Sascha-Dominik Dov Bachmann, Bournemouth University and Anthony Paphiti, Bournemouth University

Huawei’s role in building new 5G networks has become one of the most controversial topics in current international relations. The US is exercising direct diplomatic pressure to stop states from using the Chinese telecoms giant. The US government regards Huawei as a clear and present danger to national security and argues that any ally opting for Huawei will compromise vital intelligence sharing among these countries in the future.

So far Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam and Japan have heeded the US call to ban Huawei. The UK, however, is still considering using Huawei to build non-core elements of its new internet infrastructure. Differences over the matter within the UK government recently led to the sacking of defence secretary, Gavin Williamson.

When assessing the risks of having Huawei involved in building 5G infrastructure, it’s important to consider not just the security risk from Huawei, but also the wider context of international relations. It’s important to first recognise that China is a major cyber-power.

The Chinese government has been using cyber-operations since at least 2006 for strategic and military gains. Tracing the origins of hacks is difficult but China is accused of a number of hacks on government departments in the US and around the world.

Military operations aside, US politicians say Chinese cyber-enabled espionage directed at the US economy has resulted in an estimated loss of US$300 billion a year in intellectual property theft.

Risky business

Additional risks come from China’s increasing military cooperation with Russia, NATO’s main rival. And also that China seems keen to supplement its Belt and Road Initiative of global trade dominance with dominance in cyberspace. Huawei offers highly competitive pricing that could drive out rivals and this potential monopoly could be costly in the long run for countries that rely too heavily on it.

It is in the context of China’s growing cyber-power that Huawei is seen as a risky business partner when it comes to developing critical infrastructure, such as a new 5G network. Huawei may insist that it is an independent company that does not have ties to the Chinese government, but this is not how it looks to Western powers. According to the CIA, Huawei has received funding from both the Chinese army and Chinese state intelligence. Plus, it does not help that Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei was once an engineer in the Chinese army and that the company’s ownership lies with a “trade union committee” that is appointed by the state.

Then there’s China’s National Intelligence Law of 2017, which requires Chinese companies “to provide necessary support, assistance and cooperation” with national intelligence work, if called upon. So Huawei’s assurances that it will not hand over customer data to the government are difficult to trust. All the more so given China’s track record of using private actors for the purposes of spying.

Backdoors and vulnerabilities

If a country’s 5G network is compromised, this could open it up to a number of risks. First, there’s simply access to information that is transmitted across the network. More worryingly, the “internet of things” will be built on 5G. Everyday devices will all be connected – from driverless cars to smart fridges, speakers and traffic signals.

This opens the possibility for a determined actor (whether state or non-state) to control these important processes. A cyber-attack via 5G infrastructure could lead to significant damage to property and even loss of life, and would amount to an armed attack under international law.

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has a dedicated Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre. Its 2019 report found no evidence of Chinese state interference or the deliberate introduction of “backdoors” that could be used to siphon off information. But it does criticise Huawei’s technology for being generally vulnerable to attack. The potential risks, however, apply to any equipment vendor that the UK may choose to use instead of Huawei.

In light of the current US government’s tough stance on China, in terms of trade and security, it is fair to ask if the present US warnings have more to do with denying market access to a strong competitor than security concerns? If so, the UK may have to decide whether it values its relations with the US or China more. As well as the security risks that Huawei may pose, the UK must consider the importance of maintaining its information sharing arrangement with the US and the other “Five Eyes” countries, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

The trust issue will always remain with Huawei because of its proximity to the Chinese government. But, after the UK’s top spies said Huawei could be “managed” in terms of potential security risks, the main risk at the moment seems to be diplomatic. Namely, repercussions with Washington and the potential backlash regarding a post-Brexit trade deal and suspension of intelligence sharing. With China potentially becoming a global adversary to the West as a whole (not just the US), the UK should bear in mind which side it is choosing when deciding who builds its 5G infrastructure.

