The causes may have changed and the weapons may have advanced, but people have waged wars for centuries. In today's high-tech battles, the barrage of information -- or digital warfare -- is becoming almost as critical as the salvos of bullets and rockets.
The new face of cyberwar was prominently displayed last week between the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Hamas, the militant Palestinian Sunni group that controls the Gaza Strip, the 356 square kilometer strip of land bordering the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt, and Israel. Israel captured the territory in the Six-Day War of 1967, but has allowed it to remain autonomous with its own governing body, even removing all military forces in 2005. Nonetheless, the local government has chaffed at the idea of being an Israeli territory and has responded in recent weeks with violence. Each side blames the other in the clashes.
But even as the rockets flew, a new tool of war emerged: 140 character messages delivered on Twitter. Both the IDF and Hamas’ Alqassam Brigade have been waging a war of words on the site, turning the world’s hottest microblogging platform into a propaganda machine, according to some commentators.
@idfspokesperson Our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are (You Opened Hell Gates on Yourselves)
The IDF has also been actively posting on its own Tumblr page. One member of the IDF commented:
Shame that the Internet is only waking up to @IDFSpokesperson now. We have been tweeting almost daily about rockets on #Israel for years.
Indeed, the public, particularly in America, appears to be only now starting to wake up to the emerging role of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr in War 2.0. The US Armed Forces has a Twitter presence (such as the USAF’s Twitter feed), but they tend to avoid discussing combat operations, instead talking about declassified technology benefits, outreach to soldiers, family matters, and other civilian-minded topics.
But one must wonder how long the US will stay out of the information war, as commanders witness its effectiveness. Remember, Twitter is relatively new, having just launched in 2006. The last two major US operations -– the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan -- predate it. I feel it's inevitable that this nation will follow a similar path to the IDF. After all, armed forces may be accused of propagandizing for sharing their perspective on Twitter, but if they let “the other side” hurl accusations without a response, they risk being unfairly villainized and made to look weak.
Assuming the US does take up the mantle of information warfare in future campaigns, the next question is whether the US Armed Forces would manage such communications in house, or contract them to an external public relations agency. The latter possibility might be more desirable, given the danger of letting the emotion of those serving mar the message that the commanders want to share. If PR folks can do damage control on Lindsey Lohan, they should be able to handle information war.
Then there’s another big, looming question: How will Twitter, et al, respond to being made into the latest battlefront? So far, they have tolerated both sides in the conflict, even when the messages include dire threats of violence and retaliation. Twitter is very anti-censorship, but will likely face growing criticism as its use as a propaganda platform grows. (See: Twitter's Clever Censorship Policy)
Finally, there’s the issue of security. For both government and private sector contractors, safeguarding social media information streams will become an increasingly mission-critical objective. It would be an absolute disaster if a nation’s enemy hijacked its Twitter account and posted damaging or erroneous messages.
Those of us who read William Gibson have long suspected this day would come; a time in which virtual assaults -- information theft, image engineering, and even direct cyberattacks -- become as integral as traditional tactics. As the Israeli conflict illustrates, that new day is at hand.
Jason Mick is senior news editor at the independent tech news site DailyTech.
It may not be possible for the US Government to contract for an external public relations agency to manage information warfare. Whatever message they generate, it will have to be vetted by the military for approval. Thus, that agency will still be perceived as "private" industry promoting government/military propaganda -- probably not something a private corporation would want to sign up for. By involving themselves they may also become targets for opposing forces. It is probably better for the military to keep management and execution of information operations/promoting their strategic message, rather than hand that mission to a civilian firm. The military already has the capability to conduct information warfare, but contracting for advice on how to better craft their messages for a local region or take advantage of different media is possible.
"If someone saw and saved a copy of your post before you removed it or edited it, you will be in just as much Cybertrouble as you would have been in real trouble in real life."
You have a valid point. It depends on how quickly you have edited or deleted your post after the initial posting. I, myself, do post a comment sometimes which I realize later that I should not have and usually in less than a minute I realize that it aint appropriate. The longer the duration before edition and more the controversial your comment is, the higher the chances are that someone will save it.
In a real-life conversation, you can take back your words, too, and if no one was listening you will get away with it. If someone saw and saved a copy of your post before you removed it or edited it, you will be in just as much Cybertrouble as you would have been in real trouble in real life.
