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Guglielmo Marconi is popularly known as “the inventor of radio,” a mischaracterization that critics and supporters of his many rivals are quick to seize upon. Marconi was actually the first person to use radio waves to communicate. His first patent was for “Improvements in Transmitting Electrical Impulses and Signals and in Apparatus Therefor,” and he considered what he was doing to be a form of wireless telegraphy.

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This fall, ALSC is performing a survey to measure the preferences and awareness of members in regards to communication, publications, and messaging. The survey measures opinions in regards to:

• Children & Libraries: The Journal of ALSC
• ALSC Matters! newsletter
• Everyday Advocacy Matters newsletter
• ALSC Blog
• ALSC’s social media accounts
• general ALSC messaging and marketing

The 2015 ALSC Communication & Messaging Survey is open for participation. The survey consists of 28 questions and should take about 15 minutes to complete. Survey results will help ALSC measure the impact of its communications and messaging on our members and inform future communications decision-making. The survey will close on Friday, October 23, 2015.

Image courtesy of ALSC

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By Alfred Rolington

Cyber attacks on Iran have been well publicised in the press and on Western television. General William Shelton, a top American cyber general, has now turned these attacks around saying that these events are giving Iran a strategic and tactical cyber advantage creating a very serious “force to be reckoned with.”

Since 2010, Iran’s infrastructure has been attacked hundreds of times by cyber viruses. To date the most documented and best known cyber attacks have been aimed at Iran and are known as cyber worms called Stuxnet. These electronic worms were used to attack Iranian nuclear power plants and connected systems. General Shelton, who heads up Air Force Space Command and Air Force cyber operations, gave a briefing to reporters in January 2013, where he said that the 2010 Stuxnet virus attack on Iran’s Natanz uranium processing plant had generated considered responses from Iran that have led to improved offensive and defensive cyber-capabilities.

In December 2012, the Stuxnet virus returned and hit computer and energy operations and companies in the southern Hormozgan region. Shelton claimed that Iran’s improved cyber defense capability had helped Iran protect it against subsequent attacks on oil terminals and other manufacturing plants. This new capability, he believed, will subsequently be used by Iran against its enemies in the near future. “They are going to be a force to be reckoned with,” said General Shelton, “with the potential capabilities that they will develop over the years.” At present he stated that America had over six thousand cyber specialists employed to monitor, analyse and counter cyber attacks, and he was intending to employ another thousand specialists over the next twelve months to improve America’s effectiveness in this vital area.

Moreover, assassinations and assassination attempts in conjunction with cyber attacks are thought to be part of an integrated plan of attacks on Iran’s nuclear research and manufacturing capabilities. A year ago on 11 January 2012, Ahmadi Roshan, a 32-year-old Iranian scientist, and his driver were both killed when a motorcyclist attached a bomb to their car as they were driving. So far these attacks, which seem to form part of the broader cyber-related strategy aimed at Iran’s nuclear program, have successfully killed five Iranian nuclear scientists in the last two years according to FARS, a Tehran news agency. However, in January 2013, the Iranian Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi claimed that his organisation had stopped a number of attempts to kill nuclear scientists so it is uncertain which reports are accurate.

These attacks on Iran’s electronic systems represent only a very small amount of the current cyber attack and threat capability. Increasingly, all governments and corporations must respond to the cyber reality. With an interconnected world, cyber attacks on infrastructure have become frequent and damaging. Cyber crime is costing businesses billions of pounds although they tend to keep quiet about the attacks. (The BBC reported that UK cyber crime costs £27bn a year.) Efforts to get a grip on the problem had been hampered by firms who don’t want to admit they had been the victims of attacks for fear of “reputational damage”. Baroness Neville-Jones, Prime Minister David Cameron, and Foreign Secretary William Hague met the bosses of some of Britain’s biggest businesses, including Barclays, HSBC, Tesco and BA, to urge them to take the problem more seriously.

In September 2012, a hacker called vorVzakone posted a message on a Russian online forum saying that a malevolent Trojan, called Project Blitzkrieg, was capable of attacking the American financial industry, that it had already critically affected up to five hundred American targets, and that it had stolen over five million dollars. “This attack combines both a technical, innovative backend with the tactics of a successful, organized cybercrime movement,” a McAfee report explained, adding that the next target would probably be investment banks.