Sascha-Dominik Dov Bachmann, Associate Professor in International Law (BU) and (extraordinary) Reader in War Studies (SEDU), Bournemouth University and Anthony Paphiti, Visiting Research Fellow in Conflict, Rule of Law and Society, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

John McAlaney, Bournemouth University and Helen Thackray, University of Portsmouth

Cyber security incidents are gaining an increasingly high profile. In the past, these incidents may have been perceived primarily as a somewhat distant issue for organisations such as banks to deal with. But recent attacks such as the 2017 Wannacry incident, in which a cyber attack disabled the IT systems of many organisations including the NHS, demonstrates the real-life consequences that cyber attacks can have.

These attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, using psychological manipulation as well as technology. Examples of this include phishing emails, some of which can be extremely convincing and credible. Such phishing emails have led to cyber security breaches at even the largest of technology companies, including Facebook and Google.

To face these challenges, society needs cyber security professionals who can protect systems and mitigate damage. Yet the demand for qualified cyber security practitioners has quickly outpaced the supply, with three million unfilled cyber security posts worldwide.

So it might come as a surprise that there is already an active population with a strong passion for cyber security – hackers. This is a term with many negative connotations. It evokes the stereotypical image of a teenage boy sat in a dark room, typing furiously as green text flies past on the computer monitor, often with the assumption that some criminal activity is taking place. The idea of including such individuals in helping build and protect cyber systems may seem counter intuitive.

But – as we have highlighted in our recent research – the reality of hacking communities is more complex and nuanced than the stereotypes would suggest. Even the phrase “hacker” is contentious for many individuals who may be labelled hackers. This is because it has lost the original meaning: of someone who uses technology to solve a problem in an innovative manner.

Hacking today

There are a growing number of online hacking communities – and regular offline meetings and conventions where hackers meet in person. One of the largest of these events is DEFCON, held every year in Las Vegas and attended by up to 20,000 people. These hacking communities and events are an important source of information for young people who are becoming involved in hacking, and may be the first contact they have with other hackers.

On the surface, the conversations that are held on these forums often relate to sharing information. People seek advice on how to overcome different technical barriers in the hacking process. Assistance is given to those who are having difficulties – provided that they firstly demonstrate a willingness to learn. This reflects one of the characteristics of hacking communities, in that there is a culture of individuals demonstrating passion and the desire to overcome barriers.

But such events are about more than sharing practical skills. As individuals, we are strongly influenced by those around us, often to a greater agree that we are aware of. This is especially the case when we are in a new environment and unsure of the social norms of the group. As such, these online and offline hacking communities also provide an important source of social identity to individuals. They learn what is and what is not acceptable behaviour, including the ethics and legality of hacking.

Myths and opportunities

It is important to stress here that hacking is not an inherently illegal activity. There are many opportunities to engage in ethical hacking, which refers to attempting to hack systems for the purpose of finding and fixing the flaws that malicious hackers may try to exploit for criminal activity.

Our research demonstrates that the majority of people active within hacking communities have no wish to exploit the flaws they find although they do believe that such flaws should be exposed so that they can be addressed – especially when the organisation concerned is holding public data and have sufficient resources that it is reasonable to feel they should not have any gaps in their cyber security in the first place. Several large and well-known companies actively engage with this culture, by offering hackers “bug bounties” – financial rewards for identifying and reporting previously undiscovered weaknesses in their systems.

Of course criminal hacking does happen – and many of the people we have spoken to acknowledge that they take part in activities that are of questionable legality in order to achieve their goal of finding the flaws in a system. This creates a risk for those people, especially young adults, who are becoming involved in hacking. Through ignorance or through being wilfully misled, they may become involved in activities that result in them gaining a criminal record.

If so, this impacts not only them as an individual but also the cyber security profession. As a result of this culture, many companies are being deprived of individuals who could have helped fill the increasingly urgent gap in cyber security professionals. To address both of these problems, we need to move past unhelpful and negative stereotypes and work with young people and hacking communities to provide an awareness of how their passion and skills can be used to address the cyber security challenges that society faces.

John McAlaney, Associate Professor in Psychology, Bournemouth University and Helen Thackray, Senior Research Associate, University of Portsmouth

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Matthew Robert Bennett, Bournemouth University and Marcin Budka, Bournemouth University

Museums are often perceived as dusty cabinets full off dead and ancient things, especially those institutions you’ve never heard off. You know the ones, the neglected pride of county towns that could play a vital cultural and social role but struggle for funding.

