Focus on Muslims Misplaced After Shooting

Focus on Muslims Misplaced After Shooting

Nicholas Johnson

Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 17, 2016, p. A5
[This column appeared in the Press-Citizen's online edition as Nicholas Johnson, "Focus on Muslims Misplaced After Shooting," Iowa City Press-Citizen (online), June 16, 2016, 6:51 p.m. It draws upon the earlier blog essay, "Keeping Up With ISIS; There Is Another Explanation for Orlando," June 14, 2016. The column to which today's [June 17] column refers and responds is Ian Goodrum, "Finger-Pointing After Orlando Massacre," Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 15, 2016, p. A9.]

Ian Goodrum has reminded us, with writing befitting our City of Literature, of both the causes of the home-grown mass violence in Orlando, and how such tragedies are seized upon by those promoting political or other causes. (“Finger Pointing After Orlando Massacre,” June 15.)

He notes the killers’ “common denominator” is that they are “young, angry men,” and then provides insight into the pathology of their anger.

Among those promoting causes, he observes, are “bloodthirsty pundits and politicians” now calling “for state-sponsored discrimination against believers in Islam, along with a general ramping up of our military presence in the Middle East.”

Goodrum’s right on all counts, as I see it. Our enemy is not Islam. It’s a few of our home-grown, American “young, angry men;” mostly citizens, with a diversity of histories, persuasions, mental conditions, motives, weapons and targets. More domestic hate crimes involve perpetrators who would claim to be Christian than Muslim. Their targets are no more predictable than where a lightning strike may hit — federal buildings, universities, African-American churches, gathering spots for Latinos, Asians, Mormons, Catholics, Jews and the LGBT community.

To reduce mass violence, we must focus on our young, angry men. Our mission: to treat their anger before we have to treat their victims.

That is but one of the reasons why focusing on Muslims is counterproductive. Even if it were not unconstitutional and inhospitable, as President Barack Obama points out, it is precisely what ISIS wants us to do — confirm their assertion that we have declared war on Islam and its 1.6 billion followers, giving an enormous boost to their recruiting.

The “bloodthirsty pundits and politicians” who think more troops and bigger bombs are the answer are clearly not our friends. This is a high-stakes whack-a-mole drama in which all the world is ISIS’ stage, where for every bomb we drop more actors come on stage to respond with creative acts of violence.

ISIS has proven creative and adaptable. When we X-ray passengers for guns, they switch to plastic shoe bombs. When they lose a city, they move elsewhere. When they begin to lose on every battlefield, they invite and train terrorists to execute ISIS-orchestrated slaughter in Europe and elsewhere. When the West’s intelligence capabilities to track their messages, movements, and money begins to interfere with such organized efforts, they need a new strategy.

Here it is.

Our State Department describes Abu Mohammed al Adnani as the “official spokesman and a senior leader of Isis." In September 2014 he used ISIS’ sophisticated communications networks to propagate the following message:

"If you can kill a disbelieving American or European, French, an Australian or a Canadian, then rely upon Allah, and kill him. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place. Don’t try to communicate with us. Don’t expect our help, he said. Just do the killing, and pledge allegiance to ISIS."

Since that time, in each of those named countries, using the itemized means of murder, followed by declarations of allegiance to ISIS, there have been killings.

Goodrum is right that the Orlando shooting wasn’t the result of “direct involvement or orchestration by” ISIS; as were Orlando officials’ conclusions the shooter wasn’t a “member of ISIS.” But ISIS’ latest strategy may have been at play.

None of which changes the numbers. One day in Orlando, 49 were gunned down. But every day in the U.S., nearly 100 die from guns. An Islamophobic focus on this carnage is both self-defeating and close to statistically irrelevant.

Meanwhile, somebody better tell those “bloodthirsty pundits and politicians” who didn’t get the memo that they’re three strategies behind ISIS, running a trillion-dollar program as old as Windows 95.
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Contact Nicholas Johnson of Iowa City through www.nicholasjohnson.org.

# # #

Keeping Up With ISIS

There Is Another Explanation for Orlando
And see, Nicholas Johnson, "Focus on Muslims Misplaced After Shooting," Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 17, 2016, p. A5

If you can kill a disbelieving American or European – especially the spiteful and filthy French – or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way, however it may be. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him.