Hackers, apparently working independently as criminal gangs, have grown in their specialization faster than most police and government intelligence organisations would have believed possible. Yet cyber hackers working for governments have targeted everything from computer systems to power plants from the US to Iran, Europe to China, Australia and beyond. These civil servant hackers are often employed by governments to help fulfill a strategy, to change information and publicity, or to gain information and bring systems down.

One example comes from Ray Boisvert, who recently retired from the post of Assistant Director of Intelligence for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. He believes the current capabilities of most governments is not enough to counter the current cyber threats. He said that cyber threats were fundamentally undermining Canada’s “future prosperity as a nation.” He stated there is a lack of response on three levels. First from government and corporate policy-makers who do not, in his opinion, understand the technical complexities of digital telecommunications security. Second the government has not invested enough to protect Canada’s communications and electricity systems from cyber attacks. Third, he thought there was an inherent corporate shortsightedness regarding protecting Canada’s communications infrastructure.

The cyber issue is growing and will become a rising threat to governments and corporations. It may require a serious attack such as a massive electricity system shut down before a full government response is played out.

Alfred Rolington is the author of Strategic Intelligence for the 21st Century: The Mosaic Method, an industry insider’s assessment of current intelligence methods and offers a new strategic model, directed toward the police, military, and intelligence agencies. He was formerly CEO of Jane’s Information Group, responsible for such publications as Jane’s Defense Review and Jane’s Police Review, as well as CEO for Oxford Analytica. He has over thirty years’ experience of analytical publishing and media companies, producing information and intelligence for commerce, law enforcement, the, military and government. He has written about and given lectures on intelligence and strategic planning to Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard Universities, and to organisations such as Thomson Reuters, the CIA, SIS (MI6), NATO Headquarters, and GCHQ.

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Image credits: Information Systems Technician 2nd Class Ryan Allshouse uses the intrusion detection system to monitor unclassified network activity from the automated data processing workspace. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons;  Maps and charts are scanned from “Atlas of the Middle East”, published in January 1993 by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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By Professor Ian Walden

Over the past two years there has been much furore over journalists accessing the voicemail of celebrities and other newsworthy people, particularly the scandal involving Milly Dowler. As a result of the subsequent police investigation, ‘Operation Weeting’, some 24 people have since been arrested and the first charges were brought by the Crown Prosecution Service in July 2012 against eight people, including Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson. The leading charge was one of conspiracy “to intercept communications in the course of their transmission, without lawful authority.” But what does ‘phone hacking’ mean and has the CPS got it right?

The charge, under section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1977, relates to an offence under the ominously worded Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (‘RIPA’), section 1(1). The RIPA is primarily concerned with the powers of law enforcement agencies to investigate criminality by listening into phone calls and other types of covert surveillance. The Act also criminalises the interception of communication by others, including journalists.

When drafting the 2000 Act, one of the objectives was to update the law of interception to reflect developments in modern telecommunication systems and services, especially email. One element of that reform was to recognise that telecommunication systems sometimes store messages on behalf of the intended recipient, to enable them to collect the message at their convenience. In such circumstances, according to section 2(7) of the RIPA, the communications shall be considered still ‘in the course of transmission’. One key issue to be decided in the forthcoming ‘phone hacking’ cases is therefore whether listening to somebody’s voicemail message falls within this exception.

So why does uncertainty arise? The issue for the court to decide is whether a distinction should be made between accessing voicemail messages that have been listened to by the intended recipient and those that have yet to be heard. In the former case, it can be argued, the communication is at an end and the voicemail service is simply being used as a storage medium. As such, no act of ‘interception’ has taken place.

Answering this seemingly simple question of interpretation is made more complex as a result of an apparent change of position on the part of the CPS. In November 2009, Keir Starmer QC, Director of Public Prosecutions, gave evidence before the Culture, Media and Sports Committee about the meaning of section 2(7). He argued, on the basis of the observations of Lord Woolf CJ in R (on the application of NTL) v Ipswich Crown Court [2002], that the provision should be interpreted narrowly, such that a message was only ‘in the course of transmission’ until it had been collected by the intended recipient. This statement led to a very public disagreement between Keir Starmer and John Yates, the then Acting Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan police, who argued for a wide interpretation of section 2(7). By July 2011, however, the CPS had committed a volte-face and decided to “proceed on the assumption that a court might adopt a wide interpretation.”