For some, technology is the answer, virtually recreating museums and their contents online, or launching fancy augmented reality smartphone apps that overlay videos of the real world with interactive computer-generated content. We certainly see the potential for such apps to make museums more exciting, especially to young people, and have recently been using them to bring dinosaurs to life.

But sadly our experience suggests visitors just aren’t keen on downloading these apps. So is there another way technology can help revitalise musuems and similar attractions?

We are working on a project called PalaeoGo! that explores how museums and parks can be enhanced by augmented reality, 3D digitisation and new search engines. Our first foray with augmented reality was at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, US, using a smartphone app called Zappar to support research undertaken there.

Using the phone’s camera to scan a code on a notice board or flyer brings forward a 2D computer-generated image superimposed on the phone’s live camera feed. Users can see a troop of mammoths walk over the horizon with the real landscape behind, or have their selfies taken with a mammoth. We’ve since created our own free app that recreates augmented reality dinosaurs and other extinct reptiles and mammals in 3D, without the need to scan a code.

We deployed the mammoth and a T. rex at various events in 2017 and 2018, allowing visitors to pose for selfies. The tech was embraced enthusiastically, not just by children but by older generations as well. We found the sense of technological wonder coupled with a chance to strike a silly pose with an extinct animal really appealed to the visitors.

But when we first deployed the app at a museum, in summer 2018 at the Etches Collection on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, it challenged our thinking. In fact, it stopped us dead. When we had staff on site to show people what was possible with our own tablets and phones, the technology had an impact and people were excited to see it in action (although they did not always download the app). But no one engaged when we relied on posters and banners to encourage visitors to download and use the app.

We failed at the first step, not due to a lack of interest in the technology or in the 3D dinosaurs deployed, but due to the fundamental reluctance of visitors to download museum apps. We have since found this experience to be shared by others, such as Skybox Museum, who also struggle to get visitors to download their app deployed at their site in Manchester. In fact, the feedback we’ve received so far suggests that simply getting people to download a museum app, rather than a problem with the underlying technology, is the biggest obstacle to its success.

What makes people download apps?

To find out why, we immersed ourselves in a growing body of consumer-based research on smartphone apps. It turns out that the characteristics of an app are less important when it comes to getting people to download it than whether they trust the makers, and that brand loyalty and familiarity help build this trust. We also know that the potential for social interaction and pure enjoyment are more important than the usefulness or educational value of an app. People want to be entertained, engage with others and are wary of potential risks to their phones and personal data.

So when you’re asked to download an app at the doors of a museum, the default position is to decline. It’s a hard sell, especially if you have children in tow. Promoting the app in advance helps but, even if you overcome this reluctance, people still want a guarantee of fun.

What’s the answer? Games are an obvious possibility. Which regular museum visitor hasn’t seen a horde of children with clipboards on some form of quest or hunt? Promising a fun game is perhaps the key to getting children to try the augmented reality we know can change a museum experience.

The alternative is to make such resources available without an app, and we are exploring this. One solution might be to enable visitors to access it through their phone’s internet browser or via a standard QR code. Another idea we are trialling is to preload the technology onto a tablet hired like an audio guide at a museum’s entrance. As the software doesn’t need downloading it can be more complex, for example using locational technology such as GPS that can prompt the user to activate the device at a given spot and offer content tailored to their visit. But this would make social interaction and downloading those fun-filled selfies harder.

We believe that technology has much to offer the museums of the future. In fact, we would argue it’s essential to their survival. In particular, mixed reality, a form of enhanced augmented reality where real people and objects are displayed in virtual worlds, has some exciting potential to create immersive, engaging and educational content. But for once, the smartphone may not hold the key.

Matthew Robert Bennett, Professor of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, Bournemouth University and Marcin Budka, Professor of Data Science, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Maurizio Borghi, Bournemouth University

The new European Union Copyright Directive, passed recently by the European parliament after a vociferous campaign both for and against, has been described by its advocates as Europe striking a blow against US tech giants in the battle for control of copyrighted content online. This is painted as a battle about who pays for creative works, culture, and the role and workings of a free press in a world where these “commodities” are exchanged freely on social media and other platforms controlled by giants such as Google and Facebook.