-- Abu Mohammed al Adnani, the “official spokesman and a senior leader of Isis" according to U.S. Department of State, Yara Bayoumy, "Isis Urges More Attacks on Western 'Disbelievers;' Group Spokesman Adnani Seems to be Encouraging Attacks . . .," Independent, September 22, 2014

All Americans share the grief and heartache of our Orlando neighbors.

And almost all wonder how that horrific tragedy could have occurred. Was it a hate crime? Was the shooter mentally deranged? Was it the easy accessibility of AR-15 type weapons? Was it an ISIS-directed attack?

Humans are complex beings whose behavior can be driven by forces of which even they may be unaware. Frustration and anger, focused on one group or another, are often precursors of violence. There seems to be consensus that the shooter was not a "member" of ISIS, communicating with ISIS, following ISIS instructions for this massacre, nor was he trained, funded or otherwise aided by ISIS.

So then why do I say only "almost all" are wondering? Because surely there are some Americans in our national security establishment who are fully aware of the significance of ISIS' role, and what it means for our global anti-terrorist strategy.

And what might they know that they haven't shared with the rest of us?

They know that, however evil ISIS may be, it is also incredibly nimble and adaptive to modern technology and changed conditions. ("Can't bring metal guns or box cutters on planes anymore? OK, let's try undetectable plastic bombs in our shoes.")

In Iraq and Syria they have to risk their lives placing bombs along the roadside. We can drop even bigger bombs from unmanned airplanes without risking the life of a single pilot. It's no match. Theirs is a terrorist operation. Ours is a military operation. We can leave it to the International Criminal Court to sort out the ethical differences.

It's not going well for ISIS on the ground. So much so, that they are now discouraging the flow of replacement troops to help defend their new caliphate state.

They've tried ISIS-trained terrorists executing ISIS drafted plans outside of their territory -- in Europe and elsewhere. Sometimes successful (from their twisted perspective), that approach is also not working as well as it once did. The U.S. and its allies have become better at tracking the movement of their members, money and messages. Besides, it's expensive at a time when cash flow is declining.

So now they're trying another innovative strategy.

Officials from Orlando assure us that the shooter was not a member of ISIS, as he claimed, since it would be inconsistent with his claims at various times to have been a member of other terrorist organizations, some of which were opposed to ISIS. Officials are probably right about that -- if not solely for those reasons. And a few years ago that would have cleared both ISIS and the shooter of any ISIS involvement.

But those observations miss what Paul Harvey used to call, "the rest of the story."

To understand the latest switch in ISIS strategy and tactics you need to reflect, first, on the expression "practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty." Are you familiar with it? Do you practice it? I try to.

Note that, in following it, little if any money or other resources are required -- and certainly no major military operation. It may be simply a kind word or greeting to one of those millions of Americans who go through their days feeling as if they must be invisible to the rest of us.

Note also that there is no organizational planning or operation. This is not something that your local church, synagogue, or mosque is behind, orders you to do, or assists you in executing -- although it is something that may be consistent with its teachings.

Now consider, if it is possible for undirected individuals to do "random acts of kindness" all on their own, with little resources and no direction, it is also possible for undirected individuals to do "random acts of violence."

Indeed, the expression "random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty," at its creation, was a rejoinder to the expression "random acts of violence and senseless acts of cruelty."

And that, like the switch from guns to plastic bombs on planes, is ISIS' latest switch in strategy and tactics for responding to what they view as our war on them.

Their message, first in the fall of 2014 (as quoted at the top of this blog essay), and repeated this spring, has been (in effect and sometimes literally): "Don't come to the Middle East to fight along side us. Don't travel to training camps to learn terrorist techniques. Stay where you are, use what you have, kill and injure those you can reach. It doesn't have to be a military facility. You don't have to use a bomb. You don't even have to use a gun if you don't have one. You can kill with a knife, or a rock, or a car. You can drop someone from the roof of a tall building. Don't contact us. You don't need additional permission or instructions. But for the sake of keeping the ISIS movement alive, it is very important that you make a public declaration that you have done what you've done in the name of ISIS."

