A recent Wall Street Journal and NBC News poll found that 80% of voters say the country is “out of control.” I’m not sure exactly what people meant by “out of control,” but I suspect that if you were to ask the same question about the internet, the results might be similar.
If you had asked me about the internet a few months ago, I’d probably have said things are out of control, but the events of the last few weeks have made that even clearer.
But before I complain, let me say something positive. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms played an important part in mobilizing recent peaceful protests against police brutality. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, activists had megaphones, mimeograph machines and posters. Today’s activists have incredibly more-powerful tools, along with the ability to educate and mobilize people in their communities and around the globe.
And those phones we have in our pocket are also playing an essential role, helping get people where they need to be, documenting atrocities ranging from the murder of George Floyd to the shoving and serious injury of 75-year-old Martin Gugino. Cell phone video — along with the news media — also helped document exactly what was going on before and during the pepper gas attack on demonstrators to make room for the President Donald Trump’s photo op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, across the street from the White House. And, lest you think my observations are one-sided, the same technology also documented the looting and violence from a relatively small but out-of-control group of people around the protests. And speaking of “out of control,” that same technology demonstrated that some (I presume a minority) of protesters and police officers failed to wear masks in close proximity to others in the streets.
But despite its potential to do good, we’re seeing some very ugly things happening via technology now. Clearly, the use of social media to spread misinformation is high on that list. I don’t want to pile on the president, but using Twitter to claim that Martin Gugino “could be an ANTIFA provocateur,” is one of many examples. Facebook and Twitter have taken action against some false and dangerous tweets and posts, but millions continue to flood both platforms, from a variety of sources, including foreign actors. Almost every day, I see false information on my Twitter and Facebook feeds.
I even saw a resurgence this week of that absurd “PizzaGate” theory that Hillary Clinton was operating a pedophile ring from a Washington D.C., pizza restaurant. And in case you think that’s harmless, three years ago Edgar Maddison Welch showed up with three guns at that restaurant to take matters into his own hands. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and after Welch was arrested, he admitted making an “incredibly ill-advised decision” to try to save endangered children who were never there. “The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent,” he said, according to the New York Times. Duh. That “intel” was a crazy internet rumor that’s still floating around. Now we’re dealing with new conspiracy theories, like a link between 5G cell towers and COVID-19. I worry that someone will be killed trying to blow-up a 5G tower.
Hacking and phishing
Hacking has been around for a long time, but we’re now learning of a federal investigation about environmental groups receiving phishing emails because of their climate-change campaign against Exxon Mobil. Exxon Mobil itself has not been accused of wrongdoing.
Citizen Lab reports that “Dark Basin is a hack-for-hire group that has targeted thousands of individuals and hundreds of institutions on six continents. Targets include advocacy groups and journalists, elected and senior government officials, hedge funds, and multiple industries.” The hacking group is also suspected of hacks against net neutrality advocacy groups. The hackers, who are linked to a company in India, allegedly used a custom URL shortener to disguise the phishing links.
Evan Greer from Fight for the Future, one of the leading pro-net neutrality groups, said that the organization was an early victim of these attacks. “In 2017, at the height of the battle over net-neutrality, we were targeted by a barrage of sophisticated phishing attacks. It was clear at the time we were being targeted, but we didn’t know by whom.” She said that researchers have identified “essentially a mercenary group of paid hackers based in India who targeted us,” and other groups in what she called a “hacker for hire ring.”
URL shortening services, like TinyURL.com and Bit.ly are typically run by legitimate companies that offer web users a convenient and useful tool for making long URLs short, which is especially handy on Twitter and other social media platforms. I use TinyURL a lot to not only create short URLs, but custom ones. For example, you can find a shortcut to my bio at TinyUrl.com/AboutLarry. Still, there is a danger in these shortened URLs because you don’t know where they take you until you go there. With standard URLs, you can see the destination before you click.
There are also reports that the FBI, the National Guard Bureau, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “are flying manned and unmanned aircraft with equipment to conduct surveillance via video cameras and by tracking cell phones,” according to a letter issued by Silicon Valley Representative Anna G. Eshoo, D-CA, and 34 other members of Congress.
There is hope
There probably isn’t enough newsprint or internet bandwidth to document everything that’s troubling right now, so I’ll leave it here. But lest I leave you in despair, remember that the internet was created by people and can be reformed by people. And that includes some very smart and resourceful people like the World Wide Web’s creator, Tim Berners-Lee, who is promoting the Contract for the Web that challenges governments, companies, and citizens to, among other things, “Develop technologies that support the best in humanity and challenge the worst.” Berners-Lee and Contract for the Web have their work cut out for them, but as Martin Luther King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”