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Conspiracies, Daffodils and Tulips

In spring, as the poet said, a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of conspiracy. Wait! I just misquoted Alfred Tennyson and there’s a one in eight chance that someone under 34 will believe the quote is authentic.

While the new season takes tentative steps towards summer (tulips and daffodils flowering), imported conspiracy theories have taken root in Australia. The media noticed; with The Australian, the New Daily, The Guardian and 60 Minutes among those to investigate. Satirists weighed in, mocking the worrisome ideas fomented by the mendacious QAnon. While satire has its place, conspiracy theories can cause a lot of damage if people act on them.

During the lockdown of public housing towers in Melbourne, some 10,000 people refused to take a covid test. Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos said some had declined believing that Coronavirus was a conspiracy, its effects overstated, or simply with a misguided faith that it would not affect them.

More recently, News Corp reported that people are being “actively investigated” by police for encouraging Melbourne residents to protest against Stage Four lockdown. Anti-lockdown protesters clashed with police in the Victorian capital on Sunday night. The anti-lockdown lobby has been very active on Twitter and other social media outlets before and after those events.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews’ attempts to hose down the second phase of COVID-19 are being defied by those including followers of the social media conspiracy spreader, QAnon. If you hear someone utter the words ‘sovereign citizen’, its a sure sign they follow one of the far-right conspiracy groups in the US (and now, it seems, in Australia).

QAnon believes the world is being controlled by a ‘deep state’ of Satan-worshipping paedophiles and people traffickers. The plot (there always is one) is that the deep state wants to overthrow the incumbent president, Donald Trump. Even though QAnon has previously turned on Trump, at this stage in the election cycle it appears they think he’s the right man to fix what ails the US.

There’s more available, if you want to go looking for it, on Facebook and bulletin boards like 4Chan and 8kun (known as 8Chan before the Christchurch mosque massacre). The latter was in the news again this week as the perpetrator was jailed for life without parole.

The shooter posted simultaneous footage of the massacre on social media forums and investigations since showed him to be active on right-wing bulletin boards like 8Chan.

The London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which tracks extremism around the world, detailed the rise of QAnon across social media platforms. Its report, The Genesis of a Conspiracy Theory, shows that interactions with content in social media groups more than tripled, from 2.35 million in February to 7.26 million in June.

The ISD report shows a marked increase in discussions on social media platforms between March and June. Unique users discussing QAnon jumped by 12.02 million, or 63.7% on Twitter, 188,855 or 174.9% on Facebook and 96,894 or 71% on Instagram. One should hope that some of those discussions were rebuttals posted by people who know that it is just so much hokum.

Little wonder that the FBI and ASIO warned that extreme-right radical groups are a domestic terrorism threat.

The definition of a conspiracy theory is that which is promulgated as fact yet cannot be supported by evidence. Or as Daniel Pipes (a US historian and writer) was quoted in a Senate report:

“Like alchemy and astrology, conspiracism offers an
intellectual inquiry that has many facts right but goes wrong
by locating causal relationships where none exist.”

Australia has always had an element of conspiracists; holocaust deniers, anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, mask-deniers, Islamaphobes and those who subscribe to (US) theories that the world is controlled by a cabal of (Jewish) financiers (and that aliens are being kept in a secret underground facility in the desert somewhere, for breeding purpose, perhaps). The adherents may be small in number but they wield a disproportionate amount of influence.

People aged 18-34 appear to be susceptible to being swayed by conspiracy theories. About 20% of this cohort told pollsters they believed the 5G mobile network was being used to spread coronavirus (a widely debunked and baseless theory).
The better news is that 5G theory beliefs decreased in older age groupings. About 13% of 35 to 54-year olds responded positively to the theories, and between 4% and 8% of the 55+ cohort.

The rapid growth of QAnon appears to have started with the emergence of the Coronavirus in March. Those who believe that vaccinations cause more health problems than the specific ones they are forestalling, were the obvious target.

ASIO’s annual threat assessment released in February outlined the threat of right-wing extremism as “real and growing”, according to a Lowy Institute report. A June update revealed that right-wing extremist investigations now make up a third of ASIO’s domestic caseload. ASIO warns that far-right groups are using Covid-19 as a cover to push ideologies and gain recruits.

In Australia, this manifested itself in a series of rallies in May, with protesters calling Covid-19 a scam and protesting against vaccines, pharmaceutical companies, fluoride and 5G.

