For Those Who Might Not Agree

A friend of mine was analyzing the ability of some countries to identify protestors.  Just in the last couple of months, that capability has been shown by Wired and the Wall Street Journal  to identify and limit those who might have ideas that conflict with those of the State.  Those two examples are in China and Iran, respectively.

Iran is using tracking of social media and screening content to discover and arrest some of the leaders of the recent demonstrations.  I wrote about some of those in my third book on Cyberwar.  The Iranians can search for anyone on any media, across platforms, using sophisticated software which was apparently acquired illegally from U.S. firms.

China is much more sophisticated than that and has started to apply the use of this kind of information and levy controls on people who are not conforming to the State line on many social and political issues.  You cannot buy luxury goods or shop in the best places without facial recognition getting into the mix.  It was one of the reasons I stayed away from the iPhone 10.  Our phones are intrusive enough as it is.  China’s are 100 times more so, and have been for many years.  The Chinese see that as a good thing, but in the hands of Russia, Iran, China, Syria, and others, that technology is increasingly used to keep the people in power where they are.

The Russians are applying their technology to bots which are manipulating news in many social and political theaters with good result.  We are seeing the press be thrown around like leaves in the wind with all the different types of stories being generated, usually on both sides of an argument.  They keep governments off balance, tied up in knots, and they laugh at the way that disrupts and distracts us.  I thought Putin was a little too boastful about his acthievements and may have let us know that he was doing more of this than we had looked at before.

Our Intelligence Services have to do a better job of identifying and disrupting these kinds of operations.  My supposition has always been that they do not want to disrupt something which proves so useful.  But, this has gone too far and we can’t trust our press or our institutions.  Anyone would believe that was well past the point of intervention.  The more we know, the better.  Twitter is going to tell those influenced by Russian campaigns who might have signed up for those accounts.  A small but worthy step in the right direction.  We need to know more than that.