PassWord – 20th May 2015

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Speaker C: Hello and welcome to Password, the weekly The technology show that gets behind all of our glittering technology and shows some of the warts it tries to hide. In this week’s show, how computer hacking is evolving into a form of nation-state arm wrestling that could have some frightening consequences for us all. The digital currency that could end Greece’s economic nightmares and allow an orderly exit from the euro. Something that I should be able to forget but keeps pricking away at my mind, the thorny issue of the right to be forgotten. And the new messaging app that’s currently a big hit with women because it lets them make their messages more meaningful. First, on Monday, it was revealed by the German paper Der Spiegel that hackers had broken into the Bundestag, the German parliament, and that they may have been there for a while. The paper pointed the finger of blame at the US, but according to Sean Sullivan, a cyber expert for the Finnish security company F-Secure, it could have easily been the Russians seeking to apply pressure on the Germans over Ukraine. According to Sullivan, the new James The bonds are in cyberspace, and the baddies are not only creating a market in trade secrets that Blofeld would have been proud of, they are also using hackers to exert pressure and fear that he would have been ecstatic about.

Speaker D: From on high said, you shall develop this, and they poured a bunch of money into it. But you see, building stuff from the grassroots up, recruiting talent from the underground, recruiting talent from the underworld, and then just scaling it up. And a lot of their habits are very pragmatic. And not, you know, get in, get what you want, but like, you know, you might leave a lot of breadcrumbs behind that you can start to piece together.

Speaker E: So what you’re saying is that essentially what the intelligence agencies do has all of the hallmarks of what intelligence agencies do, which is they want to go in and into a room or a computer and leave no trace of the fact that they’ve been there. Somebody who is less skilled or less professional, perhaps a criminal might not exactly have that same modus operandi.

Speaker D: Exactly, yeah. And in the case of the Bundestag, if it’s, say it’s Russians, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the Kremlin. It could easily be oligarchs or criminals in Russia who then are providing espionage as a service and know that the Kremlin will be a willing buyer. And that’s kind of the dynamic. There seems to be an espionage as a service. There’s different hackers who know if they get in there they’ll have some commodity that they can sell, and they’re far more pragmatic about trying to get in, because they don’t care about the political consequences. So they’re sort of like free agents in a way, who know they’ve got a willing buyer if they can get in. If it is directed from the Kremlin, I mean, I’m sure the folks who are being tight-lipped about it in Germany, You know, that’s a demonstration of soft power as well, that like while they’re trying to figure out should they renew sanctions over Ukraine, okay, we’ve got somebody breathing down our neck here. So either way, it’s sort of a win-win for—

Speaker E: Can I just pick up two things off this? One, the first thing is espionage as a service. For a long time, you know, that hasn’t actually been possible, and it’s not possible with certain administrations. I mean, with the the Americans or the British, for example, mainly because if they are interested in doing things like that, they subcontract out to people again that they know would not leave a trace. However, espionage as a service has begun to work if you are able to supply information to different regimes who are in the market for that information. So, for example, there has been evidence of the Chinese buying information from Russian hackers because it helps in their advanced persistent threat entry into computer systems?

Speaker D: Yeah. Yes. I think the way to look at it, there’s a lot of mercenaries out there. Currently, I think I’d put most of those mercenaries over in the East, but I think eventually we will see mercenaries that learn their skills, learn their business or Western defense contractors that were subcontractors of intelligence agencies. And they will operate as mercenaries and probably hack foreign governments and sell up to the CIA who probably, you know, oh, okay, we didn’t hack anybody, did we? But like, here’s some information so that they’ll appreciate the sort of plausible deniability that we didn’t hack anybody. Those kind of things are probably going to evolve undoubtedly.

Speaker E: And also the other thing is this use of technology as soft power. Nobody’s really actually fleshed that out, but hacking is the use of soft power. What you can do is instead of disabling somebody’s utility network, you just indicate that you can. Or you indicate that you can slow something down. That’s been the tendency up until now, hasn’t it? People have shown their capability. So for example, in 2003, a few of the backbone servers on the internet went down under distributed denial of service attack. It’s an expression of power.

Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah, I think that was the case when we were looking at the malware that had the vendors for the industrial control system devices that had their software trojanized, and so there were different customers of those companies who had installed trojanized version, trojanized installers into their networks, and so these were like regular sort of companies, but I’m sure everybody then realized, okay, this purpose of this malware was to map out industrial control systems within different organizations. So, you know, whether or not it’s critical infrastructure, it must be very unnerving for the governments in those European countries to know that there’s some entity mapping everything out, and then in the real world, if you’re talking about like, should we apply sanctions, you know, with a tough stance, probably weakens your stance quite a bit.

Speaker C: Proof, if you ever needed it, that nothing is ever quite what it seems in the digital age. And it’s not the first time that hackers have been caught in the nation’s Parliament, as I know only too well. In January 2006, our website Future Intelligence won a journalistic prize for revealing that Chinese hackers had been rattling the locks on the cyber doors of Westminster, and the MI5 had been called in to investigate. Now, as we all know, Greece ceased to be a place of blissful idyll for its inhabitants immediately after the financial crash, and has never really recovered. But according to an online meeting of technocurrency experts, cyberspace could offer salvation by letting Greeks escape from their financial odyssey of disaster. The Greek hero Odysseus followed a heron through the crashing rocks of Scylla and Charybdis. Now all the Greeks have to do is follow a blockchain to avoid a Titanic forces of austerity and EU bailout. Here’s Lee Gibson of Coinstructors to tell us how the ideas that Bitcoin is based on could let the Greeks off the hook. Hello, Lee.

Speaker F: Hi there, how’s it going?

Speaker C: Not so bad. How’s it going for you?

Speaker F: Not too bad, not too bad.

Speaker C: Good. Lee, you’ve had a conference today, haven’t you, about something called a blockchain? What’s a blockchain?

Speaker F: Blockchain is a public ledger for cryptocurrencies. So it can be created through mining pools. It’s a, let’s just say it’s an algorithm mathematical problem code. So to create Bitcoin, you mine Bitcoins by breaking algorithms, codes, calculation problems, and that then the difficulty gets stronger and stronger. But the blockchain is not just about Bitcoin. There are multiple blockchains that are a transparent public ledger for transactions or data and information.

Speaker C: Now, Lily, you’re going to have to sort of excuse me here, but that all sounds a bit Greek to me. What is— what does it actually mean? Well, what is a ledger and what is an algorithm, etc.?

Speaker F: Right. So what is a ledger? So If you look at the current ways banking systems work, you can see your own account history, but it’s controlled by the bank. It’s internal. With the blockchain public ledger, it’s supported by individuals in a decentralized manner, a bit like torrent, globally. So it’s— everybody has the information stored on the net, on their computer, for example.

Speaker C: Right, so it’s got all of your transaction history, it’s got your credibility down there, is that how it works?

Speaker D: That’s correct.

Speaker C: Right, and so then you apply a— so, but when you talk about the algorithms that are used to create bitcoins, I mean, essentially, an algorithm’s a code, isn’t it? And so what you do is you put these computers together, and you set them off looking for particular numbers that meet the specifications of the code. Have I got that right?

Speaker F: That’s it, correct. The giant calculator.

Speaker C: Okay, so, and so every time I find one of those ever, ever bigger numbers, because obviously to calculate those larger numbers it takes more and more time, that’s why bitcoins in a sense are a limited currency.

Speaker F: Yeah, that’s it, correct. So with, let’s say with Bitcoin, there’s only, you can only create 21 million of them. So once you hit to the end side of the 21, you can’t create more of them.

Speaker C: Why is that? Why is there only 21 million? Surely theoretically numbers are infinite. If this is an algorithm, it keeps on going and going.

Speaker F: The idea is, is you, you drop down the source of the money supply. So it’s a limited supply. So the value of the coin would go up. So you don’t actually have to create more coins because value goes up per coin.

Speaker C: Right. Okay. So Okay, so we’ve got that, we’ve got to grips with that. How on earth can this bit of code get the Greeks out of the jam that they find themselves in? What’s all of that about?