This is what happened in Orlando. Yes, there was hatred; yes, the shooter is at best a very odd duck; yes, AR-15-style weapons are easily accessible in Florida. But the pattern of violence followed by a statement of allegiance to ISIS is clear.

This pattern -- random acts of violence, followed by a statement about ISIS -- has evolved from repeated incidents in Australia, Canada, France and the U.S. (involving guns, knives, and automobiles) -- the very countries, and methods, suggested by Adnani. Orlando is just the latest.

Oh, no, I guess it's now just next to the latest: "The murder of two police officials by a man claiming allegiance to so-called Islamic State (IS) is 'unquestionably a terrorist act,' President Francois Hollande says." BBC -- "30 minutes ago."

That switch in ISIS strategy makes the job of the NSA, FBI, CIA, military, and local law enforcement even more difficult than it is already. But it's the consequence of our military "success" in Iraq and Syria, so we best confront that reality and pivot as promptly as possible -- starting with a public discussion of what we're now confronting.

[With thanks to Rachel Maddow.]

# # #
The following day [June 15] a story appeared in the Washington Post that provides support for some of the assertions in this blog essay:

“America and Russia stop bombing the Islamic state . . . I pledge my alliance to [Islamic State leader] abu bakr al Baghdadi . . . may Allah accept me,” Omar Mateen wrote [in Facebook] . . ..

Mateen then posted . . .: “The real muslims will never accept the filthy ways of the west” and “You kill innocent women and children by doing us airstrikes . . . now taste the Islamic state vengeance.” . . .

The social media postings corroborate accounts that Mateen was motivated in part by a perceived connection to the Islamic State. The shooter made 911 phone calls during the shooting in which he pledged allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, . . ..

FBI Director James B. Comey said . . . there were no signs that Mateen was directly tied to any kind of network, and . . . it remained unclear exactly which extremist group he supported. Mateen’s references to terrorist groups have at times been muddled. Officials say he made comments in recent years to co-workers claiming he had family connections to al-Qaeda and was a member of Hezbollah, two opposing terrorist groups that have clashed repeatedly in Syria.

Kevin Sullivan, Ellen Nakashima, Matt Zapotosky and Mark Berman, "Orlando Shooter Posted Messages on Facebook Pledging Allwegiance to the Leader of ISIS and Vowing More Attacks," Washington Post (online), June 15, 2016, 11:12 p.m.

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Cyber Warfare, Hacking, and You

June 17, 2011, 12:06 p.m.; with added critique June 18, 2011, 8:30 a.m., and June 19, 2011, 9:15 p.m.

[NOTE, June 18: Since posting this blog entry, I requested and received a critique from someone with more inside knowledge than I possess. (She/he wishes to remain unidentified.) Excerpts from her/his comments have now been embedded throughout the blog entry -- within brackets, quotes, and in this font.

It might have been less embarrassing to simply revise what I had written, but I have almost always been more interested in letting curiosity propel inquiry wherever it may lead than in being "proven right." Besides, it's both more honest and also more interesting reading to share with you both my text and the critique as written.]

A Primer
The hacker community -- Lulz Security and Anonymous, among others -- have had a good couple of weeks.

["Your first error is in referring to 'the hacking community.' There isn't one. Non-hackers tend to view hackers as a community due to the fact we have shared technical skills and some grossly similar social features. The reality is that if the 'hacking community' exists, it's an anarchist mob that's defined by temporary alliances, shifting loyalties, cults of personality and people whose fads have briefly aligned. Enduring long-term associations and friendships do exist, but they're much more rare than people think. We generally do not socialize very much outside our circles. Our few social mavens are rare birds, and prized for their abilities to make magic happen just by putting the right people together and standing well clear of the result.

"The 'hacking community,' to the extent it exists at all, is more a pool of diverse skills, philosophies and capabilities, which self-organizes in response to events. Consider the Iranian protests of a few months ago: there were contingents of pro-democracy hackers who were putting together anonymous relays to help get a trickle of uncensored communications into/from Iran, there were contingents of pro-regime hackers who were trying to shut down the pro-democracy types, and there were even jackasses who were exploiting the entire thing for juvenile sophomoric jokes ('the lulz'). Take any significant, serious event in the world and the 'hacking community' will within hours develop at least three or four responses to it, many of which are in open conflict with the others."]

