Disintermediation
of News & Comment
Essays Published in Various Newsletters
by M. E. Kabay, PhD, CISSP-ISSMP
Professor of Computer Information Systems
School of Business & Management
Norwich University, Northfield VT
One of the
battlespaces of information warfare is the cognitive domain: knowledge,
perception, attitudes and mood. For example, military campaigns have long used
propaganda and misinformation to influence both the military decisions of the
enemy and to discourage soldiers and civilians. In the Second World War, for
example, the Nazis used radio broadcasts into Britain to spread false
information about the progress of the war; conversely, the Allies broadcast to
the peoples of the Axis powers to blame the governments, but not the
population, for the war, thus attempting to drive a wedge between civilians and
their regimes.
In more recent
years, there was a scandal in the USA in October 1986 about a reputed
disinformation campaign during the Reagan administration in which government
officials were accused of misleading the press to convey false information to
Libyan dictator Qaddafi about an imminent attack. And of course currently
there’s a major division in the USA between those who argue that the
administration deliberately misled the American people into a pre-emptive
attack on Iraq versus those who suggest that the decision was based on
incorrect information (or, for that matter, was correct despite the failure to
find corroborative evidence of weapons of mass destruction).
Prof. Daniel Kuehl,
PhD, is the distinguished Professor and Director of the Information Strategies
Concentration Program at the Information Resources Management College of
National Defense University in Fort McNair, Washington DC. A frequent
contributor to scholarly analysis of information warfare, Dr Kuehl was the
keynote speaker on Thursday the 11th of March 2004 at the 17th
Annual Meeting of the Federal Information Systems Security Educators’
Association at the University of Maryland University College. After his
lecture, we got into a discussion about the information warfare implications of
a couple of trends in modern society: disintermediation and the lack of
critical thinking in the population at large.
Disintermediation
in general is defined by the Webopedia as “Removing the middleman. The term is
a popular buzzword used to describe many Internet -based businesses that use
the World Wide Web to sell products directly to customers rather than going
through traditional retail channels. By eliminating the middlemen, companies
can sell their products cheaper and faster. Many people believe that the
Internet will revolutionize the way products are bought and sold, and
disintermediation is the driving force behind this revolution.”
Disintermediation
in the distribution of news is the phenomenon of reducing gate-keepers in the
flow of information from provider to user. For example, Matt Drudge is free to
spread unsubstantiated rumors to a huge audience without having to bother with
the fact-checking that is customary in responsible news media such as reputable
newspapers or magazines and some television or radio programs.
Critical thinking
is the ability to analyze information skeptically rather than gullibly. For
example, people who open unexpected attachments in e-mail from friends are
failing to distinguish among different targets of trust:
·
Trust
in the authenticity of the FROM line of an e-mail message (which may not, in
fact, correctly identify the source);
·
Trust
in the technical competence of the sender to evaluate the quality of the
attachment (which may not, in fact, correlate with how loveable and friendly
Aunt Gladys is);
·
Trust
in the authenticity of the labeling of the attachment (which may not, in fact,
really be a document at all but may be an executable);
·
Trust
in the description and safety of an attachment (which may not, in fact, be a
screen saver with frogs).
Now couple
disintermediation with a lack of critical thinking. Consider the likely effects
of a concerted campaign to, say, spread a number of rumors about major
publicly-traded companies. We know that pump ‘n’ dump schemes have successfully
manipulated stock values to the benefit of criminals; why not expect terrorists
to apply the same techniques to manipulating the entire stock market? If people
are willing to believe and act upon stock tips e-mailed to them by total
strangers using spam (even though tiny print clearly states that the junk
mailer has been paid to distribute the information), why wouldn’t uncritical
thinkers cheerfully act on “advice” spread by enemies of the nation?
Similarly, the
phenomenon of flash crowds worries me: training people to assemble on command
in large numbers at, say, shoe stores, piano showrooms or restaurants for no
good reason other than the fun of being part of a huge crowd is a perfect setup
for creating an army of willing, mindless drones who will congregate on command
at the site of a terrorist attack or at places where their presence will
interfere with response to criminal or terrorist activities. Want to rob a bank
in peace and quiet? Set up a conflict between two instant crowds to draw the
police to an instant riot.