As if this was no disturbing enough, a meme being circulated (again), purports to claim that Australia does not exist. I thought it was satire, and so did the person who brought it to my attention. No, it is a conspiracy theory/hoax that’s been around long enough to have its own hashtag, #australiadoesntexist.

So, enough of this nonsense; let’s just enjoy the daffodils and tulips, the pardalote chit-chitting away, the smell of jasmine…

If you see Junior thumbing away at his phone or tablet when it’s supposed to be family time, share the real quote from Tennyson: “In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”

Or if you prefer a poem with an Australian flavour:

And jolly Spring, with love and laughter gay
Full fountaining, lets loose her tide of bees
Upon the waking ember-flame of bloom
New kindled in the honey-scented trees.

Hugh McCrae

Cyber attacks and the Faraday cage

cyber-attacks-hackers — Image: Antoine Tevaneaux, Wikipedia CC: these women are protected from the electric arc by the Faraday Cage. (Palais de la Découverte in Paris.)

Just as I was thinking about the unexpected email from the Australian Taxation Office, She Who Mocks ScoMo called me in to watch a live press conference about cyber attacks.

Beware of State-based actors with sophisticated means to hack Australian infrastructure, began the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison (ScoMo).

“He’s dog-whistling,” interjected SWMS. This of course sent me off to google what ‘dog-whistling’ meant. After discounting a video of a wizened old Kiwi farmer in gumboots and a Swanndri using two-fingered whistling to direct his sheep dogs, I alighted upon this:

dog–whistle: a type of doublespeak used in political messaging. Dog whistles work by employing language that has normal meanings to the majority, but can be implied or loaded to mean very specific things to intended recipients.

In this context, there were several observations to be made – what was the government seeking to do by causing fear and trembling in a community already alarmed about the coronavirus? What news did the government not want to get out, hiding behind the ‘cyber-attack’ smokescreen?

I asked a couple of IT gurus I know what they made of it all.

“Whatever it is, just sandbox it,” said one (which means isolating the malicious email/code and testing it in a non-network environment).

“Well if Scotty from marketing says there are more state actors right now. you gotta believe him,” said our resident geek boy.

“I might even quit my day job and go after my real dream as a state actor. Hopefully they do the Scottish play. .. I know that one well.”

Chin up Scotty, they’re not taking you seriously – should they?

After analysing the press conference on Friday morning, I tend to agree with ScoMo’s “it hasn’t just started” caveat. The controversy over Russia’s involvement in social media manipulation of the 2016 US election is one example alone. CSO Australia recently listed the top 15 cyber security breaches of the last 20 years, ranked by the number of people whose personal data was stolen. Data belonging to 3.5 billion people was compromised in the top two alone (Adobe and Adult Friend Finder). Well-known names on the list include LinkedIn, Yahoo, eBay and Marriott International.

The PM refused to be drawn on which ‘State-based actor’ was the villain of the piece but journalists have, of course, made much of the role of China as the state power with the ability and the motive.

If there is anything useful to be drawn from ScoMo’s cyber attacks warning, it is perhaps to remind computer and smart phone users to do a regular Wi-Fi security audit.

The growing popularity of smart devices (Wi-Fi speakers, smart TVs, household appliances that take verbal orders and Bluetooth-enabled devices has just added new vulnerabilities to the wired household.

I use Bluetooth to hook up my phone in the car but I also to stream music to wireless speakers. No problem, you’d think.

Technology writer Dave Johnson says, rather colourfully in this article for howtogeek.com, that “Bluetooth is about as secure as a padlock sculpted from fusilli pasta.”

Johnson recently attended the Def Con 27 security conference where the first order of business was to ask delegates to disable Bluetooth while attending the conference.

Tyler Moffitt, a senior threat research analyst at Webroot, says there are “zero regulations or guidelines” as to how Bluetooth vendors should implement security. He also warned that smart phone users might not know that using Bluetooth with earbuds disables the smart lock, leaving the phone open to abuse.

Moving right along, the other security threat which bothers experts is the proportion of social media users who do not use or understand privacy settings. Password manager LastPass revealed in a recent blog how careless people are with their private information. A survey showed that 52% of respondents set their social media profiles to ‘public’ (open to FB’s 1.7 billion account holders!) The survey showed that 51% of social media users had shared vacation photos, an open invitation to burglars who troll social media. About 20% shared pictures of their house or neighbourhood and 25% shared pictures of their pets or kids).

The government’s over-kill way of bringing cyber security to ‘front of mind’ was timely, in that June and July are the peak scam months.

