Thursday - Jun 9, 2011
The political scandal du jour involves New York congressman Anthony Weiner. Last week a conservative media group charged him with sending lewd pictures to a 21 year old woman via his Twitter account.
Initially, the congressman denied the allegation, claiming that his account was hacked and it was just a juvenile prank. As more pictures began to surface, the congressman admitted to sending the image in question and many others to six different women over the last three years.
This practice, known as sexting (sex + texting), has gotten a lot of people in trouble, as it leaves a trail of data that can easily be uncovered. The disgraced legislator is now paying the price for his reckless behavior in cyberspace. He has refused to resign from office, despite calls from some of his colleagues and many of his political opponents.
As convoluted as Weiner’s denial was, it was not implausible that he had been hacked. It’s easier than you may think to hack someone’s Twitter account. If you’re curious, here’s one way to do it. For other possible explanations, read Errata Security’s “Weiner Schnitzel” story.
Of course we now know what really happened. For once, hackers weren’t responsible. But this sordid story still offers lessons for everyone. As the hacks of corporations like Sony, Gmail and most recently, Citibank, make clear, online security as got to be improved–and fast.
In the meantime, take your own personal security precautions. If you use Twitter, limit access to your account. Have a unique password that you only use for Twitter. Use a strong password, change it periodically and keep it secure.
Remember that social media is designed to help you share information. Privacy settings notwithstanding, assume that anything you share online can be viewed publicly and act accordingly.
As for sexting, some things are best done offline, don’t you think?
Wednesday - Apr 27, 2011
The short answer is “you are”–you and the 2 billion other people who use the Internet. More on this in a moment.
There’s also another “anonymous,” an amorphous group of people around the world who claim they’re fighting for free speech. Because of their cyber-attacks on targets as diverse as Sony’s PlayStation Network (Anonymous denies stealing any customer data) and the governments of Tunisia and Egypt, Anonymous has been branded as criminals. But depending on your point of view, this rebellious band can also be seen as Internet freedom fighters.
According to their YouTube manifesto published last December, “We are not a terrorist organization as governments, demagogues, and the media would have your believe. Rather, Anonymous is a spontaneous collective of people who share the common goal of protecting the free flow of information on the Internet.” Anonymous has compared their actions to those of American Civil Rights workers of the 1960s.
Members of the collective reportedly include software programmers, professionals and IT types. They take down websites by using denial-of-service attacks. Anonymous harnesses an army of zombie computers to direct simultaneous service requests to a website, causing the server to overload and then crash. They claim, “We do no damage to the computer hardware.”
Anonymous attacked Visa, MasterCard and PayPal when the companies stopped processing donations for Wikileaks. The group crashed Egyptian government websites in retaliation for taking the country offline. More recently, they embarrassed HBGary, a computer security firm with numerous high level government and corporate clients, by hacking into its network.
In many ways, the Internet remains a new frontier. There’s a certain romance to a band of outliers who pledge to protect free speech by challenging multinational corporations and governments. Of course the targets of the attacks hardly see it that way and are actively trying to round up these outlaws. Will they succeed?
Being anonymous is one of the great strengths of the Internet. We don’t hesitate to research subjects online that might prove too sensitive to discuss face-to-face with a research librarian. We buy products online that we might be too embarrassed to purchase in a retail store. Then there’s the porn industry, which makes billions of dollars from its anonymous clients. Concealing one’s identity has advantages.
The only way to unmask Anonymous is for all of us to reveal ourselves as well. The question is, are we ready to pay that price?
Thursday - Apr 7, 2011
William Cronon is a respected author, president-elect of the American Historical Association, and a distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin. He’s also under attack by the Wisconsin Republican Party, which has filed a Freedom of Information request to see all of Professor Cronon’s email that contain any of these twenty keywords: Republican, Scott Walker, recall, collective bargaining, AFSCME, WEAC, rally, union, Alberta Darling, Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, Rob Cowles, Scott Fitzgerald, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Glenn Grothman, Mary Lazich, Jeff Fitzgerald, Marty Beil, or Mary Bell.
Why is he under attack? You can probably guess from the above terms.
Professor Cronon writes a personal blog, “Scholar as Citizen.” A few weeks ago he wrote a post about a conservative organization, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which drafts and circulates proposed legislation to Republican legislators. Cronon alleged that ALEC played a role in the union-busting legislation championed by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
The post went viral, garnering over 500,000 hits in two days. And two days after Cronon’s post, the Wisconsin Republican Party filed its request with the university.
Professor Cronon and many others have charged that this is a shameless attempt to intimidate him and stifle academic freedom. He claims that the Wisconsin GOP wants to discredit him by showing that he misused state email resources.
Regardless of the motive, my takeaway from this story is that you should always keep your professional and personal correspondence separate. The first rule of email is to have two accounts. (By the way, there’s no indication that Professor Cronon did anything wrong.)
Your business email may be subject to discovery pending on the laws in your state or country. Gaining access to your private Gmail or Yahoo! account, for instance, is a whole other matter. While it may be faster to just dash off a quick note to a friend from your business account, resist the urge. You never know how it may come back to bite you.