I think that all of
us in the IT, network and security fields are used to critical thinking. We
have to be to keep up with the flood of technical information and distinguish
marketing exaggerations from realistic information. We are used to writing and
reading product comparisons, strategy evaluations and management
recommendations as part of our work. Let’s use our skills to foster critical
thinking throughout the educational system. Let’s work as volunteers on school
boards, in the classroom and in social organizations to introduce critical
thinking to children and adults who haven’t learned how to distinguish reality
from propaganda. Push for curriculum changes to accompany lessons on how to use
the Internet with lessons on how to weigh the information found through e-mail
and on the Web.
Let’s make sure
that we’re not patsies for an information warfare attack rooted in
disintermediated propaganda.
* * *
With some
justification, skeptics have questioned whether cyberwar is a realistic
scenario for concern or merely a scary story to earn funding for security
companies and writers. Unfortunately, there are many cases in which journalists
and others have leaped to the conclusion that security breaches are examples of
cyberwar; recent examples include the Estonian “cyberwar” of 2007 and the
attacks on the Church of Scientology in early 2009. < http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2008/01/scientology-hacks-cyberwar-or-street.html >
We may be seeing an
illustration of one kind of cyberwar in June 2009 as many readers follow news
of the post-election events in Iran with interest and concern. Following a
vigorous election campaign in which Mir Hossein Mousavi appeared to have a
majority of the voters’ support but not a majority of the reported votes < http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/mousavis-aides-fear-dirty-tricks-could-swing-result-1703226.html >, the situation after the balloting
quickly degenerated into claims and counterclaims of ballot-rigging < http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/15/iran.elections.qa/index.html > and demonstrations that turned into
violent confrontations.< http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/irans_disputed_election.html >
Throughout the
conflict, electronic communications have been central to the organization of
protests and to the attempts of the dictatorial regime to suppress dissent. In
particular, the tiny-message network Twitter < http://twitter.com/ > has been central to the coordination
of mass action. Canadian writer Brett Anningson has a summary of Twitter’s role
in the protests < http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/706779 > in which he comments, “Iranian
Twitterers, many writing in English, posted photos of huge demonstrations and
bloodied protesters throughout the weekend, detailing crackdowns on students at
Tehran University and giving out proxy web addresses that let users bypass the
Islamic Republic's censors. | By Monday evening, it had become such a movement
that Twitter postponed maintenance scheduled for the wee hours of the morning,
California time -- midday Tuesday in Iran. | The maintenance was rescheduled to
be between 2-3 p.m. in California which happens to be 1:30 a.m. in Iran. | A
couple of Twitter feeds have become virtual media offices for the supporters of
Moussavi. One feed, mousavi1388 (1388 is the year in the Persian calendar), is
filled with news of protests and exhortations to keep up the fight, in Persian
and in English. It has more than 15,000 followers.” He adds that the social
networking site Facebook < http://www.facebook.com/ > has over 50,000 members in the
Moussavi fan group.
The government has
been fighting back: “Access to networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter
and the photography site Flickr have been blocked in Iran, where the government
has also been accused of blocking text-messaging, launching denial of service attacks
and spreading misinformation to protest communities online.” < http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/rizkhan/2009/06/200962281940160238.html >
Iranians have been
bypassing these attempts to shut down their communications; countermeasures
include using proxy servers to evade Iranian government Internet blocks.< http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/17/MN75188C6K.DTL > Supporters of the protests have
posted lists of suggested countermeasures < http://boingboing.net/2009/06/16/cyberwar-guide-for-i.html >; e.g., they advise Twitter users not
to publicize the location of proxy servers, not to rebroadcast information
without verifying its origin and authenticity (to circumvent Iranian government
propaganda), and to switch Twitter settings to match the geographical location
of Tehran and thus make it harder for the government agents to identify local
protesters (the “I AM SPARTACUS” defense< http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054331/ >).
So it seems that
Professor Phil Agre’s emphasis on the importance of disintermediation< http://www.mekabay.com/opinion/critical_thinking.pdf > – the removal of institutional
barriers to mass communications – and the widespread availability of electronic
networks really has brought the world of cyberwar to reality.
And I don’t think
that this is as far as cyberwar will go. Keep your attention focused on that
screen / cell phone / neural implant. . . .
