Social engineering

As any other trick, social engineering is successful only if the attacker is smarter than his victim. The most important are information and some knowledge about dangers and traps on the net. A lot of people don’t recognize mail from spam, more to recognize serious attempts to gain their identity and passwords. In my opinion, there should be some security tutorial for new users installing internet browser – some guide “How to avoid problems”.

Very dangerous is to Trojan horse or virus which activates pop-up window which requests retyping your username and password because of, for example” lost connection. The password could be even written by dots, so you can very easily reveal your personal data.

Case of hacktivism

The term hacktivism hadn´t been very well known and usual in my country, so the situation before last elections in 2006 was for many people surprising. The election campaign spread also on internet and among hackers. For example personal sites of a few popular politicians have been hacked and somebody on their homepages rude words or tried to stultify them. Because negativity was one of the most important features of those elections, this hacking could influence final results – not only by stultifying, but also politicians´ failure to oppose new situation effectively and rise above.

Very funny were also “Google bombs” – if you write some rude word (as “namyšlenej idiot” – bigheaded idiot), the first result in Google search will be personnel site of former Czech Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek. It became very famous and Paroubek asked Google for prohibiting this relation, but didn’t succeed.

Minority groups

Internet offers great opportunity to introduce the minority and its ideas for very low price. A lot of alienation and prejudice stem from ignorance and fear of unknown. For example, it could be case of new established Muslim community in the town, where they have never been before. To settle there and build a church they need to be trustworthy for local people. Using internet the can introduce and visualize their plans anybody, advertise on city web pages, set up the e-mail address for questions and complains, set up forum for ideas etc. The more information people know the less fear they feel – and the internet is useful and powerful tool.

For any member of minority with internet access is interesting challenge and chance to try any on-line job. Doesn’t matter, if you are black, yellow, Muslim, on wheelchair or with huge scar on your face. May be except of entrance interview you can get easy and “painless” work experience and increase your self-confidence and chance to get next time any other job. In my country it could be interesting opportunity for Gypsies who nobody wants to employ.

Enter the hacker

I like the most definition “One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations”. The term isn’t limited and can cover more areas, but catches the main point of overcoming limitations.

I think that success of non-commercial collaborative projects (like Wikipedia, mapping places with pictures etc.) is proving the hacker ethic exists among people and is not marginal. Internet brings new way of work which demands new way of thinking. A lot of hackers´ rules and principles can be found in European philosophy, traditions and values. After reading the article I think hackers can be its new apostles.

Collaborative aspect of hacktivism can be also found in many company social and team building activities and project solving strategies.

Czech ITC strategy and social cohesiveness

Czech Republic hasn’t got any complex ITC strategy. There are only some notes in government programme about supporting digital infrastructure and bringing internet to all libraries, village schools and municipal offices. The most important for Czech politicians is eGon programme, whose goal is to get to top 5 European countries in e-Government development. Through the country there are coming up so-called CzechPoints, where can people managed all their communication with state and offices. The network should be finished by 2010.

The social cohesiveness is very important for me. In my opinion making knowledge gaps and excluding particular parts of society is dangerous and can very easily take revenge. Those excluded people will become in man ways unemployable, will not bring society a lot of added value and on the contrary they will need care and welfare system help. That signs large social problem and obstacle on the way towards information society.
Moreover, in the time when European population is dying out it is crucial to have as huge as possible skilled and educated workforce.

The Digital Divide in my country

Infrastructure and public services in my country are on high level, including internet accessibility. Internet is almost in all schools and libraries and the government runs several projects to make it better. That means the internet should be available almost in every village. Than yet, thanks to telephone operators it is possible to get some connection anywhere.

Czech Republic still hasn’t got such a high number of broadband connections as in Germany, Britain or Estonia, but it is getting better very fast, everybody wants to be no-line. Nowadays, about 60 percent of people are connected to internet, 2/5 of them broadband.

There is one specific group in Czech Republic, which has got often problems to integrate into society (and vice versa). Gypsies are said to be lazy, bad workers, pick-pocketers and many people don’t like them, because they have a lot of children and get high welfare benefits. Unlike Vietnamese, or Chinese communities Gypsies really very rarely work, run any businesses and educate themselves.