Speaker F: Well, it’s not just about a bit of code, it’s about the issues. So originally I started off with the idea of how can this technology, this new cryptocurrency, work for being backed by an asset. So there are people backing these digital tokens via gold or silver. And so I was looking at an island landmass, retail real estate, for example. So I started looking at a Greek island. It then metamorphed into the whole country of Greece because they have so many issues internally, not just about not paying back its debts, but they have issues with pensions. They have payroll issues, they have tax problems, land registration problems, and the blockchain could possibly offer different solutions to that problem because it’s over the public ledger and it cannot be manipulated because it’s— once it’s on the blockchain ledger, it’s set in stone.

Speaker C: Right, okay. So in a sense, this is internet transparency. People know what they’re getting into, they know what they’re buying, and they know what is out there and what is backing it.

Speaker D: Is that correct?

Speaker F: So if the government— so what happened is, is we started looking at if into Greece and it’s talking about issuing a second currency, a national currency. So if they did that via paper, it’s going to be an IOU. And who says that the government’s going to be able to honor that IOU when it’s not able to honor its debts currently? It’s struggling to honor the IMF and ECB and its bonds. So creating a secondary currency as an IOU is not going to really work because people aren’t going to trust it. So as I was looking into it, there’s the great fire sale of Greece. So Greece has got oil and gas supplies of the region of $600 to $700 billion. Eurostat reports that the Greek government has $86 billion in government-owned assets. That makes them actually the 7th richest asset-owned country in Europe, when you’ve got financially stable Germany, which is 17th for government asset-owned rich country in Europe.

Speaker C: So what you’re basically saying is that you can recapitalize Greece. But isn’t there an issue with bitcoins? I thought that with no one overseeing the currency, that they’re at the mercy of online crooks.

Speaker F: Well, that’s not the point. I hear the bitcoin world’s a— We don’t use bitcoin. Sorry, you don’t use Bitcoin. That’s the whole point. You’re using the underlying technology.

Speaker C: I understand, right? So what you’re saying is that you basically create a new currency for the Greeks but using the same technology that Bitcoin is based on. So you have this transparency in terms of the transactions. So you have this transparency so you can basically see the value of the asset that it’s based against and you’re just basically using the same technology that Bitcoin is using.

Speaker F: Yeah, correct. So you’re creating an alternative coin currency, let’s say, a digital token which is backed by the assets of Greece, which therefore is the first because nobody’s ever done that. But it enables them, opposed to selling off their assets for pennies on the dollar, it enables them to create liquid out of their illiquid assets without having to sell them.

Speaker C: Right. You’ve been having a conference about all of this today, haven’t you? You’ve been having an online conference.

Speaker F: We’re running live right now.

Speaker C: Right. Well, have you approached the Greeks about it? What do they think about it?

Speaker F: No, we’ve not bothered approaching the Greeks. I was just using the Greek scenario as a prime example because they have so many issues and to find out what technologies can be out there to solve certain issues. But it is now becoming apparent that the finance minister has already been talking about creating a future tax coin.

Speaker C: Has he?

Speaker F: Which is pretty ridiculous because it’s well known that the national sport of Greece is do not pay tax. Why would you want a future tax coin?

Speaker C: Exactly. Well, Lee, if the financial minister of Greece does get in contact with me, I’ll pass on your phone number and we will see what we can do. I’ll also actually ask the Greek government whether they’ve considered this. They do run a local currency at the moment as well. Anyway, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you.

Speaker F: Okay, thanks a lot.

Speaker C: Now, to use some apposite techno jargon that was stolen from the Greeks in the first place, it’s something of a Trojan horse in reverse, except the Greeks, if they do opt for it, they might be climbing back into it and hoping that it will roll back out of their enemy town that they’ve got themselves in. Now, possibly the internet’s biggest conundrum. Listen to this clip. And see what you think.