Our end of financial year reminder from the ATO did seem genuine, given it was addressed to the recipient by name. We became suspicious in that the email encouraged clicking on links to ‘learn more’ – something the ATO says it never does.

That is an example of the common email scam known as ‘phishing’, an attempt by someone posing as a legitimate institution to trick individuals into providing sensitive data. An article from The Conversation, titled “Don’t be phish food!” cited below, summarises why you should be suspicious of bogus emails. Phishing scammers are not afraid to impersonate government agencies, banks or large institutions – even your own ISP!

If it looks real but you were not expecting it – be wary.

The very least you can do to avoid cyber attacks is change your computer logon passwords. This was one of the key messages from The Australian Cyber Security Centre. ACSC’s website advisory says the attackers are primarily using “remote code execution vulnerability” to target Australian networks and systems. That is, the attacker attempts to insert their own software codes into a vulnerable system such as a server or database, thus taking control. That, folks, is why Windows 10 keeps updating your operating system.

While you are at it, change all of the passwords you use for social media, web-based email and any website which holds your financial information. Make them complex passwords of at least 8 and preferably 10 characters. Check your social media settings and ensure that you are set to private and friends only (or at worst, friends of friends). If you are on the Facebook app Messenger, don’t open videos, even if they are sent by your lover or maiden aunt. Much-circulated ‘joke’ videos containing malicious code are often used to hack someone’s Facebook account. (What – you didn’t know that?)

If all else fails, you could purchase a Faraday Cage, invented in the late 1800s by an English scientist (Faraday). The cage is an enclosed space made of conductive material that blocks electromagnetic signals. Wi-Fi and cellular signals are rendered useless inside the cage.Any spy worth his 2020 clearances would have mini-Faraday cages at home and work in which to keep smart phones and other hackable devices safe from cyber attacks.

Coincidentally, this week we just started watching season five of the quality French spy thriller, The Bureau*, where the Faraday Cage got a mention in episode one or two. This up to the minute drama, while fictional, nonetheless references present day political pariahs including Trump, Putin and Assad.

In the early episodes we see one of the protagonists in a Russian troll factory – a vast air conditioned room where drones fly a circuit to make sure the worker bees are not eating baklava at their keyboards.

If you are really concerned about cyber attacks, you could get an engineer, an architect and a builder to collaborate on the hacker-proof house, modelled on the Faraday Cage.

Shouldn’t cost that much.

(By all means, watch ‘The Bureau’, but only if you don’t mind numerous gratuitous sex scenes. It is French, after all. And you can improve your French language skills too, if you don’t look at the sub-titles. Ed.)

Not everyone has Internet access

I visited my local library last week for the first time in months and noticed that public internet access (computers, desks and chairs), had been removed. Desks, tables and chairs had also been removed from the reading room, where one could sit for hours browsing newspapers and magazines or working on jigsaw puzzles.

“That’s not very fair on people who don’t have a computer or access to WIFI,” said She Who Believes in Equality.

A survey published in March this year, citing Australian Bureau of Statistics data, showed that 2.5 million Australians are not online. Reasons given by respondents included affordability issues, location (poor signal or no signal), or that they lacked the 21^st century skill called ‘digital literacy’.

The Centre for Social Inclusion (CSI) produces the National Digital inclusion Index, based on data from Roy Morgan Research.

Since data was first collected in 2014, Australia’s overall digital inclusion score has risen by 7.9 points, from 54.0 to 61.9. Improvements have been evident across all three categories: Access, Affordability and Digital Ability. CSI notes in its 2019 report that those with the lowest ADII score are in the lowest socio-economic demographic (income under $35,000), with a score of 43.3 points. The Northern Territory is excluded from the research (sample too small), but indigenous Australians living elsewhere scored 55.1.

The digital divide is an obvious social strata marker, with a 30.5 point difference between the lowest income demographic (43.3) and the highest (73.8).

The 2019 survey shows that all segments of the digital access market improved on their 2018 score. Scores are allocated to particular geographic regions and socio-demographic groups, over a six-year period from 2014 to 2019. People aged 65 and over are the least digitally included age group, with a score of 48 (13.9 points below the national average).

I know a few elders who, for one reason or another, refuse to engage with the digital world, clinging on to old analogue TV sets and VCRs, eschewing mobile phones and in some cases, not even having an answering machine. The NBN is relentlessly catching up with this cohort. Moreover, financial institutions are forcing these older customers to abandon time-honoured way of paying bills (by cheque and in person).

