future intrusions

12

Centralised defence of virusesYet there is an end in sight to widespreadvirus problems as responsibility for pro-tection is transferred from end usersback into the network, with monitoring and deletion of viruses car-ried out by ISPs or at specialised data treatment centres. This may well mean an end to the anti-virus package as we know it, although there will continue to be a need for spe-cialists to preside over the Internet as awhole.

A new type of intrusionBut this will not mean an end to prob-lems of intrusion for end users. Far fromit. It means though that the nature of the threat will change to “legitimate”commercial and government-sponsoredactivities involving surveillance and control over our online sessions. This willapply increasingly not just to PC sessionsbut also to the TV, whether or not thesetwo converge.

Internet users are already familiar ofcourse with the annoying pop ups thatdetract from the experience and seeming-ly cannot be entirely blocked by any filter. In the case of TV, advertisers are working on schemes to insert similarpop ups into programming content, in the hope of preventing viewers fromskipping them through recording and then fast forwarding. At the

same time advertisers are hoping to starttargeting individual consumers on the basis of publicly available informa-tion about their preferences and life styles, as well as on the basis of theprogramme they are currently watching.

Such capabilities are not far away. The US maker of video serversSeaChange already offers software that allows adverts to be targeted on thebasis of post code, nature of programmecontent, and prevailing weather conditions. By 2005 the companyexpects to extend this to allow individualconsumers to be targeted, with theprospect then of dynamically insertingadverts in programmes on the basis of personal information. For example if the person had just moved house, and it was cold, they could be targetedwith adverts about double glazing.Advertisers are becoming starry eyed at the potential, although ultimatelythey will all still be competing for thesame level of overall spending.

Ostensibly consumers should benefitthrough hearing about products or ser-vices they are more likely to be interestedin. But in practice it could become a formof multimedia junk mail, bombardingthem with unwanted adverts that theycannot after all get rid of because the TVcompanies have conspired to make thisalmost impossible. In theory the adventof digital programmable video recorderswas supposed to usher in an era of greaterpersonal choice, but then the advertisersspotted that they were in danger of losingtheir audiences as the ability to skip com-mercials increased. The outcome may bethat we will be able to obtain our programming on demand, watching what we want when we want, but that it will be the network where the contentis cached, not the consumer’s set top box.

Advert free content would still be available, but this itself would constitute a feature that we would becharged for. It is true that content has to be paid for one way or another, whether by subscription, licencefee, once off payment or advertising, butit is also true that enforcement of com-mercial realities upon consumers in theevolving digital age will impose limits ontheir access to and ability to manipulatecontent.

Another aspect of this is ability to copycontent for back up purposes or to gain access to it via different devices. But such right conflicts with the desire of studios to protect their intellectual property from unauthorized copying and distribution. The digital age increases the potential for pirating, but also

Centrally controlled intrusions — the futurethreatPhilip Hunter

Computer viruses have been at the top of the news recently as new strains emerge as a result perhaps of turf wars between virus writers. Plenty of innocentend users have suffered considerable grief as a result, and if anything the level of threat has worsened over the last year. Leading anti-virus packages from thelikes of Sophos and Norton catch plenty of circulating viruses and do a reason-able job if kept up to date, but in the immediate future there will be no guaran-teed protection against emerging strains, especially those with radically new characteristics.

There is an end in sightfor viruses as

responsibility becomes centralised

RFID could also be used totrack goods after they have

been purchased feedingback information to

advertisers

13

allows mechanisms to evolve that can monitor such activity. It will be possible,via “soft tagging” for broadcasters to keep taps on content even after full accessrights have been sold to the consumer.The content in a sense would be intelligent with the ability to report back to its owner whenever it was played or copied. It is possible of course for the boundaries of such technology to be constrained by legislation. But to some extent the genie is out of the bottle and it will be impossible to rein it back in entirely.

RFIDTalking of tagging, privacy and civil lib-erty groups are also paying close interestto a technology revolution fast emergingfrom the retail sector – radio barcoding.RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)as it is called involves embedding a smallchip capable of emitting a short burst ofradiation with a unique frequency signature within any object or organismof value. Already Tesco and Wallmartamong others are insisting that suppliers tag their products this way, toassist with tacking and to prevent“shrinkage”, ie theft. But RFID couldalso be used to track goods after they have been purchased, feeding backinformation that could be of great value for example in the one-to-oneadvertising mentioned earlier.

Certainly the civil liberties implicationsof RFID have not yet been fully appreci-ated, never mind addressed by legislators. At a recent conference delegates were surprised to find that their movements during the event had been tracked by RFID devices embedded in the named

badges handed out at the beginning. In this case the abuse of privacy washarmless but it demonstrated the potential.

Ironically RFID, having been designedto tackle theft, could prove a boon to

criminals and even terrorists, for it maynot be difficult to mimic the signals andas a result bypass security controls. WithRFID being used to drive automaticmovement of items, it could be fooledinto allowing through a fake package containing a bomb purporting to be an important compo-nent in a manufacturing process. At any rate this potential abuse needs to be addressed alongside civil liberty concerns.

Software as we know can also betagged, with cookies for example capableof feeding back information about theuser over the Internet. Now we see thatapparently dumb products and entertain-ment content can also be tagged, it is easyto see that Kofi Anand is not the onlyperson being monitored without hisknowledge. In various ways we are allgoing to be under continuous surveillance.

Control of TV and PC movesback to the centreMany accept this as an acceptable priceto pay for greater security, but there isalso a grievous sense of lost empower-ment. This word empowerment was agreat buzzword a decade ago and wassupposed to signify a transfer of powerout to employees and end users, with areduction in central control. We now, asusers of PCs and TVs, have far greater choice of content and information than 10 years ago. We canaccess far more TV channels along

with video on demand and interactiveservices. On the Internet, Google can connect us to any website on thebasis of a search within at most a few seconds, gaining from the phenome-nal proliferation in main addressable memory and the evolutionof vector database searching. But in asense we are ceding control of both TVand PC back to the network and thecentre.

Direct monitoringThere is also the issue of direct monitor-ing of activities, more particularly overthe Internet but also increasingly the TVas well. TV advertisers will be able to tellwhat we watch and when. On theInternet there have already been numerous prosecutions purely on the basis of choice of websites accessedand material downloaded. This is desirable of course in the case of childpornography, but nonetheless there is the risk of justice being miscarried. Ina recent case in the UK, a man was con-victed and jailed for three years largelyon the basis of downloads from child porn sites. The number of clicks he had made came up in the prosecutioncase, and there was some dispute over how reliable these figures were. Inother celebrated cases, defendants have argued that they were just assessingthe dangers for their children. Whateverthe merits of individual cases there is no doubt that the curious or mildly prurient must exercise some cau-tion when browsing, or else they willhave Inspector Knacker calling at theirdoor.

The same applies to teenagers inno-cently downloading music, and from now on videos too. They may be swooped on by over-zealous copyright enforcers from the film or recording industries. But the real message is that there is a price to payfor the brave new world of online infor-mation and entertainment, and this isnot just money. Viruses may well turnout to be just a transient component inthis.

future intrusions

We are all going to beunder continuous

surveillance

RFID...could prove a boonto criminals and even

terrorists