The sense of this battle is found in two articles from the text of the new directive. Article 11 introduces the “press publishers’ right”, also called the “link tax”. This permits publishing groups such as newspapers and other media to charge online content sharing service providers and platforms – most obviously, Google, Facebook and Twitter – a fee for a licence to link to their content. Article 13 makes online content sharing service providers responsible for the copyright content uploaded by users. Large platforms must implement filters to monitor copyright infringements and obtain licences from music, film and television rights-holders for the use of copyright content where it appears on their services – YouTube and Instagram, for example. This has led to claims that the directive would effectively ban memes, because automated checking of uploads would identify them only as copyright material, rather than allowable “fair use” or “parody”.

Unsurprisingly, publishers and copyright industries across Europe have saluted the new law as a great victory of European culture and free press against the greedy American titans. But it is not this simple.

First-mover advantage

When companies like Google and Facebook started their ascent as global players in the mid-2000s, they benefited from a generally favourable legislative framework, made of legislative vacuum and liberal legislation. Thanks to the flexible contours of the “safe harbour” provisions for internet hosting services – which essentially immunises them from any liability for content uploaded by their users – YouTube rapidly became the main channel of distribution of music. Similarly, Facebook and Google News became major distributors of news (whether good, bad or “fake”).

The ascent of these companies was not without hurdles and challenges, including a chequered history of lawsuits from music, film and television companies against content-sharing platforms, and by press publishers against news aggregators, which eventually changed the legal contours of the hosting providers’ safe harbour in the European Union. As a result of these legal disputes, the tech firms have progressively adapted their business models from head-on challenge of copyright norms to adopting a more accommodating attitude towards copyright holders and press publishers.

Google, for example, has entered into various commercial agreements with news agencies and publishers to display content in Google News and Google Books. YouTube, a Google subsidiary, has entered into revenue-sharing agreements with copyright holders based on a technology called Content ID that detects, identifies and manages copyright-protected music and video uploaded by users. Facebook has struck similar deals with major music labels and has a partnership programme with news publishers. A large amount of the content we consume today through these platforms is authorised by the copyright owners and generates some revenue for them.

A hammer to crack a nut

So in this respect, what the new EU Copyright Directive now obliges the tech giants to do is largely what they do already. To be sure, it is an open question whether they pay enough for the privilege of making use of (and profiting from) all that content created by others. Admittedly, by obliging tech giants to pay press publishers and to obtain licences with copyright holders, the new directive may reduce their bargaining power with respect to the arrangements they must make with content creators, and therefore lead the copyright holders to increase their revenue share. This small (and largely uncertain) effect has some important consequences.

Take the directive’s article 13, which redefines the safe harbour for content-sharing providers. In effect, platforms like YouTube will be directly responsible for copyright content uploaded by their users (although they will continue to be shielded from direct liability for other wrongs committed by their users, such as defamation or hate speech). If this norm was in place ten or 15 years ago it would have prevented YouTube from becoming what it is today.

But now it is only good news for YouTube. The new directive will have little effect on its current business model (perhaps paying only a little more for contracts with copyright owners), but it will prevent others from challenging established firms’ dominant positions. Costs that for platforms like YouTube or Instagram today represent a small and ultimately insignificant portion of their profits are huge and potentially insurmountable barriers for new companies attempting to enter the market.

Only micro or small enterprises and non-commercial platforms – which are excluded from the effects of article 13 – will benefit from the same favourable legislative conditions that Facebook and Google experienced at the beginning of their career. But even these, as soon as they become more than start-ups, will have to operate in the same playing field as established giants – leaving them with no serious prospect of winning a substantial market share, challenging their dominance, or providing an outlet for innovation.

Quite the opposite from what was the intention, the Copyright Directive may ensure the current crop of tech giants retain their dominant position for a long time, possibly forever. Which one could say is not exactly bad news for them, and not exactly a victory for European creativity either.

Maurizio Borghi, Professor of Law, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.