* * *
Information
security professionals are concerned with preserving the six fundamental
properties of information: confidentiality, control, integrity, authenticity,
availability and utility of information.< http://www.mekabay.com/overviews/hexad_ppt.zip > One of the issues we must watch
carefully is the publication of inaccurate information in corporate
publications that have an Internet presence. Publishing misinformation on the
Internet contributes to the global children’s game of telephone< http://wondertime.go.com/create-and-play/article/telephone-game.html > that now characterizes much of what
passes for intelligent discourse on the Web.
Andrew Shapiro, in
his book The Control Revolution: How The
Internet is Putting Individuals in Charge and Changing the World We Know (2000)<
http://www.amazon.com/Control-Revolution-Internet-Individuals-Changing/dp/189162086X >, wrote in a section about Matt
Drudge< http://www.mediachannel.org/originals/shapiro-drudge.shtml > as follows:
>Yet
misinformation is only really dangerous when there is both an unreliable source
and a credulous audience. As the amount of questionable material increases,
then, we need to be ever more cautious and skeptical. Indeed, the control
revolution is blurring the distinction between news professionals and
audiences, forcing us all to deal with the same predicaments. The common
challenge is one of exercising self-restraint to prevent the spread of
inaccuracies. On the one hand, that means not being the originators of flawed
information (though obviously, few of us intend to do that). On the other hand,
it means exercising caution as information consumers. Do we blindly believe
what we read? Do we weigh the accuracy of different content providers? Do we
pass along, without warning, information that we know comes from dubious
sources?<
The examples of
misinformation spread uncritically among Web sites are uncountable. For
example, right-wing extremists < http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/10/palin-death-panels-newsmax-health-care >invented non-existent “death panels”
as fear-mongering technique to frighten voters< http://mediamatters.org/blog/201009210062 >; by November 2010 there were over 12
million hits in GOOGLE for “death panels.” Anyone wanting more examples of
media distortion – now spread worldwide instantly through the Web – will find
more than they can stomach at Media Matters for America < http://mediamatters.org/ > and On the Media< http://www.onthemedia.org/ >.
One of the articles
that prompted me to write this column is a review of growing resistance to
vaccination in developing nations, in which reporter Vivienne Parry of the
Guardian newspaper in England writes that “Rumours about vaccines quickly gain
credence in the [I]nternet hothouse, with sites feeding off each other.”< http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/11/vaccination-fears-developing-world-deaths > As a result of rapidly disseminated
misinformation about vaccine safety, increasing numbers of people in poor
nations are refusing to allow their children to be vaccinated, “threatening to
derail global vaccination programs” and “putting the lives of thousands of
children at risk.” However, meta-analysis of extensive research< http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=7807 > consistently debunks the
anti-vaccination rubbish being promulgated by the rumor-mongers attacking
public-health programs that use vaccines. These rumor-fueled attacks have
resulted in sickness and death for thousands of children worldwide.
The spread of
almost instantaneous spread of inaccurate information is one consequence of
growing disintermediation in the control of information, as discussed in the
1990s< http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/political.html > by Professor Phil Agre< http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/ > of the Department of Information
Studies at University of California at Los Angeles. Much as the use of movable
type in 15th century caused a revolution in the availability of
information (see for example The
Renaissance Computer: Knowledge technology in the first age of print edited
by Neil Rhodes and Jonathan Sawday, 2000 (Routledge, ISBN 0-203-46330-7)< http://www.amazon.com/Renaissance-Computer-Knowledge-Technology-First/dp/0415220637 >). In Chapter 3, “Towards the
Renaissance Computer,” Sawday writes, “The book, too, once seemed to help
humans to understand their world; and yet, once books had begun to multiply,
that world began to appear more uncertain, more unknowable, than ever.”
Ironically, the
interconnectedness of the Web and the disintermediation of information flow may
be resulting in increasing uncertainty about the accuracy of what we encounter
in cyberspace. In addition to doubts about the veracity of pictorial information
(see the series on photo manipulation in this column < http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/sec/2010/053110sec2.html
>) we must question
what we read.
On the whole, such
skepticism may not be a bad thing! Questioning is good!
* * *
Recently there was
a flurry of excitement at my university about a front-page article in the
student newspaper written by a student who interviewed three close friends and
proceeded to generalize the results of her inquiry to make demeaning comments
about a large proportion of the student body. I won’t even discuss the comments
about faculty that were included in this farcical near-satire of college
journalism. As I saw it, the quotations in the article either (1) made the
student speakers and the writer look like immature fools or (2) revealed that
they really are immature fools. In either case, their inane self-immolations
were immediately available online for the world to read. You’ll forgive me for
choosing not to provide a link here.
