-academic network in the 1970s. But now the Pentagon is taking cyber attacks seriously in an entirely different way. It has just created a Cyber Command headed by Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander who has told the House Armed Services Committee that the US military needs to reorganize its IT for offense as well as defense. The implications of this are serious. The Russians have already given a mild demonstration of what offensive IT can be. When recently in dispute with Latvia, the Internet in the Baltic state ground to a halt because of a massive bombardment of traffic from Russia.
It is not, of course, that the US merely plans similar interdictions of Internet traffic in target countries. It is clear that the Pentagon will also seek to use the whole armory of trick programs and Trojans being deployed by fraudsters worldwide to penetrate, monitor and, if necessary, bring to a grinding stop the computer networks in countries with which it is at war or merely indeed in dispute. The National Security Agency (NSA) in Fort Meade, Maryland already deploys the world’s largest concentration of raw computer power to snoop on communications traffic, not just to and from the United States but anywhere else it thinks affects its interests. Given repeated allegations in Washington by US corporations that Chinese hackers in particular are constantly trying to break into their systems and steal commercial secrets, the Obama White House, soon to appoint an Internet security czar, is likely to sign off on big new investments in the Pentagon’s planned cyber warfare capability.
What this means for the rest of the world may be that if you really wish to keep something private, see if you can remember how to write a letter.
Poverty: More unequal than ever
Britain is more unequal than it has been at any time since records began, in 1961 said The Guardian in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
Like flashing blue lights, poverty indicators tend to show up in the rear-view mirror. Awareness of that must color reading of the dreadful statistics published yesterday. For all the talk of ending poverty, the number of poor children did not fall, and, if anything, increased. Working-age adults dropped below the breadline rapidly, and pensioners — for whom the trends have been better — made no progress at all. To cap it all, Britain is more unequal than it has been at any time since records began, in 1961. Back then the Etonian Harold Macmillan was in charge. Gordon Brown has sincere egalitarian impulses and must shudder at the prospect of bequeathing a more economically polarized nation to another Etonian next year.
If and when David Cameron takes up the reins, the new figures confirm Britain will be far more unequal than it was two generations ago. Chiefly, that is due to what happened in the 1980s and 1990s. Despite yesterday’s data it is still too early to tell whether Labour’s three terms have made things better or worse, because the numbers are so out of date. They take months to crunch, covering the year starting in April 2007, since when a great deal has happened. Most obviously, the world economy has entered its sharpest contraction since the 1930s. Unemployment will be one major consequence, and it will indubitably deepen hardship. But the bursting of the bubble has tamed top incomes, while also curbing inflation, something which helps pensioners and benefit claimants living on fixed incomes. Past experience suggests the net effect of recession will be to dampen inequality.
Brown, of course, can hardly brag about the slump. But he can take pride in measures to help parents make ends meet which should show in the poverty figures over the next couple of years.
