24 July 2024

ALAN HAYES

 

WHEN English author Eric Arthur Blair, who was better known by his pen name George Orwell, published the novel 1984 in 1949, it was a warning against totalitarianism. But can we compare our contemporary surveillance society to that in the Orwellian dystopia?

 

In Orwell's book, the ruling government (the Party) implemented a system of telescreens with embedded cameras and microphones to constantly monitor citizens. They are so omnipresent that there is seemingly no area that is not being monitored, in public or in your own home.

 

In our modern society, the 1984 scenario has created an unprecedented plethora of surveillance apparatus, such as CCTV cameras. These cameras can be found in a multitude of public spaces (e.g. roads, train stations, shopping centres) and are allegedly intended for security purposes – namely detecting, responding to and reducing criminal behaviour.

 

This continual spying is everywhere and the Central Coast is no exception. When you walk down the street, go to a shopping centre – even walking down the corridor to the toilet at the shopping centre – you are being spied upon. Now, of course, we also have facial recognition software embedded into many of these spying systems.

 

Security cameras impact upon individual behaviour in the same way as the system in 1984 - reluctant to dissent.

 

Since the post 9/11 world, when authorities realised any individual anywhere could be a threat, our willingness to be monitored continuously through the mass collection, storage and analysis of metadata has allowed our government to delve into our daily lives. An invasion not by stealth, but by tacit consent as computers, mobile phones and other devices, and satellite navigation of the cars we drive, track everything we do and say.

 

In Australia, government (through intelligent agencies) collect metadata and store it in massive databases from which it is analysed by computers to identify trends and patterns.

 

Australian legislation requires telecommunication service providers to store metadata for two years.

 

While privacy laws protect the content of communications, metadata can be collected without individual consent. In Australia, no warrant is required for 22 agencies to access retained metadata. What’s more, legislation does not contain explicit information about how this information is shared with the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (Australia; Canada; New Zealand; United Kingdom; United States). Not knowing how this data might be used raises concerns about individual privacy rights.

 

People have become concerned about who is watching them and why? The blur created between security and privacy raises the question as to whether individual privacy is being infringed upon for purported security purposes. With technological advancements and our increasing online presence nowadays, have we evolved into a society where protection of privacy is not the most important consideration, and constant surveillance is just the way things are now? George Orwell just had the date wrong!

 

There is little doubt that 'Big Brother' has become a synecdoche for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance and a lack of choice in society. Yet last week we saw how easily ‘Big Brother’s’ control came crashing down from a bug in a little-known piece of software, called Crowdstrike, causing a global meltdown.

 

Seemingly, all at once, millions of computers around the world were infected by what is known in the industry as the ‘Blue Screen of Death’.

 

As the massive scope of the outage was still revealing itself, its cause was already being dissected online.

 

There was early speculation that Microsoft was responsible, largely because, initially, only computers running the US tech giant's operating systems had been affected.

 

Adding to the confusion was that Microsoft had reported a major technical outage with its cloud services earlier in the day.

 

Ultimately though, that was a red herring.

 

The global tech crash was a mishap! But it serves as a dress rehearsal for more sinister possibilities and serves as warning to people everywhere as to why government agencies were in a panic – they had lost control; the ability to see inside its citizens daily lives, even for a limited time, had disappeared.

 

But last Friday’s meltdown was also a reality check on how dependent human beings have become on modern technology - despite knowing that ‘Big Brother’ is lurking in the background, watching their every move. It was a lot like the climax of a disaster movie – airports were thrown into chaos, teller machines were out of action, supermarkets were unable to accept cashless payments, your smart fridge had become a dumb box; a prelude to the end of time. The difference of course is that in the movie, there's a villain pulling the strings — a hostile foreign power, a money-hungry cyber gang, or even a fanatical cult, intent on bringing entire nations to their knees.

 

Last week’s computer system failure wasn’t due to terrorism or intentional sabotage. It was just the sheer pressure of centralisation. Think of it as a house of cards — one wrong move, and the whole thing collapses.

 

Of course, in the version we witnessed, the culprit was in some ways more dangerous; it was our own systems, leaving cyber security experts scrambling to understand what caused the largest computer outage in history.

 

And, what was our PM doing amid the outage chaos?

 

Anthony Albanese took a five-day holiday break in Queensland as the mop up continued over the computer outage, which impacted Australia and impacted companies globally. A bit like Scott Morrison, when he took a holiday during the Black Friday bushfires - leadership at the top seems to be lacking when it is often needed.

 

A spokesperson for the PM said Mr Albanese has been continuously briefed on the outage.

 

“The Deputy Prime Minister will be Acting Prime Minister,” a spokesperson said.

 

As the lady in the yellow pages TV advertisement yelled out of the window to her colleague, for not placing their business listing advert, “Not happy Jan!”

 

The final scenario

 

It may be weeks or even months before we have the full picture about the global computer meltdown, but what's certain is that two separate systems — Microsoft's cloud service, Azure, and a software update from cyber security company CrowdStrike — malfunctioned on the same day.

 

Unlike the iPhone software updates that Apple sends to customers, the incident highlighted information technology systems that operate in the background. The CrowdStrike issues were compounded because the software being updated performed critical cybersecurity tasks, giving it access to scan a computer to look for viruses and other malicious attacks.

 

Cybersecurity tools operate quietly to defend computers against attacks. The software is frequently updated with new defences as hackers develop fresh methods of attack, but constant updates mean there are many opportunities for mistakes to happen.

 

One of the problems of security software, however, is that it needs to have absolute privileges over the entire computer in order to do its job – manifestation of too much control over computers storing personal data.

 

Yet as the crisis was unfolding, University of NSW's sober-minded and well-respected cyber expert, Professor Richard Buckland, said, "It is playing out how an attack would play out," he told the ABC.

 

"We could be getting a taste now, even if it is just a dress rehearsal for what a cyber warfare or cyber terror attack would look like."

 

CrowdStrike has since apologised and taken a large measure of responsibility, saying a software bug in one of its updates triggered the problems for Microsoft too. It has warned companies and consumers that criminals could try to take advantage of the confusion by making bogus offers for so-called "fixes".

 

Regardless, both the Crowdstrike and Microsoft issues are thoroughly woven into the fabric of the world's digital ecosystem. But one thing is absolutely certain, it could happen again. The next time caused through intentional malice and heralding the start of a cyber war – weapons of mass destruction not needed.

 

So, where does this, in reality, leave our current ‘Big Brother’ society and mentality? Maybe it’s time for a change, a step-back to a simpler and uncomplicated way of life, before the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ is all we see.

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