The upshot was a
wave of anger among some students (I don’t know what proportion or how many),
some of whom told me in my classes that they felt that their university and
they themselves were being cast in a false light. An anonymous leaflet went up
on bulletin boards in our building telling students not to give interviews to
writers for the school newspaper.
Recently there was
a flurry of excitement at my university about a front-page article in the
student newspaper written by a student who interviewed three close friends and
proceeded to generalize the results of her inquiry to make demeaning comments
about a large proportion of the student body. I won’t even discuss the comments
about faculty that were included in this farcical near-satire of college
journalism. As I saw it, the quotations in the article either (1) made the
student speakers and the writer look like immature fools or (2) revealed that
they really are immature fools. In either case, their inane self-immolations
were immediately available online for the world to read. You’ll forgive me for
choosing not to provide a link here.
The upshot was a
wave of anger among some students (I don’t know what proportion or how many),
some of whom told me in my classes that they felt that their university and
they themselves were being cast in a false light. An anonymous leaflet went up
on bulletin boards in our building telling students not to give interviews to
writers for the school newspaper.
Discussions of
whether the article should have been published generated ritual cries of
“Freedom of speech!” by supporters of publication of the students’
self-demolishing comments. However, in US law, First Amendment rights refer to government interference in speech.< http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/billofrights > There are no constraints on
limitations of content by the owners
of publications.
Back in the early
1990s, I was the WizOp of the Security Forum on the value-added network
CompuServe. The forum was established under contract with the VAN by my
employer, the National Computer Security Association, for whom I served as
Director of Education from 1991 through 1999. I established and posted rules in
the Forum including restrictions on content, language (no vulgarity), and style
(no ad hominem attacks, no slurs). The SysOps (over a dozen, each with assigned
responsibility for specific sections) tracked postings, moved off-topic
postings into more appropriate sections (e.g., from the PC security section
into the LAN security section) and removed those that violated the standards of
professionalism; we sent a polite explanation to the member concerned
suggesting how the posting could (usually easily) be changed to conform to our
rules. If someone repeatedly violated our standards, we’d ban them from the
Forum.
Every now and then
we would get a furious response from someone who claimed that we were violating
his (rarely her) First Amendment rights.
My response was
pretty simple: you have no First
Amendment rights in our private
forum. If we had decided – insanely – to restrict all postings to prevent the
use of the letter “e,” we surely wouldn’t have had many postings, but we
wouldn’t have been violating any laws (other than those of common sense). The
NCSA was not part of any form of government and was not supported by funding
from any government agency; therefore, our regulation of our Forum was not
constrained by the First Amendment guarantee of speech free from government
controls.
Discussions of
whether the article should have been published generated ritual cries of
“Freedom of speech!” by supporters of publication of the students’
self-demolishing comments. However, in US law, First Amendment rights refer to government interference in speech.< http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/billofrights > There are no constraints on
limitations of content by the owners
of publications.
Back in the early
1990s, I was the WizOp of the Security Forum on the value-added network
CompuServe. The forum was established under contract with the VAN by my
employer, the National Computer Security Association, for whom I served as
Director of Education from 1991 through 1999. I established and posted rules in
the Forum including restrictions on content, language (no vulgarity), and style
(no ad hominem attacks, no slurs). The SysOps (over a dozen, each with assigned
responsibility for specific sections) tracked postings, moved off-topic
postings into more appropriate sections (e.g., from the PC security section
into the LAN security section) and removed those that violated the standards of
professionalism; we sent a polite explanation to the member concerned
suggesting how the posting could (usually easily) be changed to conform to our
rules. If someone repeatedly violated our standards, we’d ban them from the
Forum.
Every now and then
we would get a furious response from someone who claimed that we were violating
his (rarely her) First Amendment rights.
My response was
pretty simple: you have no First
Amendment rights in our private
forum. If we had decided – insanely – to restrict all postings to prevent the
use of the letter “e,” we surely wouldn’t have had many postings, but we
wouldn’t have been violating any laws (other than those of common sense). The
NCSA was not part of any form of government and was not supported by funding
from any government agency; therefore, our regulation of our Forum was not
constrained by the First Amendment guarantee of speech free from government
controls.