Their targets have ranged from PBS and Sony, to Citibank and Lockhead, Google, the IMF, CIA, FBI, White House and U.S. Senate.

It has not been without cost. Sunday [June 12] Turkish police detained 32 members of the Anonymous cyberactivism collective on suspicion of planning attacks on a number of websites, after Anonymous took down the Website of Turkey's Directorate of Telecommunications. And Spanish authorities arrested three of the Anons group two days earlier on suspicion on organizing the cyber attacks against Sony, banks and governments.

["Second, the Turkish police didn't arrest 32 members of the Anonymous collective. There is no collective. It isn't as if these people carry membership cards and hang out in a clubhouse. Even the most hardcore Anonymouser wouldn't consider herself to be a 'member of Anonymous' or a 'part of Anonymous'. She might say that she /is/ Anonymous, which means she has adopted their political platform and is an autonomous agent spontaneously organizing with other like-minded people to perform acts.

"The hacking community, as it were, is *radically decentralized* -- decentralized to such a degree that most people can't imagine it functions at all. (And hackers grit our teeth and mumble, 'well, now that you mention it, it really *doesn't*.') It would be more accurate to say the Turks arrested 32 people who they allege have acted in concert under the banner of Anonymous -- but in the same breath you should say there is no guarantee these 32 people represented the beliefs of Anonymous as a whole, *because there is no such whole*.

"Compare to, e.g., if you said the Turkish police arrested 32 people from the freedom of religion collective. There really is no 'freedom of religion collective': freedom of religion is a philosophy which has many adherents, most practitioners of which want to murder the others who are believing in the wrong god and using their freedom poorly.

"And that's exactly what Anonymous is. Anonymous is a philosophical banner beneath which different people self-organize to perform acts in accordance with the ideals of Anonymous (to the extent it has any, and the jury's still out on that). What are the ideals of Anonymous? Well, Anonymous has been in a constant state of civil war in order to determine just that...

[[My source subsequently [June 19] provided me with additional evidence of his/her judgment that "the hacker 'community' [is caught up in] fractious, internecine conflict, cults of personality, fads, etc. Case in point. LulzSec and Anomyous are, as near as I can tell, identical in philosophy, goals and methods, and yet they're still engaged in a hatefest." She/he cites Matthew Lynley, "Hit the deck: LulzSec and Anonymous start trading blows," Venture Beat, June 15, 2011 ("Hacker group LulzSec has begun publicly attacking hacker group Anonymous, an action that could lead to a civil war of sorts between the two hacker groups that have similar origins.").]]

"The associations within a freedom-of-religion-collective would be rather permanent: people rarely wake up one day and decide, 'today I think I'll be a Buddhist.' The associations within Anonymous are in a constant state of flux as internal power battles play out."]

The Internet has grown faster than Kudzu; in fact, it is the largest and fastest growing anything in the history of the world -- and there's nobody in charge. If a part of the backbone goes down, the traffic routes itself around it and follows another path. That was a deliberate part of the Defense Department's plan in creating the Internet's predecessors: it wanted a communications system that could not be knocked out with a single bomb on "headquarters."

["Third, the DoD did not plan for the internet to survive nuclear strikes. Urban myth. The DoD didn't want the internet at all. The DoD was, through the Advanced Research Projects Agency, funding a lot of different scientists in a lot of different places. These scientists said, 'hey, can we spend some of our research grants to build a better way for us to collaborate?' ARPA said yes. In those days communication channels were unreliable and expensive, so ARPA's scientists developed a network that could work even if large parts of it went down. The rest, as they say, is history. The DoD has never trusted the internet to handle national-defense data: rather than trust the internet, DoD much prefers to trust MILNET (its own version of the internet)."]

Whether the global hacking community deliberately modeled its organizational structure and governance on that of the Internet, or did so as a matter of necessity, it is equally resilient. Whatever may happen to the 32 in Turkey and the three in Spain, the organizations and the hacking by their members will continue.

What's going on is serious enough that, without getting into the jargon and details of hacking techniques, each of us needs to have at least some basic understanding of what's happening. And that understanding requires that we recognize the enormous variation in the sophistication of hackers' techniques, their motives, and the consequences of their actions.

Let's consider these variations in turn.

