Cyber Scene #21 - Facebook Follow up and Fall Out
Cyber Scene #21
Facebook Follow up and Fall Out
Mark Zuckerberg presented his mea maxima culpas to the European Union Assembly in Brussels on 22 May, following up with them on the apologies he made in his two Congressional hearings in April (recounted in the April 2018 Cyber Scene). His own data compression talent was displayed in his distilling the 10 hours of his congressional testimony into his allotted 75 minutes (which reportedly ran only 15 minutes over) before the EU. On 22 May Stephanie Bodoni from Bloomberg cast this breach impacting millions of Europeans as well as American Facebook users as a game changer in data protection. The Facebook CEO summarized, saying “Whether it’s fake news, foreign interference in elections or developers misusing people’s information, we didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibilities. That was a mistake, and I am sorry.”
Mr. Zuckerberg’s meetings, public and private, with the EU, French President Macron and other senior European leaders are well-timed: whereas the US Congress is considering additional regulation in light of the Facebook issues, the EU is lightyears ahead and is flexingits pan-European regulatory clout through its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) set for implementation on 25 May. Mr. Zuckerberg understands better than most the global impact of the EU GDPR and the need to "calm tension with regulators" cited by the 16 May Wall Street Journal over their “Outcry Facebook’s Data Use” in the 16 May New York Times.
The EU’s GDPR center of gravity sits in the Republic of Ireland, recently evolved into the Silicon Valley in Europe (NYT 16 May, “New Privacy Rules”). Northern Ireland is part of Brexit while the Republic of Ireland remains in the UK. Helen Dixon, Ireland’s data protection commissioner, will take the EU lead with new authority to investigate the flourishing tech industry. She intends to “use her powers to the fullest.” The Facebook CEO is setting an example that other global companies would be wise to follow: the European headquarters for Airbnb, Apple, Google, Twitter and Microsoft which owns LinkedIn are in Ireland and subject to Ms. Dixon, the GPRD and the EU.
Global Ripples
In its “FT BIG READ, GDPR”, the Financial Times journalists Sarah Gordon and Aliya Ram on 21 May dive into the details of the new regulations for data privacy. The UK, home to the Financial Times, is Brexiting but still, like the US and the rest of the world, deeply impacted by the GDPR. Two years in the making, the regulations, which will protect the privacy of users across several domains, have added wind to their sails thanks to Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data. Even Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, admitted (per the Financial Times) that Europe was way ahead on this. GDPR applies to existing users and partners, and mandates that any country wanting to sign a trade deal with one of the EU’s 28 member countries will have to sign up to respect the GDPR. Other rules are documented in the GDPR’s 200 pages. Given the article’s reference to 75% of the world population in 7 years being connected to a digital device, the impact is beyond huge. (N.B. The Financial Times is by subscription only, however a four week trial digital subscription is only $4 U.S.)
Readers of last month’s Cyber Scene may be expecting a synopsis of Mr. Zuckerberg’s responses to Congress, but they have not arrived yet even as Congress adds more questions.
And just in case you feel that GDPR (and perhaps this Cyber Scene) are consuming way too much of your time, New York Times’s Brian X. Chen cautions in “Tech Fix: Getting a Flood of G.D.P.R.-Related Privacy Policy Updates? Read Them” on 23 May that the new law may merit its reputation as the world’s strongest protector of digital privacy rights. It underscores the global nature of digital life, requiring “every commercial entity that touches the web” to make changes to its apps and sites to comply. He goes on to single out several exemplars of the game-changing nature of this regulation that touches us all.
War Cries; Re-Made in China
On several planes, cries of 21stCentury war have lately been heard in the cyber world. The 3 May NYT Op-Ed by Christopher Kirchhoff, “Silicon Valley Must Go to War” departs from a recent Google engineer workforce call to prevent Pentagon use of technology “for evil” and moves to note that impact of cyber on that kind of war is history. The author, who presently serves as Visiting Technologist at Harvard’s Institute of Politics also led the Pentagon’s chief interface with Silicon Valley. He marks the Constitution as the cornerstone of collaboration between the two entities.
The Economist looks at both the world of arms control in “A farewell to arms control” (5 May) and a “Not so phony war” on 21 April. The former looks at how technology’s race pace advances and recent political crises in the making are leaving the SALT agreements in the dust. The role of cyber is crucial: Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association think tank says that “cyber attacks on nuclear command and control systems could vastly increase crisis instability.” The latter appears rather instable as it is.
In the realm of “coming back home to haunt us,” on 21 April, The Economist wrote in “Not so phony war” on the Chinese telecom ZTE issues which as of this writing are far from resolved. The article cites the bank, UBS, estimate that its products relied 80-90% on American parts and notes that the initial ban on ZTE coming back to the US in contravention of a seven-year ban with US parts it isn’t supposed to have had particularly roiled the Department of Commerce. The plot continues to thicken.
Not So Cryptic Currency; Should You Bank On It?
In the age of the onslaught of cryptocurrency concerns, Bloomberg Businessweek examines on 23 April Palantir, a data-mining company that initially supported the financial services sector in monitoring computer use to protect against rogue traders, but has evolved into what the article terms “Wall Street meets “Apocalypse Now.’” The authors cite a litany of applications deriving from countless domains of privacy and include a diagram of the web of developer Peter Thiel that links 50+ big tech players and their organizations, FANGs to Tesla, in and out of this world.
As perhaps a deep dive echo, the New York Times Magazine of 2 May features nearly a dozen articles--backdrops to the status of global financial services as well as the criminal applications--probe the status of potential victims and the creativity of cyber criminals. With regard to the growth industry aspect of money still making the world go ‘round, now at unimaginable speed, the series featuring rigging a lottery to insider trading to offshore tax havens present cyber insecurity lessons for all tastes.
An across-the-pond “companion piece” is the Economist’s 5 May “special Report” article on financial inclusion entitled “Exclusive access” which discusses how the last quarter of the world’s population that remains unbanked will be moving to phone banking. Mobile banking in the Third World where other means of communication and an absence of brick and mortar banks across most of the quarter of the world creates opportunities, for good and evil, that will expand commensurately with the surge of mobile, cyber-hackable banking leading to if not the best of times, and least better ones for a quarter of the world with the flip side of worst-of-times vulnerabilities.