* * *
Have you noticed
that inconsiderate people post repeated off-topic comments, rumors, insults and
other forms of comment spam in the
discussion sections on blogs or publication Web sites you used to enjoy? You
can sometimes find the same rant or obscenity-filled nonsense from some
nut-case repeated in multiple sections of the blog and even in different blogs.
The problem is so severe that some high-traffic blogs are changing their
comments policies. For example, the Huffington
Post Website published this explanation< http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/11/12/sarah-palins-unfavorability-numbers-hit-new-high-survey-finds/ >:
“In an effort to
encourage the same level of civil dialogue among Politics Daily’s readers that
we expect of our writers – a “civilogue,” to use the term coined by PD’s
Jeffrey Weiss – we are requiring commenters to use their AOL or AIM screen
names to submit a comment, and we are reading all comments before publishing
them. Personal attacks (on writers, other readers, Nancy Pelosi, George W.
Bush, or anyone at all) and comments that are not productive additions to the
conversation will not be published, period, to make room for a discussion among
those with ideas to kick around.”
As I was
researching the problem, I ran across a sad little valedictory to unrestricted
commenting in November 2009 when a literary agent called Kristin explained that
she had decided to start moderating her forum< http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2009/11/dirty-word-comment-moderation.html >. What interested me was that the
response from her readers on that page was overwhelmingly positive: I counted
58 of the 62 comments as supportive of her decision; many expressed regrets for
the extra work it would impose on Kristin.
Here at Network World, some cretin has been
posting illiterate maunderings about handbags and shoes on our commentary
section in the “Security Strategies” pages, causing extra work for staff
members at Network World as they have
to get their cat-litter-box scoops out to clean up the section. Surely few
readers would doubt that Network World
has the right to remove such comment spam
from any comments section it chooses to clean up.
Network World
Editor Ryan Francis adds, “An option is to use a Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans
Apart (CAPTCHA)< http://www.captcha.net/ >. However, hackers have found ways
around many types of CAPTCHAs< http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/050208-breaking-googles-audio.html >. So the only thing left to do is to
authenticate users before comments can be made – including even asking for
payment to allow comments.< http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/newspaper-readers-comments-now-cost-99-cents- > And the question remains whether
people would register to commenter just leave a site.”
Google Blog has an
interesting note from 2005 about automatically tagging postings that include
hyperlinks with the “nofollow” attribute so that the link doesn’t get included
in computations of referral frequency by search engines.< http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html > Comment spammers are merely
irritating the people who see their nonsense in the blogs; the spammers derive
no additional visibility in Google, MSN Search or Yahoo! for their Web sites.
As the amount of
rubbish increases in comments sections all over the Web, I think we will see
increasing control being exerted by owners of blogs and other Websites.
* * *
No forum has a
legal obligation to support comments; however, providing such a venue for free
and intelligent discussion has long been a contribution to civil discourse.
Although newspapers today generally require and check the identity of
correspondents, anonymity and pseudonymity have been accepted at times. For
example, letters to the editors of the London
Journal and the British Journal
by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, writing under the pseudonym “Cato< http://classicliberal.tripod.com/cato/ >” 1720 through 1723 played a role in
the development of a liberal ideology that later became a foundation for the
American Revolution.< http://mises.org/daily/1355 >
The times they are
a’changin’.< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rh1ppL-xjw&feature=related >. [By the way, the obscene comments
on the YouTube page for this cut illustrate the very problem about which I’ve
been writing in recent columns. Sensitive souls be warned….]
Richard Perez-Pena
of The New York Times, in an April
11, 2010 article entitled “News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments,”< http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/technology/12comments.html > writes, “When news sites, after
years of hanging back, embraced the idea of allowing readers to post comments,
the near-universal assumption was that anyone could weigh in and remain
anonymous. But now, that idea is under attack from several directions, and
journalists, more than ever, are questioning whether anonymity should be a
given on news sites.”
Perez-Pena points
out that nasty, crude comments can annoy readers, reduce the likelihood of
thoughtful postings, and drive advertisers away. The journalist reports on
moves by The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and the Plain
Dealer of Cleveland in particular to limit abuse on their comment boards.
The Huffington Post< http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/11/12/sarah-palins-unfavorability-numbers-hit-new-high-survey-finds/ > notice on posting comments about its
stories includes a ban on anonymous postings: everyone has “to use their AOL or
AIM screen names to submit a comment”.