Sophistication of techniques.

It helps to begin with the variations in sophistication of those doing mischief in what the cyberati refer to as the "brick and mortar" world in which the rest of us live. Consider the range. A burglar may see three days of newspapers in a driveway with no cars in sight, try each of the exterior doors, find one that opens (or a key under the door mat), walk in and walk out with the new HD wall screen TV. A company's bookkeeper or accountant may design accounts and transactions that can cover for years their embezzlement of thousands of dollars. Art thieves may figure out how to disable, or otherwise get around, heat sensors, motion detectors, and video cameras, to make off with a multi-million-dollar painting. Or our military may design fighter planes that fly with no pilots, send video recordings thousands of miles back to control centers, and fire missiles at designated targets.

Just as there is unsophisticated brick-and-mortar crime, there is also unsophisticated virtual world, electronic crime. It doesn't require much sophistication to find a credit card in the parking lot of a big box store, pick it up, and use it to make some purchases there. It doesn't require much more to get into a computer network if an employee's user name and password are displayed on a Post-It note stuck to the monitor's screen. Information that ought to have been encrypted, and kept behind more than one firewall, may have been inadvertently left on a public Web site or made equally vulnerable. In fact, an awful lot of what's characterized as "hacking" involves little more than asking -- a current, or former, employee may provide the necessary information, perhaps even one who designed the security system. The credit card information may be obtained from a receipt found in a dumpster. A hidden camera may record users' ATM pin number key strokes.

A Google search for "denial of service attack tools" (software) produces nearly a million hits. Some of what Lulz Sec and Anonymous members have been doing involve denial of service attacks. They send so many requests to a Web site that its servers slow down or stop, preventing legitimate users from gaining access. Such attacks are a nuisance, a big nuisance, but they need not do any harm to infrastructure or physical property, and do not provide the attacker access to the contents of the site, or its network. It's something experienced teenagers can do, if so inclined.

Similarly, while designing malicious software programs may require some sophistication, getting them onto a computer inside a secure location may involve little more than putting them on a thumb drive, leaving it in the building's parking lot, and hoping some employee will find it, put it in their computer to see what's on it, and thereby unwittingly load the hidden software onto the institution's "secure" computer network.

At the other extreme, what has been described as "the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed," a complex computer program called "Stuxnet," is suspected to have been the creation of some of the most brilliant computer programmers in the West. It was specifically designed to attack the centrifuges in Iran's weapons grade uranium facility, causing them to spin at speeds ultimately producing their self-destruction. This destruction, under the watchful eyes of Iran's trained scientists, was made possible by the program's additional ability to simultaneously take over the recording and reporting facilities, which continued to display to the facility's guardians that everything was operating normally when it was not.

This is the kind of sophisticated attack that could be waged by an enemy against our infrastructure, such as the electric grid -- turning off the traffic, as well as the house, lights, shutting down air traffic control, the stock market, banks and financial transactions, turning off the natural gas and gasoline pipelines, and filing stations' gas pumps, and so forth. Except, of course, such a strike would be far, far easier than what the Stuxnet was designed to do -- and accomplished.

["Fourth, under 'Sophistication of techniques,' you should also put 'velocity' of techniques. If a particular criminal offense nets you only $0.001 per attempt it's clearly more worthwhile to you to flip burgers at McDonald's. If you can do a million attempts per second, though, you're now raking in $1000 /per second/ and you're going to be sipping mai-tais on a beach somewhere. Network crime doesn't have to be particularly efficient or effective, because the network allows you to do so damn much of it.

"Velocity -- the ability to scale up your efforts -- is a big deal. One real mark of sophistication is velocity. A well-designed computer virus can infect 95% of all susceptible computers on the internet in about fifteen minutes. Quite often, by the time you know you're under attack it's too late and you've already lost. Against an unsophisticated teenager, reactive security measures work pretty well. Against a sophisticated operator, reactive security measures are pretty much useless."]

Could it happen? It could, according to the Director of the CIA, soon to be Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, who told Congress last week, "The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack that cripples our power systems, our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems."

Motives

The motives of hackers vary as much as the sophistication of their methods.

Some attacks, like Stuxnet, appear to be acts against one nation by another -- in that case literally, the history shows, an alternative to dropping bunker buster bombs on the facility (an option considered and rejected).

