Advertising cookies have long been an annoyance for Internet users. Nobody – except perhaps the occasional reality TV star – really wants their virtual movements amalgamated into a faceless database. But take heart – the database is no longer quite so faceless. They're from the government, and they're here to help.
Most Internet users are familiar with average, run-of-the-mill ads in their many forms – pop-ups, banners, promised of vast lottery winnings. But a subset of Internet users are coming to know them in a less desirable fashion (if, indeed, such a thing is possible).
With the average Internet ad, the product being sold is the latest widget or fad – weight-loss gimmicks of dubious provenance, or some weird trick that the tricksters swear the IRS doesn't want you to know.
Today, in contrast, the ad model is being turned on it's head. Selling you stuff is incidental -. The product being hawked is you. Who you are, where you go, who you socialize with. With each click on an ad-bearing page, you run a very real risk of coming across a National Security Agency sponsored link.
Such links were the pet of NSA in targeting the popular and widely used Tor browser bundle. While affecting only a specific version of the bundle, the damage was “limited”, except perhaps for the users relying on strong anonymity – which is most Tor users.
But maybe your deepest secret is Aunt Berta's fudge recipe. It's been lovingly prepared for generations of Ms. Bertas. But surveillance today no longer means watching the malefactors. Every Internet citizen with a stake in any kind of of privacy or secrecy is affected. Having an affair? Well, if your neighbor is the dangerous type, his dragnet can affect you. Quite simply, the old adage “If you have nothing yo hide, you have nothing to fear is hopelessly dated.
People have lost jobs as a result of Officer Friendly dropping in to let an employer know that a “sick say” was actually an organized protest. Was the firing technically justified? Yes. Was it an effort to protect and to serve? Almost certainly not.
When this writer was 18,w he as cornered and goaded by an a uniformed officer clearly trying to provoke a confrontation. This writer didn't bite. But it was a valuable life experience.
The same thing can easily take place on line. Everyone knows all teenage girls are FBI agents, but what about foreign state actors – or for that matter, domestic ones? There's no perfect solution other than remembering loose lips sink ships – perhaps literally in this modern age, where computers increasingly run American warships. After all, Windows NT software glitches famously cause what the US Navy would eventually call “an engineering local area network casualty,” in what was at the time one of the United States' most advanced Aegis-class warships.
Certainly not least, Russia inherited the USSR's stockpile of paranoia and technical know-how. The beautify of soft power as applied in counterattacks is, inter aka, deniable – say nothing apart from the occasional noises about disarmament. Sort of like Israel, minus the niceties
Still, we are not our own worst enemy – but neither are we our own best friend. Russia and China – as well as, to a degree, Israel. All are well-established advanced persistent threats who have honed the art of soft power to better-influence nations, but are hardly the only ones. Some of the most effective network threats are grown right here playing for the home team. I mean, of course, NSA and other government agencies and the unprecedented good fortune disaster has handed them in terms of carte blanche to evolve their abilities. Success has been cruel to us, and no one likes the new kid – or sole superpower – on the block.
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