Perez-Pena’s
article provides a useful review of different methods being considered or used
to limit abuse. In summary, the approaches include the following:
·
Require
some form of reliable identification such as login IDs; these may not be real
names, but they are at least likely to be relatively stable (unless the comment
spammers just generate new throw-away IDs);
·
Rate
contributors by the consensus of readers’ evaluations (but watch out for
claques< http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/claque >);
·
Let
viewers see only a subset of comments such as those of paying subscribers;
·
Moderate
in advance: review every comment before allowing it to be viewed by the public;
·
Moderate
after the fact: remove objectionable postings either in routine review by a
staff member or by letting readers flag the drivel;
·
Shut
down commenting altogether (“Some sites and prominent bloggers … simply do not
allow comments.”)
For more about
anonymity, you can read a white paper called “Anonymity and Pseudonymity in
Cyberspace”< http://www.mekabay.com/overviews/anonpseudo.pdf > that I wrote for a conference in
1998 and that ended up with updates in the Computer
Security Handbook, Fifth Edition< http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Security-Handbook-2-Set/dp/0471716529/ >.
* * *
If a corporation –
or a university – owns a newspaper or a newsletter in which students are
invited to write, nothing in law inhibits the exercise of complete control over
what is published. In a corporate context, such total control makes a great
deal of sense. Corporate reputation and brand image are important issues that
reasonably take precedence over personal expression. However, to be fair, it
makes sense to publish clear guidelines, to the degree possible, governing the
nature of acceptable writing or postings. Employees responsible for creating
and publishing corporate content must know what to aim for and what to avoid to
the best of their ability; and it makes sense to have the drafts reviewed by
the marketing and legal departments before they go to press and to the Web.
The situation is
not so clear in a college newspaper. A major purpose of such publications is to
offer students opportunities to express their interest in journalism, to
exercise their creativity and imagination, and to use their enthusiasm. Strong,
well-written opinions should be welcome, even if they attack university
policies or specific actions by named individuals. But in my opinion,
encouraging or even allowing students to publish sloppy research and poorly
written work does not contribute positively to their growth. Writing articles
that are more appropriate for a supermarket tabloid (“Hillary Clinton Adopts
Alien Baby;” “Dick Cheney is a Robot!”< http://weeklyworldnews.com/area51/3075/five-classic-weekly-world-news-covers/ >) than for a serious publication –
and having them published on the Web for the world to read – is a pretty brutal
growth experience: the writer and the quoted students will be suffering the
consequences of their unflattering self-portrayals for years when potential
employers search for information about them on the Web.
If students feel
strongly that a University administration is clamping down too strongly on
their ability to speak freely, they can always organize an independent outlet
for their thoughts. For example, at my doctoral alma mater, Dartmouth College,
the College publishes several newsletters< http://www.dartmouth.edu/home/about/publications.html > under the control of the
institution. However, students dissatisfied with College control formed an
independent newspaper, The Dartmouth
Review< http://dartreview.com/ >, in which to express their opinions without
interference from faculty and administrators. The publication lists several
similar independent student publications< http://dartreview1.squarespace.com/about-us/ >
at Stanford< http://stanfordreview.org/ >, Cornell< http://www.cornellreview.org/ >, Princeton< http://theprincetontory.com/main/ >, and College of William and Mary<
http://www.vainformer.com/ >.
Creating a Web site
is no longer an expensive proposition; for example, InMotion Hosting< http://inmotionhosting.com/ > has provided excellent service for
my personal Website< http://www.mekabay.com > for about $7 a month, including
registering my domain name. The only issue students might have to watch out for
is that university names and logos are protected intellectual property, so no
one can just stick them on unofficial Web pages or newspapers without
permission.
But returning to
the content and style of publications, all organizations offering a venue for
the expression of opinion should ensure that opinions are clearly demarcated
from supposedly factual reporting. Both can be justified, but muddling the two
categories can leads to unfortunate results. For example, interviewing three
close buddies and then making wild generalizations about an entire student body
is a classic example of what not to
do with non-random sample data.< http://www.mekabay.com/methodology/crime_stats_methods.pdf >
And that’s my opinion!
* * *
In recent columns,
I’ve been discussing issues of free speech in blogs and college newspapers.
Today I am completing the series with some advice that I hope security and
network experts will pass on to young people in their families and to teachers
that they may know.< http://napps.networkworld.com/newsletters/sec/2010/060710sec1.html >
* * *
Regardless of
whether specific comments fall within editorial guidelines or not, everyone
should think carefully about anything they say or write that will be made
public.