The Defense Department has recently declared that when a cyber attack on U.S. infrastructure, or defense installations, can be traced to another nation's government, it will be considered an act of war justifying our response with conventional military weaponry.

["Fifth, under 'Motives'" you're misquoting DoD badly. DoD has never said cyberattack *will* be considered an act of war. DoD has said that *depending on the consequences, it could be considered* an act of war. This is a pretty sensible policy. Your other points are quite accurate, though.

[[NJ: For more on the content, context, and challenges of this DOD declaration, see David E. Sanger and Elisabeth Bumiller, "Pentagon to Consider Cyberattacks Acts of War," New York Times, June 1, 2011, p. A10.]]

"Further, under 'Motives' you declare the hack of PBS was a protest about how they handled a Wikileaks story. The question becomes, why are you taking felons at their word for why they're committing their offenses? I suspect the real motive was because PBS is high profile and gets noticed -- the motive the attackers gave is just a rationalization and/or public-relations theory. 'We're engaged in political protest!' goes over in the public eye a lot better than 'we did it all for the lulz!'"]

There are a number of problems with this declaration. (1) Since our government is engaged in cyber attacks on other countries, presumably those countries could rationally justify dropping bombs on the United States. (2) It is often very difficult to know where cyber attacks are coming from. (3) Many involve multiple global operatives. For example, the computer theft of $10 million from banks was run out of 49 cities on multiple continents. (4) When a single country can be identified beyond a reasonable doubt, it's still not clear who is behind the attack: that country's government, its organized crime operatives, or just its precocious teenagers. If our government cannot know, let alone control, everything our mafia and teenage cyber gangs are up to, it's neither reasonable nor fair to expect that other countries are able to control what their criminals and teens do. (5) Indeed, a country ("country A") intent on harming another ("country B") could fairly easily construct a cyber attack on the U.S. in such a way as to make it appear that the attack on the U.S. came from country B, thereby causing the U.S. to launch a retaliatory attack on country B rather than country A. There are many potential examples, such as Pakistan and India, Israel and Palestine, North Korea and South Korea.

Shy of the devastation brought on by cyber warriors are the individuals engaged in serious, organized crime -- mass scale identity and credit card theft and resale, or movements of money (including that of banks and their clients).

Then there are those who do a little of the former, but are mostly just up to devilment -- a form of electronic vandalism. For example, the hack of PBS was a protest against a Frontline program about Wikileaks.

For those just beginning hacking -- eight of the Turkish 32 were minors -- hacking is often little more than a challenge, a hobby, and a way to earn the respect of one's hacking contemporaries and elders.

(Of course, there are also the white hats: those who are hired by the hacked company to try to break in, to test the adequacy of the company's security measures.)

Consequences

The consequences can vary from unsuccessful and unnoticed attempts at unauthorized entry, to little more than a minor nuisance (denial of service attacks), to taking over personal computers and using them to circulate harmful viruses or other malware, loss of national security secrets, or closing down vital infrastructure (such as the electric power grid).

Any unauthorized impact on a computer is something we need to know about and try to prevent. All are, not incidentally, already illegal. But in our efforts at prevention and enforcement it's important for us to be able to distinguish between that which could bring down our country's infrastructure, and that which is kids' play.

["Sixth, under 'Consequences': it is not strictly speaking necessarily illegal for someone to attempt to exceed their granted authority to a system (although a naive reading of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could make one think otherwise). C.f. the Lori Drew case, where Drew was accused of violating CFAA because she violated a website's terms of service. The government's rationale was the ToS was the grant of authority, she violated the ToS, therefore she exceeded her authority and violated CFAA. The judge in the case threw out Drew's conviction."]

Obviously, if the computer systems of governments and major corporations are vulnerable, so are yours and mine. What can we do to protect ourselves?

Self-defense

There is probably little or nothing we can do to protect ourselves from the kind of sophisticated attack that could be imagined and implemented by hackers with the skills of those able to create something like the Stuxnet worm. Fortunately, such individuals are few and far between and those that exist are not likely to waste their professional time trying to read our Microsoft Word documents.

