By Tom Espiner, 4 July 2008 09:04
NEWS
Terrorists are increasingly using technology to achieve their aims, according to the government.
In a speech at the Homeland & Border Security Conference 2008 in London on Thursday, Admiral Lord West, parliamentary undersecretary of state for security and counter-terrorism, said that terrorists were increasingly harnessing technology to try to achieve their goals.
Security from A to Z
Click on the links below to find out more...
A is for Antivirus
B is for Botnets
C is for CMA
D is for DDoS
E is for Extradition
F is for Federated identity
G is for Google
H is for Hackers
I is for IM
J is for Jaschan (Sven)
K is for Kids
L is for Love Bug
M is for Microsoft
N is for Neologisms
O is for Orange
P is for Passwords
Q is for Questions
R is for Rootkits
S is for Spyware
T is for Two-factor authentication
U is for USB sticks/devices
V is for Virus variants
W is for Wi-fi
X is for OS X
Y is for You
Z is for Zero-day
West said: "Recent plots have been characterised by increasing technological and logistical complexity, including [the use of] false identities, encrypted communications and multiple email addresses."
Information-security company Detica also claimed that terrorists and criminals were increasingly employing technology, and were attempting to exploit the growing information infrastructure to hide their activities.
Tom Black, chief executive of Detica, told silicon.com sister site ZDNet.co.uk: "Terrorists are using the internet for secure communications, mission planning, assessing targets online and to radicalise the next generation. Society depends on the information infrastructure; the ability to steal information and deny access is a serious threat."
Black claimed that information-security measures need to be reassessed to be effective, due to the pace of technological change and information expansion.
Black said: "We're not moving fast enough. The amount of information is doubling every 15 to 18 months."
Instead of collecting and processing ever larger amounts of information in the hope of discovering terrorist plots, Black said, the next-generation approach would be to detect anomalous behaviour in real-time by combining information collected online with information from the physical world.
Black said that eventually "threat prints" could be developed by analysing potential targets, such as the London 2012 Olympic Games, and developing a model of potential terrorist behaviour. Law-enforcement and security agencies could then combine information about anomalous behaviour centred around that event. This would eventually enable law-enforcement bodies to anticipate potential terrorist behaviour "ideally before the terrorist or criminal has been radicalised or recruited".
However, civil liberties campaigners greeted this suggestion with caution. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, told ZDNet.co.uk there was a danger that the mass profiling of behaviour that would be necessary for this scheme to work risked turning the whole population into terrorist suspects.
Chakrabarti said: "The devil's in the detail. There's a crucial distinction between investigating specific threats and the mass trawling of the population. We need a framework to decide where the line is drawn. [Mass data collection] is not a good idea, as you are in danger of turning the whole population into a suspect."
Comments
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1. MusicFan
Whenever we here the word "terrorist" it is almost always followed by a proposed method of removing an innocent person's privacy.
2. Roger Huffadine
"the next-generation approach would be to detect anomalous behaviour in real-time" - trust me this is not going to work - to get a 'fingerprint' of activity that is clear enough to identify a threat is close to impossible - all the 'terrorists' have to do to avoid these techniques is to use 'normal' behaviour.
and -
any terrorist who is serious about staying undetected - does not use a mobile phone - never uses the same landline twice - uses word of mouth & 'drop boxes'.
If our government seriously believes that they can thwart terrorists by this anomaly technique then we are in deeper shit than I thought.
3. Government created sceptic
Is this just another way to try and justify the governments wish to monitor all e-mail and phone calls for their latest gigantic database project ?
4. anonymous
Chakrabarti is right to counsel extreme caution, but I fear we are already too late. All that has stopped governments carrying out mass monitoring (and hence management) of populations in the past has been the sheer difficulty of doing it.
As more and more activity creates digital traces it becomes easier and easier to accumulate and analyse activity on a large scale. Now that the majority of communication is digital that surveillance is very easy, save for the staggering volumes involved.
The latter merely makes technology providers salivate and work harder and harder to argue for the business and governments to collect and analyse to their heart's content.
Once that becomes routine it WILL be used increasingly against many people other than "terrorists" - as we have already seen with anti-terror laws being used to carry out surveillance to counter dog fouling.
We urgently need an active discussion about the kind of society we want to be living in over the coming years. Unfortunately there is too much complacency and too much ignorance about what is no possible. The future is going to be different in some not very pleasant ways!
5. Radical Meldrew
No wonder they are worried.... in their world they require detailed information about everybody and everything at the click of a button. Technology is misused by our government. Instead of utilising it as a tool to enhance their mission they opt for the 'technological crutch' and substitute hard graft with meaningless statistics to support whatever is the political flavour of the month.
6. Karen Challinor
So the first point I'm getting is that terrorists and criminals understand and use IT better than our government, anti terrorist and law enforcement agencies
- so does my next door neighbours five year old
The second thing seems to indicate that attacks should be predicted and prevented by running war game simulations on what might be a potential target
- a bit like running a simulation of the grand national to see who is going to win and placing your life savings on the outcome
and the third thing based on this section 'Law-enforcement and security agencies could then combine information about anomalous behaviour centred around that event. This would eventually enable law-enforcement bodies to anticipate potential terrorist behaviour "ideally before the terrorist or criminal has been radicalised or recruited"' seems to indicate that people could be arrested because of suspicious behaviour BEFORE any crime has been comitted
- so people will be arrested on suspicion prior to any illegal act, I think several rights have gone out of the window here, a sizeable chunk of the magna carta and very probably habeus corpus too
This reminds me a bit of the film "minority report" only here we'll have a "pre terrorism" division dropping from the sky to arrest and imprison people for being potential and not actual terrorists
7. G
With Data and information leaks from secure and goventment facilities being highlighted continually, do we reallt think that this data will remain any more secure... in principal, if dealt with properly an amzing feat of potentially life saving analytics.. If not, a how to guide for the terrorist states... Scary!
8. Richard Davies
Society depends on the information infrastructure; the ability to steal information and deny access is a serious threat
The above excerpt from the story is exactly why I didn't / don't want a goverment ID card scheme!
The idea of such schemes are great, but actually creating one that is secure etc. is a whole different ball game...you certainly couldn't rely on the government to do it with their track record.
I wondered who in their right mind would back things like an ID card scheme and then I saw them on the news...its people that have suffered tragedies etc. which is unfortunate in itself...but then they back hair brain schemes which they can't even start to comprehend in terms of making it work in a secure fashion. This worries me because it turns out theres quite alot of them out there. These peoples opinion shouldn't driuve such schemes as they are blinkered / biased.
If you have watched the film 'The Mist', they are similar to the church going lady in the supermarket!!!!