As an aside, when I first tried to source the CSI report, I was ironically greeted with the message, “bandwidth exceeded, try later”.

We’re all getting a lot of messages like that with the weight of people using Facebook, Twitter and their affiliates 24/7, not to mention streaming movies, TV series and engaging in bandwidth-using virtual performances and community catch ups.

Last time I wrote about this subject, 90,000 Australians were still using dial-up modems to surf the Internet. That annoying yet welcoming modem squeal is heard no longer, at least not by Telstra customers. Telstra retired its dial-up service In December 2015, citing a sharp drop off in the numbers of people still using dial-up in favour of a variety of connectivity options.

When I last worked for the now mostly digital regional news services, when we went to public meetings in rural areas, we’d take a portable modem. The mid-1980s version was a device you clamped to the handset of a (dial up) phone and then transmitted your news report from the laptop. News organisations spent a fortune equipping field reporters with clunky laptops which weighed at least 10kg and cost thousands. When the technology inevitably did not work, reporters simply called a ‘copy-taker’ at HQ and dictated the story.

Copy-takers are long gone, and the rest of the old school cohort who had not already taken a redundancy package will most likely be swept out the door in the latest media shakeout.

But getting back to the 2.5 million Australians who told survey takers they do not have access to the Internet.

A group of 30 community organisations has called for urgent efforts to help Australians not connected to the internet. The group told the Sydney Morning Herald that the pre-existing problem was heightened during the pandemic, hindering access to government services; for example, children trying to undertake online education and people needing access to telehealth services.

The group asked Communications Minister Paul Fletcher to consider ‘targeted low-cost broadband’ connections for eligible households, a relief package of basic telecommunications equipment and a telephone service for people with low digital literacy.

Of those Australians who do have Internet access, more than four million use mobile only to ‘gain access to the internet’ (note how I refuse to verb a noun). This means they have a mobile phone or mobile broadband device with a data allowance, but no fixed connection. This cohort rated a low ADII score of 43.7, some 18.2 points below the national average (61.9). Mobile data costs substantially more per gigabyte than fixed broadband, which means mobile-only users are unlikely to be binge-watching Narcos, House of Cards or Killing Eve.

Mobile-only use is linked with socio-economic factors, with up to a third of people in low-income households, those with low levels of education and the unemployed more likely to be using mobile-only.

Now here’s what at first sight seems to be an anomaly. You would know the oft-quoted homeless numbers in Australia – around 116,000 at the last Census. However, as the survey found, homeless people find phones essential for survival and safety, job prospects and for moving out of homelessness.

Consumer advocate The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), cited a Sydney University study that found 92% of Australians who identify as homeless (95% in Sydney and Melbourne), own a mobile phone. The homeless favour smart phones (77% of those surveyed had a pre-paid plan for a smart phone). They typically use free WIFI and public access (libraries) to keep costs down.

You might well ask, “How can a homeless person afford a smart phone?”

Well, I bought one last week for $29! It is destined to replace an unreliable IPod as a portable music player. But it also has all of the apps anyone needing a survival tool could ever use. And you can use it to call someone or send a text!

Apps take up most of the memory in this bargain phone. But even so, a minimum $10 a month would make this a handy ‘Where am I sleeping tonight?’ tool.

The annual Deloitte Australia Mobile Use Survey’s key finding is that mobile penetration in Australia has maxed out at 91% (about 20 million users), and accordingly, sales are slowing. The main reason for this is that Australians are holding on to their phones longer (three years on average).

If you are at all interested in how mobile technology is developing, this report (you need to sign up to download it), is illuminating.

For example, did you know that mobile is starting to lose ground to voice-assisted speakers (a 51% increase since 2018), as the preferred user method of ‘gaining access to’ home services and entertainment?

(“OK, Google, play ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen” – but you have to train the thing to recognise your accent…Ed)

As an observation on the recent move by News Ltd to shut down many print titles and move most of the survivors online, mobile remains our preferred device to consume news. Having said that, Australians are less interested in tuning in at all, with only 39% reading the news weekly, compared to 48% last year.

And, as if we did not already know, 27% of Australia’s 17.9 million smart phone owners use their device at least once a week to watch a TV series or movies, up from just 5% in 2015! I relate to this statistic, as I covertly watch Killing Eve on my smart phone, as She Who Believes in Equality chooses not to watch.

Bandwidth exceeded – try later.

FOMM back pages: https://bobwords.com.au/friday-on-my-mind/ Hold the phones 2014