That's a very thoughtful message. Just like we dont express everything we feel so as to avoid consequences as far as everyday face to face conversations are concerned, we also decide not to express it on social media. Unlike real life conversations, you can take your words back unless you are editing something 1 week after posting it.
If, indeed, "Government is a reflection of society and can enrich society, if the citizens hold it responsible," then I'm all for it. The thing is, all too often government refuses responsibility even as it usurps authority, and the citizens are too apathetic or too afraid to stand up and denounce it for its actions.
Government certainly will expand the use of social media in its continued war against not only the other countries it calls enemies but even more against its undeclared target: us.
I'm pretty sure that Facebook does keep track of what our wall posts said before we edited them; most likely they aren't the only ones (can you say Homeland Insecurity?).
Being able to edit what's on your wall, or tweeting an edited version of your tweet, or in changing your position on a topic seem to me normal human responses. We say something in anger, we take it back later. Those listening may or may not choose to remember what we said. It may represent the difference between how we react and how we choose to present ourselves from the world, and both have some validity. Both are part of who we are.
@ Jason
Thanks for the update on the laws. So it is possible to prosecute someone who feels that social networks are royal rumble.
As far as editing on fb is concerned, is editing of inbox messages possible? Wall posts are editable surely. May be Facebook keeps a log of what was edited.
I fundamentally agree with you, and feel you defend your position very eloquently.
My take is similar: A government is only as good or bad as its citizens allow it to be. Government is a reflection of society and can enrich society, if the citizens hold it responsible.
There's a fine line between propoganda and transparency when it comes to government operations. Where the IDF lands on that line is open for debate, but I think the U.S. can use social media without abusing social media.
Wikileaks, et al. are always crying about lack of transparency regarding the U.S. Military and its operations. So if social media information was truthful, how could critics call more information be a bad thing?
Just because your organization is strictly scrutinized does not mean you have an excuse for playing luddite.
In the U.S. laws against harassment/cyberbullying do exist in mutliple jurisidictions, though there's no formal federal law yet (a house bill H.R. 6123 has been proposed to fill that gap).
Now, certain kinds of harassment -- i.e. sexual harassment or harassment of government employees -- may fall under certain other workplace or anti-terrorism laws.
"Also, the good part about online messages on social media and mails are that they are there on record forever and the defendant cannot revert from his statement."
In theory, although even Facebook now allows edits of posts. ;)
One thing you are right that the smartness counts on the social media and one should think about the far reaching impacts of the word before it is delivered. Being smart on social media however doesnt mean that you are on the right path.
IMO, Twitter has in recent times been dirtied by the political debates. Facebook and Google Plus have played safe (unintentionally) in this aspect.
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Whether you’re an engineering firm that uses CAD for parts design, or an e-business that leverages Photoshop for user-interface graphics, you likely require a modest graphics-processing unit. In the old days, this was a daunting hurdle to innovation, but today, the situation has improved thanks to technologies like NVIDIA’s GRID and Microsoft’s RemoteFX. Such virtualized graphics protocols allow you to load-balance graphics-intensive workloads from virtual desktops on a server-side graphics card.
Take a trip down memory lane and imagine, if you will, a system-on-a-chip with Apple IIe-like specs -- 4KB of RAM and 32KB of flash. Add some modern niceties like an ARM Cortex-M0+ 32-bit pipeline, 12-bit DAC, and low-power UART, and you have Freescale's recently unveiled Kinetis KL02, which the company calls "the world's smallest ARM Powered MCU."
Recent reports from the NPD, IDC, and Gartner suggest the end is nigh for ye olde personal computer. They imply that 2017 will be the magic year tablet sales will surpass PC purchases.
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The US government is funding controversial projects to collect daily Internet activity, including Web searches, Twitter messages, Facebook and blog posts, and the digital location trails generated by billions of cellphones. Its goal is to map these interactions to predict social behavior, such as protests.
The US boasts a commitment to "Internet freedom," but in practice that commitment falls short. What Internet freedom really means is freedom of the mind.
If an educated electorate is the key to effective democracy we should be doing better than we are. Government is too secretive, but we also need to use the Internet better to get good information and analysis before the voters.
What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
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The 20th Century Internet was characterized by the ability to interact with other people and information on the Internet largely without anyone knowing who you were. The Internet of this century, conversely, will be defined by identity. Saunders explains how Internet users are unwittingly contributing to the demise of the anonymous Internet.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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