As a consequence of this legal uncertainty, there would appear to be a very real chance that the coming prosecutions may fail. As well as the considerable waste of police resource that would result, and the adverse impact on public confidence, this reliance on the crime of ‘interception’ seems unnecessary, as suggested by the moniker ‘phone hacking’. An alternative charge would seem to be available under section 1 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, for ‘unauthorised access to computer material’. This was the original ‘hacking’ statute, and the offence carries the same maximum tariff as that for unlawful interception, i.e. two years imprisonment. There can be no question that a voicemail service is held on a ‘computer’, while it would seem relatively easy to show that the perpetrator, which can include both the private investigator and the requesting journalist, knew that such access was unauthorised.

The rationale for pursuing journalists for ‘intercepting’ rather than ‘hacking’ phones is not immediately clear, but the outcome of the forthcoming cases may simply represent another sorry stage in the long running saga of newspaper phone hacking.

Ian Walden is Professor of Information and Communications Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary, University of London. His publications include Computer Crimes and Digital Investigations (2007), Media Law and Practice (2009) and Telecommunications Law and Regulation (4^th ed., 2012). Ian is a solicitor and Of Counsel to Baker & McKenzie.

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Today’s fast-paced lifestyle seems to compress time and necessary activities.

When I was at university back in the early eighties, life allowed a pause button. That button appears to have disappeared, as one of my characters would say.

I wonder if we as a society will ever allow its reinstatement. The question arises by the simple expedient of our collective expectations concerning time. That has changed, at least for me and most of those I know.

The Pause Button

Back in the day, people could unwind at the end of a day’s work. They could go out to observe happy hour, laugh with friends, play with the kids, enjoy a leisurely meal, etc. That was the norm. There was a friendly competition with friends or family at the bowling alley or popcorn and sodas at the movies where deafness wasn’t an end product.

Sunday drives with the family after church afforded leisure, togetherness, and a mild sense of adventure. For those few hours the rest of the world was allowed to fade away. The mini-vacation was in play.

People’s lives are more complicated than ever before. Each child has one or more after school activities that take up family time, except during the commute to and from said activities. Parents may also have additional evening and weekend activities that don’t include the rest of the family. Everyone scatters and re-assemble at a more convenient time.

I’d hazard a guess that the Sunday drive has been replaced with less restful activity for most people today. There are fewer places anyone can go to get away from the modern world today. The ever-present cell phone has insured a quick response­-even for those who aren’t carrying theirs, one belonging to someone else disrupts one’s thoughts just as easily. Laptops, iPads, etc. intrude even deeper into non-work time. If you’ve managed to forget your own, there’s always one close-by to remind you that you’re not on yours.

NJS

News Junkie Syndrome, as I like to call it, has hit a large segment of the population. I believe the condition began decades ago with CNN availability followed closely by the internet. Most people, I think, know what it’s like to crave a news fix, even if it’s only about one event. Even children get caught up in the passion to know what’s happening elsewhere.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not condemning the media out of hand. In fact, a writer who doesn’t follow some form of media soon runs out of viable writing avenues.

Now Vs. Then

What concerns me is the fact that so many seem to believe they must/should be “plugged in” 24/7. That phrase is a household word anymore.

My question is this: is anyone any happier because they’re plugged in? Would they be less happy now if they’d never had technologies little communications inventions? Would our families be any less scattered?

I suppose we can speculate about the answers to these questions all day. The bottom line is that we create our lives by the importance we place on the things, attitudes, and people we gather into them.

If we use our time wisely and well, we get to enjoy all of the facets of our lives. If we’re not enjoying something make a pause button for yourself. Take the time to study what is missing or what needs more attention. You don’t have to commit to a permanent change. Temporary maneuvering can give you the answer you need without committing to something for the long-term.

Having recently been through a major change in direction for my life, I can offer this experience. Be careful of the approach taken to make a major change. Sometimes the cost can be too high and the effects too permanent. The result may not be what you’re looking for.

And on that note, I’ll leave you to your own thoughts on the subject. I’ve pushed the pause button and get to explore contingencies and repercussions for a while. Good luck with your own explorations and adventures. I intend to appreciate those

While watching a taped concert of John Denver for the third time on WXXI, I was feeling rather nostalgic. I loved his music. I have several of his albums.I play them in the car and in my writing den. So I was wondering about his plane crash. I did a little research on the Internet. [...]