Comments that might
be perfectly appropriate in private conversation – funny, satirical, sarcastic,
exaggerated – can be time bombs once they reach the public sphere. Speaking to
reporters can be a wonderful opportunity for an organization or for an individual;
however, not all reporters have the best interests of the people the interview
in mind when they publish or broadcast quotations. Sometimes, quotations can be
taken out of context and result in misrepresentation of the speaker’s position.
But sometimes, direct, accurate quotation of thoughtless comments can cause
serious harm to the speaker, especially if they are young people.
The prefrontal
cortex of the human brain is largely responsible for planning, judgment, and
control of impulse. These frontal lobes are incompletely myelinated until the
late teens or early 20s and most people. Hypo-myelination results in weaker
control of impulse, poor judgment, and inadequate planning. Anyone who has
raised children will instantly recognize the effects of changing patterns of
myelination on behavior. Interestingly, alcohol depresses frontal lobe
activity, resulting in disinhibition that can be expressed in childish
behavior, exaggerated emotionality, suggestibility, and disorganization. Have
you ever noticed that drunks can sometimes act like children – and vice versa?
For an entertaining review of the most famous case of damage to the prefrontal
cortex, see an article about Phineas Gage, who got a crowbar through his head
in 1848.< http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm/volumeID_21-editionID_164-ArticleID_1399-getfile_getPDF/thepsychologist%5C0908look.pdf >
Young people with
incompletely matured frontal lobes are susceptible to blurting out comments
with little or no regard for their effects on others or the consequences for
their own reputation. Personally, I remember to this day with horror that when
I was 14, I casually told a girl in my high school class that she looked like
an ostrich; I cannot imagine doing something horrible like that today, but my
immaturity made this hurtful comment seemed perfectly ordinary. I think about
my own unthinking cruelty to that poor girl when I contemplate the years of
persecution I suffered at the hands of other children in my high school and put
their behavior in perspective: our frontal lobes weren’t mature!
As adults, we can
help young people avoid blunders that could damage their prospects for entry
into college or the job market. Freedom of speech or no freedom of speech,
casually confessing that one finds professors so boring that one is compelled
to text friends extensively during class time may sound like a harmless joke to
the speakers, and it’s harmless in a private conversation. However, when such a
comment is published on the Web, the unintended consequences can include
viewing by an admissions committee in a graduate program or by an employment
officer in an organization thinking of hiring the student – not to speak of the
anger of fellow students and of professors. It’s true that some adults looking
at the candidate might simply dismiss the comment as unimportant; the problem
is that others might look at the date and ask whether enough time has elapsed
to overcome the obvious immaturity of the speaker at the time of the quotation.
With dozens or hundreds of applicants applying for each opening, why would
anyone want to lower their rank in the list?
Here are some
suggestions to discuss with young people you know:
·
If
you are being interviewed, think before you answer a question. You don’t have
to answer instantly just because the interviewer seems to be in a hurry.
·
As
you consider your answer remember that complete strangers will be seeing or
hearing it.
·
Before
making a comment that criticizes yourself or someone else, think carefully
about what benefits or harm there might be to you in saying that in public and
for a permanent record.
·
If
you are writing an article or creating a documentary clip, consider the
consequences to the human beings you are representing if you distort what they
say or deliberately give a false impression of their meaning.
·
To
the degree possible, check your final quotations in context with the people you
are quoting. It may be difficult if you are under deadline, but it’s worth
trying even if it means phoning somebody to read them your text.
·
Unprofessional
behavior as a writer or other producer of public communications will harm you,
not just your subjects and your readers or viewers.
My final thought
for today is that if these rules were followed in the political sphere, an
entire industry devoted to creating political propaganda would collapse.
Hey, there’s an
idea!
* * *
The completely
revised IS407 “Politics of Cyberspace”< http://www.mekabay.com/courses/academic/norwich/is407/index.htm > course that started in January 2011
included a module of references about WikiLeaks< http://wikileaks.info/ > and the role of disintermediated
news gathering and distribution< http://www.mekabay.com/courses/academic/norwich/is407/is407_resources/is407_week_08_links.htm > that may interest readers who are
thinking about confidentiality of business affairs in the age of the Internet.