Despite of many government programmes and NGOs activities most of them stagnate and prefer “unchained” way of live inside their communities. Internet penetration among Gypsy families is very low, close to zero. But it is not only technology gap, but social gap in general.

Typical digital divide case in CZE is based on age. Elderly people (60+) in my country usually don’t use internet and often computer at all. There are not many projects concerned with this issue, but the main reason is, in my opinion, the socialist era. Most of their live people weren’t forced and motivated to be creative, think more than was requested and adopt new technologies. After Velvet Revolution everything changed, many people lost or had to change their job and suddenly the world started move faster. Till this time many old people hasn’t faced up to this changes, not only with internet era.

Internet fraud scheme and What’s the bloody point

The most casual fraud which tries to flood in my inbox consists of offers Viagra, enlarging penises or helping in critical situation. Or some Nigerian banker offers me a chance to earn huge money :-) Always it involves send money to an account or go to a site request. It seems to be so naive and simple, but some people sometimes use it.

My professor of media and advertising law asserted there are always 5 - 10 percent of consumers who believes everything and aren’t able to catch any stretcher – even if you claim that while eating this sausage you feel like in paradise. With these simple frauds is it the same.

Phishing is obviously more dangerous – if users get email from address, which seems to be very similar to bank address, they pay it much more attention. In Czech Republic was phishing quite often last time, fraudulent emails contained even bank logo, colors and “signature” of the bank governor. No surprise, some gullible persons “in the interest of better security” revealed their personal information and bank account details.

The thing I really don’t like is mimicking well-known websites names. For example most popular Czech web portal http://www.seznam.cz/ has got several similar parasites - searching engine http://www.sezamn.cz/ and page with music downloading http://www.sezanm.cz/. It is very easy to confuse last letters and these web pages owners know it very well. For me are these pages only annoying, but for web novice it might be dangerous trap.

What’s the bloody point is amazing! I have never had any idea about this or similar page. I´ve read several scams and all were really interesting and some even funny – it is nice to see that also those criminals and mugus can step in the same trap and be beat by their own weapons.

Inside Echelon

Until communication and privacy protections become effective and ubiquitous, Echelon or systems like it will remain with us. This last sentence is probably one of the few sentences which show any solution and aren’t pessimistic. Otherwise it seemed intelligence collection system would be dreadnought and without any limits.

The first part of the article about Echelon shows the practical use and importance of electronic surveillance system – it was one of key factors in the WW2. The more information people send and the more is global communication important, the faster raise importance of these systems and services.

For me the most risky factor is that there is no public control how these system work, who receives information and outputs and how easy misusage of it is. Are data really safe, if a journalist can get inside the object (at New Zealand)? How easy can special interest group get to sensitive information about individuals, companies, technologies or armies?

The amount of information is really amazing, if the just one system can generate a million inputs per half hour; filters throw away all but 6500 inputs; only 1,000 inputs meet forwarding criteria; 10 inputs are normally selected by analysts and only one report is produced. This information is from the early nineties, this number must be now higher and present software is more developed and smarter. Moreover, it should enable sorting data more efficiently – in my opinion it might be inspired by sorting content on web – tagging, keywords, tag clouds etc.

The idea that every my sent message is somewhere noticed, run and stored is quite scaring. I can only hope that my data are so uninteresting, that gets lost in the information sea, and the system is “service for me”. Public service is the only sense of existing of these systems.

Net Nanny - blocking software in practice

From the list of blocking software I picked Net Nanny Package. I have no previous experience with using filter or parental control software, so it was just by chance. Net Nanny should keep kids, friends or work colleges safe on the internet and protect them from the things they shouldn’t see while still being able to do what they need to.

Net Nanny runs both with PC and Mac and enables block several different categories of content – pornography, gambling, image and video search or chat pages. It also it should be able to block some community servers, pages with and manual set pages.

My first contact with Net Nanny was totally deterrent. Just after the installation had finished, my laptop collapsed – blue screen and quiet. Fortunately I lost only a few opened documents and one file, but next day I spent with reinstalling some software.

