Dear Editor,
As a teenager, I was a science fiction fanatic reading all there was in the library about robots and computers. Later, the books were focused on the real implementation of ICT and the future of computing when Christopher Evans, The Mighty Micro, predicted that the wars of the future would not be fought with guns and tanks but that they would be Information Wars given that he had predicted that 70% of the world would be information workers by 2000.
As I read and re-read Mr. Darshanand Khusial’s letter `How does the Guyana government guarantee Huawei is not spying or will use its equipment for malicious purposes on behalf of another nation?’ in the December 16 Sunday Stabroek which focused on Huawei, it was recognized that the broader picture was omitted, and the information gap was gaping. For any information to be acceptable and usable, it must be accurate, complete and unbiased. I suspect this fear-mongering is a US-based initiative which started a few years ago but more so, as a fallout from the Sino-USA trade war and China’s growing technological hegemonic powers with the added caveat of changing the course of global wireless communications development. America’s big businesses are linked directly to its country’s politics as is China’s.
There are more similarities than differences between the Americans and the Chinese. The former being more insidious while the latter is bold, stubborn and un-repenting. As the cricket announcer pointed out last cricket season, “it’s 6 of one and two 3s of the other.”
It was revealed as recently as October 2018 that Huawei Technologies Co. had displaced Apple Inc. as the number one supplier of smartphones. Additionally, the company could become the world’s largest technology company in semiconductors and telecommunications gear. Huawei will soon overtake Qualcomm Inc and Nvidia Corp and challenge such companies as Microsoft Corp. and Amazon Inc in their specific niche markets. Huawei is a $93B company. We do not have to read between the lines to determine that China, the once sleeping giant, is fully awake and means business.
As technologies have continued to expand and converge, there is an integral surveillance architecture in-built that generates big data that will be used by law enforcement, politicians, hackers and marketers, alike. Big data is big business and huge profits. Changes to our social, political, economic realities are inevitable and we need to adjust to them. There is a myriad of evils associated with the convergent technologies such as cyber bullying, cyber-terrorism and the widespread malware applications which impact computers, cell phones and telecommunication systems. Malware is designed to be undetectable. For the most part, it is designed to steal account data, credit card information, passwords and is an enabler of corporate spying.
Early in 2018, hackers illegally accessed Bell Canada’s customer information. Twice in one year, they were hacked. This is Canada’s largest telecommunications company. Over 100,000 customers’ information, including names and email addresses. In 2017, about 1.9 million email addresses were stolen from Bell’s database.
The largest known data breach was at Yahoo, which announced that all 3 billion of its user email accounts were affected by a hack in 2013. In 2017, Equifax reported that 145 million people, had personal information stolen in a cyber-attack.
Four months ago, Ottawa police and the federal Office of the Privacy Commissioner investigated a significant data breach in the federal government after a device was stolen from Public Services and Procurement Canada. Hundreds of federal civil servants lost personal information in the data breach.
The USA and a few of the European countries, chiefly the UK have been supporting digital interference in other countries’ affairs as soon as the surveillance architecture became available. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), passed in the USA in 1994, requires that all U.S. telecommunications companies modify their equipment to “facilitate authorized communications interceptions and access to call-identifying information unobtrusively and with a minimum of interference with any subscriber’s telecommunication services.” However, the USA government-backed surveillance involves legitimate telecommunication service providers which extends beyond their domestic markets to the international arena. Edward Snowden’s name must ring a sombre bell.
The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is an intelligence and security organization of the UK. Since 2013, the Guardian newspaper reported that major telecommunication service providers like BT, Vodafone Cable, Verizon Business amongst others have been complicit in providing GCHQ secret, unlimited access to their network of undersea cables which carry a high percentage of the world’s phone calls and internet traffic. Unless a country belongs to the Big Boys’ Club, the G8, similar actions are considered illegal and unethical.
The ubiquitous use of Apple and Google’s services and equipment precludes any judgement on their surreptitious use of their users’ data.
However, there’s a bright side to everything under the sun. All we must do in Guyana is to have our Telecommunications Specialists trained to modify system code and ensure that all technical specifications are handed over to the Government of Guyana.
Secondly, ensure that the National Data Management Authority has the requisite skills to manage the ICT industry in Guyana and to create the Code of common practices that the Telecommunications Service Providers should follow to protect critical infrastructure and safeguard their networks. A National Strategy for Critical Infrastructures would have to be created and implemented as early as possible, preferably by 2019.
Thirdly, there must be an involvement of technical people in the government’s decision making. Back in the 80s when the Fifth Generation Conference was held in Tokyo, many of the governments were not represented by their technical experts. Donald Mitchie who built the first Expert system was not even considered as an invitee to the conference. Let’s hope that we, Guyanese, are smarter than they were in the 80s and that we do not live to regret the politicians’ myopic views.
As Timothy wrote so aptly many years ago, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” We need to recognize that we do not have the financial, technical nor political resources to take on the super powers. An African proverb cautions us and even suggests an approach to dealing with super powers, “when the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.” When the USA Air force rendered the air control system ineffective while they tracked a USSR submarine in the waters off Barbados over two decades ago, I recognized the need for political collaboration. The late Errol Barrow of Barrow once declared that Barbados was friend to all and satellites of none. Let’s pray that the counsel still holds for Guyana.
Yours faithfully,
Wayne W. Dec. Barrow
MPM, FAAPM