["Seventh, under 'Self-defense.' When you say there is little to nothing regular people can do to defend themselves against serious attackers, you're being both too optimistic and too pessimistic. A very important concept is *target specificity*. If a highly trained cyberwarfare operator with a few years of dirty tricks experience decides to target you, and you specifically, then there is literally nothing you can do about it -- not even unplugging your PC will work, since so many of the vital records in your life exist on computer systems beyond your control. At the same time, though, if you are not a specific target, there's a lot you can do. Keep a well-honed sense of skepticism. Check with your OS vendor regularly for security updates. Don't open random things people send you in email. Browse the Web with Firefox or Google, and not Internet Explorer. Etc., etc. There's not much you can do about a bullet with your name on it, but there's a /lot/ you can do about all the hot lead flying around addressed 'To Whom It May Concern.'"]

But there are a good many basic and obvious things we can do to protect ourselves from the electronic devilment, vandalism, and theft to which we may be vulnerable. Use common sense (and a locking cable) to prevent theft of the entire laptop. Create more complex passwords than "password." Don't write user names and passwords on paper kept within easy access from the laptop. Use encryption for documents that warrant it. Get good quality virus protection software and keep it up to date. If you have a home Wi-Fi signal others could access, make it a locked, password protected signal.

And while we're at it, recall the observation that every hard drive will, someday, crash; we just don't know when. So make regular backups (or offloads) of any documents you care about onto an external hard drive (or two; one stored somewhere away from home or office). That way, if the laptop self-destructs from an attack, is lost or stolen, or is otherwise destroyed (or the time comes for your hard drive to crash) you will at least have retained the computer's contents -- which may be much more valuable to you than the computer itself.

I will close with one final observation regarding the extent to which we, and our friends, are our own worst enemies when it comes to protecting our privacy and identity. Most of the privacy and identity we have "lost" we have willingly given away in exchange for what we've perceived as benefits.

The credit card company knows what cities and stores we have been in, at what hour of what days, what we purchased and what we paid. The bank has all our loan and checking account records (legally considered their records, not ours). It knows where and when we've visited ATM machines, and how much cash we withdrew. Our cell phone carrier knows where we've been, and when, whom we've called, and how long we've talked. The airlines know where we've flown and when. Some have as well our Social Security numbers, birthday, address and phone numbers.

They haven't hacked or otherwise stolen this information from us. We've voluntarily given it to them. We believe that the use of checks, credit cards, ATMs, cell phones and airlines is well worth the loss of privacy.

What we may not be aware of is that the Supreme Court says once we voluntarily give information about ourselves to third parties, (a) we no longer have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" with regard to that information, and (b) the third parties are free to hand it over to law enforcement, or others, without letting us know they have done so. And the government has not violated our Fourth Amendment rights to be protected from governmental "search or seizure" if it was third parties, rather than the government, that obtained the information in the first place and simply handed it over to the government when asked.

Walt Kelly, the creator of the comic strip character Pogo, once had him say, in the context of environmental issues, “We have found the enemy, and he is us.” So it is with our loss of privacy. Much of the problem is not that George Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother is watching us (and digging through our trash, as the FBI is now permitted to do without a warrant).

The problem is that we and our Facebook friends are the “enemy,” watching us, recording us, photographing and videoing us, writing and commenting about us, circulating all of the above, and filing it all away, in public (on Facebook; and on Facebook’s servers forever), where Big Brother can come and just download it all. The government can then include and save it with all the other databases that include records and information about us (school, medical, military, vehicle and criminal, credit card, bank, real estate, etc.). It can then “data mine” all of this information to its black heart’s content. Facebook's latest invasion -- face recognition, plus "tagging" of individuals in photos -- added to the rest, now makes potentially available to the FBI, CIA and NSA everything a criminal record would contain but our fingerprints. (And with fingerprint ID gaining in popularity for check cashing and door opening, they may soon have that as well.)

If none of this bothers you, if it's worth the services you get in return, fine. No problem. Just make sure it's really what you want.

It is a whole new jumbled jungle of two worlds out there. One is a virtual world of blue smoke, reflective mirrors, electrons and no parachutes. The other is a world of crumbling brick and mortar. Both offer wonderful opportunities from which we benefit. Both also present risks which we ignore at our peril.

Have a nice day.

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