However, after the second installation I started trying poker pages, some erotic content, gay and lesbian sites, torrent downloading and searching for videos and pictures. At first in Czech and then in English. Usually I was able to get to content I wanted. I used different keyword in searching engines (they blocked searching for some words immediately) or went to page without particular word in the name of page or in link. I was surprised, that I managed to play Texas hold´em poker. It was enough to write cards and hold.

In English it was more difficult, word and keyword database was probably bigger and smarter. But still after a few minutes it wasn’t problem to find requested content. When I tried to get to Facebook and MySpace, the software behaved odd, sometimes it worked and sometimes not. I couldn’t find any rule.

All in all, for less skilled users and kids is probably this kind of programme safe enough, but for more experienced user it is easy to get to any information. Of course, it is necessary to try more sources. It could be good for company network, but for normal user is it incredibly annoying. And that is probably the main feature I got after two days spent with Net Nanny.

Challenges to the Global Information Society

World is rapidly changing and every country is a competitor on global economic market. Some of them try to reduce tax rates, some offer cheap workforce, some compete with new technologies. How can Europe success in this risky arena? Pekka Himanen believes in network form of organization and growth based on creative innovations. What does it mean?

Golden mean

The United States uses neoliberalist model, which enables everybody to do as much as you manage. Show as your capabilities and we appreciate it. But if you not succeed, we leave you behind. This model is very dynamic, but not for all society, says Himanen. There is a huge amount of people, who are left behind and public sector is quite poor. As well the Singapore model has a lot of disadvantages – attempts to offer lower taxation causes, that at the moment somebody offers better conditions, we have no weapon to avert a threat. Moreover, this model is also patronizing - freedom and rights of people could be easily restricted which can negatively influence potential of people’s creativity.

Using Himanen’s vocabulary, current European model is combination of information society and welfare state. This model grows up from traditional European values, if is closely connected to innovative entrepreneurialism and creativity of society, then is considered to be Golden mean of development.

Key values

Himanen introduces ten basic values, which are traditional and broadly shared in (in my opinion western and central) Europe. Their encouragement and new comprehension are fundamental to reform European welfare state combined with information society (Finnish model). The values are caring, confidence, communality, encouragement, freedom, creativity, courage, visionariness, meaningfulness of doing and balance of all components.

Briefly, new welfare state should more support equal opportunities for everybody and in global view for all people worldwide. System should guarantee social care and confidence, which together with caring and freedom makes background for communality and enable create innovative and creative environment. People feel more courage and easily fulfill their visions and start new projects.

Fields of implementation

Successful global competition needs to implement core values in practice, particularly to a creative economy, a creative welfare society, humanly meaningful development and a global culture. Key terms in this process are creativity and innovation. Welfare society needs quite large expenses and the only way to keep economical growth is only through innovations. Himanen highly recommends improving employees´ conditions to be more motivated and creative. For example it is non-fixed working time, time for innovation and experiments with new technologies. Creative environment should be supported in all corporations and management should appreciate these efforts. Moreover, higher productivity of labour mustn’t lead to jeopardize jobs, otherwise all passion will fade.

Very important is increasing quality of people’s personal lives. People are already overloaded of work and the population is ageing. Long life learning programmes are necessary for keeping people´s minds in good condition and also it is essential to get their personal live in more natural way – more time for family, sports and own project and activities. The result will be more satisfied employee with less physical and psychical troubles who brigs his/her company more use than only ordinary work.

European economics can not increase production of traditional goods too much. Ideas must become the raw material for most of product. Himanen therefore exhort to cooperate also with other cultures which can bring new points of view and modus operandi into present processes.

Conclusion

Himanen’s paper tries to deal with European development opportunities in global competition. His view is quite optimistic, but on the other hand he describes most of processes and trends in general and not indeed. Practical implementation will need many years of tuff work on all levels of society. Some theoretical and practical inspiration I can see in Anthony Giddens´s “third way” practically used in British Labour Party policies. It could be valuable source of experience.