Speaker G: This person, it’s a girl, a lady, a neighborhood, a new neighborhood in her building. And this man was a rapist. He was a convict actually, from the, from police. And, and because police wanted to catch him. But the thing is, this man started to live in the building, and he was just in the next apartment, in the next flat from this girl. She has a girl, a little girl actually, and I don’t know, maybe 2 or 3 times per week, this lady was going out with her daughter to the park, and this man was always watching her, and she She didn’t realize what was happening. And after some time, this man started to date with this girl. And after some time, they— and then this man started to live with her in the same apartment with she and her daughter. And until this moment, if you know about all these situations, maybe you could think that this man has changed. That this man did wrong in the past. Now he is a good boyfriend or a good— I don’t know, after 1 year, something like that. I think you could imagine what happened. This man had raped her daughter, and finally she discovered this situation. She realized, and at the end, this guy was— I think he is in jail now. But with this little story, you could understand the purpose of our company, right?

Speaker C: Well, that was Xavier Ares describing one of the reasons why he thinks that his idea of setting up an online site that exposes wrongdoers with a record is a good one. Here’s Xavier telling us why he’s doing it.

Speaker F: Unmask.

Speaker G: Well, I think the best Concepts that I can tell you, it’s, uh, this is the first, the first social network, I think, in all the world that tries to expose and show the truth about the people, about the individuals and, and, and the persons.

Speaker C: So how are you going, so how are you going to do that?

Speaker G: Well, basically, uh, this is like something similar like Wikipedia, for example, or, uh or WikiLeaks also. Basically, we depend on all the users, right? I mean, all the users, all the people will create all this information and all these profiles in our website. So we believe that after some time, this could be a big database of many different information about personals.

Speaker F: About people.

Speaker C: And just so it doesn’t become a site for those nursing a grudge who will get the site buried in libel suits, Xavier says you have to be able to back up your claims.

Speaker G: In every post that, that the users will publish in our website, they will need to upload any proof about their past, right? From like any video, any pictures, any audio files, documents, anything, right, to prove what they are posting. And the second thing, it’s a vote system from all the users. So if, for example, if you post anything about a friend, for example, and you upload pictures or videos, whatever, all these will be voted by all the users, right? They can vote if the posts are true or are false. And then all the posts that have many, many false votes from the users will be deleted automatically. So we believe we have two options. Users or stalkers, if that is the correct word, people who just want to write any bad information, they will not find any reason to do it. Because first of all, for example, if you come to our page and you see a profile and you see this profile with many posts with proofs on it and votes about true information, and then you see another post that is just with no proofs and and with many boats of false information, you will not even take care about this post, right? So I think they will not find any reason to post anything like this. And anyways, we will delete it if this doesn’t have any proofs and if this has many— so that’s how we will deal with this situation.

Speaker C: Which is all well and good, but Unmask is part of a trend that is exciting considerable debate in the US, where websites websites have been started up so that people know whether there are sex offenders living in their area or if they are rubbing shoulders with convicted robbers. It has also provoked many in the UK, who claim that it breaches an essential tenet of our society: forgiveness.

Speaker A: So there is this relevancy question, and even forgetting some irrelevant data might increase increase efficiency overall. But irrespective of the question of efficiency, we might as a society decide that some things should not be remembered forever. Even though it might be good for historians 100 years hence, or even though it might be good for some statistical analysis in 5 decades to have the data, we might as a society decide that it is more important to forget certain things because we want to give people a second chance in their lives, for example, if they have misbehaved in the past. And by doing so, we create digital speed bumps, if you want. But these speed bumps are deliberate choices that society makes. And even though that might destroy some value because data is lost, we as a society might think that’s okay.

Speaker C: But there will be some people who say, and I’ve noticed this trend starting in America, for example, people want to know if a sex offender is living in a neighborhood near them. There are websites in America where you can actually get that information.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: That strikes me as being a little, you know, if our civilization is based on Christian principles, there is no forgiveness in that because it means that people will always pillory that individual.