For historical
perspective, the students were able to read a 2003 interview with Daniel
Ellsberg discussing a report in The
Observer of London< http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/mar/02/usa.iraq > about what On the Media (OTM) director Brooke Gladstone described as “the
scoops that the U.S. National Security Agency had wiretapped several officials
at the U.N. whose nations would be crucial votes on whether to support an
invasion of Iraq. A leaked report suggest that Angola, Cameroon, Chile,
Bulgaria, Guinea, and Pakistan were bugged, presumably the give the U.S. a leg
up in precarious negotiations where few votes for war can be entirely relied
upon.” < http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2003/03/14/03 > Gladstone commented that the story
was ignored by the established news media in the US.
In 2006, OTM
co-host Bob Garfield discussed pressures by the Sunlight Foundation< http://sunlightfoundation.com/ > to make “government transparent
& accountable.” In that year, the House of Representatives in the US
Congress “approved two measures to combat so-called earmarks, the pet projects
slipped into spending legislation…. One rule change requires House members to
put their names on the earmarks they propose. The other is a bill, already
approved in the Senate, that would create a public, searchable Web database of
all federal grants and contracts. That bill was introduced in the spring but
then was secretly put on hold by a couple of senators, preventing it from a
full vote.”< http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2006/09/15/07 > Citizen action removed the secret
hold: “In a rare show of unity, a coalition of liberal and conservative blogs
asked readers to call their senators and find out if they had imposed the hold.
Volunteers managed to narrow it down to four possible culprits, at which point
Republican Ted Stevens stepped forward and claimed responsibility.” Garfield
noted that the pressures for openness by politicians “change the behavior of
citizens in this what-does-one-vote-do culture. The idea of actually holding representatives
accountable seems to suggest opportunities for actually an engaged
electorate[.]”
The Sunlight
Foundation also participated in a movement to track how members of Congress
spend their time.< http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2007/03/09/05 > Another project was an organized
database of government contracts showing exactly which organizations receive
how much money from US taxpayers. < http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/01/16/07 >
A March 2009
interview with WikiLeaks principal Julian Assange< http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/03/13/04 > challenged Assange on “if
hypothetically he would publish information sent to his website that could lead
to the deaths of innocents, such as, for instance, how to release anthrax into
a town’s water supply.” Assange replied, “Yes, even if there is a possibility
that it would lead to loss of life. It’s hard to imagine a circumstance where
we would get a document and us not publishing it would be helpful. If they were
ill motivated, then they could send that in private to terrorist groups, to
neo-Nazi organizations, and those organizations could then develop their plans
out of the sunlight. And that’s the greatest harm.” Bob Garfield pointed out
that Assange “declined to provide your telephone number to our producers, or
your whereabouts, for that matter.” Assange explained, “We are a bit cagey
about some of our communications. The reason is that we deal with intelligence
forces every day. If too much is known about the journalists that are working
with us, their telephone can be tapped and monitored, and forces that are
communicating with them can be monitored. The results of a slip-up on our
behalf could be fatal to some of the people that we work with, so we're very
cautious to make sure that people can't get at our sources by obtaining our
telecommunications records.” Students in IS407 commented on the irony of
secrecy by an organization touting openness.
In a May 2010 show,
Bob Garfield interviewed Gabriel Schoenfeld, author of Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law<
http://www.amazon.com/Necessary-Secrets-National-Security-Media/dp/0393339939/ >, who argues strongly for limits on
the publication of state secrets. Schoenfeld summarized his position at the end
of the interview as follows: “I think the government can and should prosecute
journalists who trespass on the public’s right not to know. And the public’s
right not to know is something that’s rarely spoken about, let alone defended,
but it’s perfectly obvious why we don't want to know certain things that our
government is doing. It’s because if we know those things, our adversaries know
them as well.”
* * *
M. E. Kabay,< mailto:mekabay@gmail.com > PhD, CISSP-ISSMP, specializes in
security and operations management consulting services and teaching. He is
Chief Technical Officer of Adaptive Cyber Security Instruments, Inc.< http://acsi-cybersa.com/ > and Professor of Information
Assurance< http://norwich.edu/academics/business/infoAssurance/index.html > & Statistics< http://www.mekabay.com/courses/academic/norwich/qm213/index.htm > in the School of Business and
Management< http://norwich.edu/academics/business/faculty.html > at Norwich University.< http://www.norwich.edu > Visit his Website for white papers
and course materials.< http://www.mekabay.com/ >