Speaker A: Very much so, but on the sex offender directories and notices, we at least had a modicum of public debate about whether we should want it or not. There is another instance in the United States that I think is much more egregious, and that is that state penitentiary systems sell mugshots of prisoners to whoever wants to pay a certain price. And then a company bought hundreds of thousands of them from past prisoners in state prisons in the United States and put them on websites, in fact created a franchise system of dozens and dozens of websites websites where you can go and sort of look up who was imprisoned in the 1990s in Nevada with name and everything. Even though the criminal record of that person might already have been expunged, you can go to a commercial website and find that person. And to me, the kicker is that they— the company who that provides this quote-unquote service is actually offering a possibility of taking the picture and the name off the website against a hefty fee. So in that sense, it is blackmail— I have no other word to describe this— of those that are trying to resocialize themselves, trying to reintegrate themselves in society, at a time when perhaps government has already forgiven them by expunging the conviction from the criminal record, but the commercial side of things is not forgetting yet. I think there we need to make a clear decision as a society whether we want this permanent comprehensive memory or not.

Speaker C: Well, that was Professor Victor Mayer-Schomburger, Professor of Internet Governance at Oxford University and author of the acclaimed book Delete. Perhaps an unremittingly blank, bleak message from the internet. And let’s face it, while there are problems with it, it has also done and continues to do an incredible amount of good. Because while the internet is forcing transparency out of individuals who may not like it, it is also forcing transparency out of governments and making it more and more difficult to keep secrets. And perhaps that is the issue that we’re all trying not to face. The internet is not good at keeping secrets, whether they are yours, mine, or the government. The internet is like Gore Vidal’s friend who asked him if he could keep a secret, only to be told, “If you can’t, why should I?” The internet is careless of our privacy. So what’s the answer? Well, according to one of our former guests, Professor Adrian Cheok of London City University, we should all give up on our secrets. Well, that might not be the message that our next guest, Frode Nielsen, agrees with, but he’s very keen to see a lot of messages, because Frode has put together an app called Deemi that makes our messages a joy to behold. Frodo, welcome to Password.

Speaker B: Thank you very much. Thank you, Frodo.

Speaker C: Why should we make our messages pretty? Surely the point of a message is just to send some information.

Speaker B: Well, we think it’s important, um, just because you send so many messages a day, and why not make it beautiful? I mean, why, why should you make it simple when it’s It’s so easy to make something look good, and that’s what we’re aiming for. We’re not aiming for a long process to make nice-looking messages, but we are aiming for simple processes to, to be able to make beautiful messages.

Speaker C: How do you make a beautiful message? What, what is it that you do that makes messages beautiful? Talk me through what I can do with, with your system.

Speaker B: Well, the, the basic idea is It’s actually based on the first time we used Instagram, and we really love that because when Instagram released, everybody looked like professional photographers all of a sudden because, you know, with all the filters and everything, anything that you took a picture of looked really well. So we wanted to do the same thing with the instant messaging thing with, you know, pre-installed fonts, really nice icons that you can add. And of course filters. So our whole point is to make any person off the street able to do really nice posters of the colored backgrounds that we have, or really nice images based on images you take or something that you have on your phone, and then you can just add a little bit of message on them or a nice icon.

Speaker C: Okay, now apparently you’ve got a strong female following. Why is that?

Speaker B: I think females tend to try new social media platforms first. They also like the creative part of Beeme. They like to make things look good and they like the creative side of it. So that’s why we, you know, the first part of the user base that we have built now is around 65-70% women. And that’s the same thing for any social media platform around the world actually. Instagram as well.

Speaker C: So women like communicating and now they’re going to communicate in a very pretty way. Do you think men will follow suit?

Speaker B: I think so too. Yeah, I think anywhere where females go, obviously it’s interesting for men as well. But I think those kind of apps, it’s mainly the first interest of it is mainly with women. And then obviously men tag along at a later stage.

Speaker C: Okay, well, that was Frode Nielsen, CEO of DeMe, taking on board Marshall McLuhan’s famous statement that the medium is the message. And our message is nearly over. This is Password on Resonance FM, and if you’ve just joined us, you’ve missed it, but we’ll be back next week. And you can find out more about technology and society at our website, Future Intelligence. Password is made by Angel Media Productions CIC. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.

Speaker A: This program has been brought to you by Resonance 104.4 FM. If you liked what you heard and want to support our work, please make a donation at fundraiser.resonance.fm.