February 18 (Friday) 10:15 President
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The Chinese government is tightening restrictions on major IT companies. What is in the background? Noboru Nakatani, a former police officer, said, "Now, the personal information of users, including those of Chinese people, owned by major Chinese IT companies is far larger than the information held by the Chinese government. I think we want to keep it within our reach. " (2nd / 2nd in total)* This article is a re-edited version of Noboru Nakatani's "Super Introductory Digital Security" (Kodansha + α Shinsho).
Photo = iStock.com/Smederevac * The photo is an image--Photo = iStock.com/Smederevac■ Personal information held by major IT companies exceeds that of the Chinese government
China is now restricting major domestic IT companies.
China's Cybersecurity Law restricts anonymous communications and allows certain communications to be stopped at the will of the government.
Moreover, as in any country, antitrust laws are trying to control the activities of major corporations.
Under the National Intelligence Law, Chinese intelligence agencies are obliged to cooperate with both companies and individuals, so the data held by companies will be sucked up by the government. Now, the personal information of users, including those of Chinese people, owned by major Chinese IT companies is far larger than the information possessed by the Chinese government. Government officials would like to keep such information within their reach.
In China, smartphone payments, online shopping, utility bill payments, etc. are all done by services created by IT companies. Such information will include everything from personal daily activity history to hobbies and tastes to political ideas. And it can be said that such data is the information that the government wants to obtain at all costs.
The more data we collect, the more we can predict human behavior. It can be used for economic activities such as business, and it can also be used for national security and security maintenance as intelligence.
Not only Japanese businessmen who are assigned to China and users who use the products of Chinese IT companies, but also the general public need to be aware of such risks.
■ Data makes it possible to "manipulate other people"
What's scary if you keep collecting data?
Collect information on "what this person likes" and "what to sell to this person to buy" on online shopping sites and news sites.
If it's a business, it's unpleasant to know all your tastes, but some people may forgive it because it's convenient because it automatically guides you to recommended products that suit your tastes.
But what do you think when you hear that some countries may use it for national security purposes?
It is easier to understand if you replace "people" with "countries." Thoroughly collect data on the people of the target country to know what they want to do and what they should give them to fly. Also, if you want people in that country to believe in something, you can use articles and SNS to guide people's actions.
■ Is that decision really what you thought?
Moreover,
"What kind of news are these people seeing?" "What, who, and what are the sources of information?"
Understanding is also an important factor in knowing the other party. Especially if you look at the search history, browsing history, and communication history, you can see it quite clearly.
Targeting methods based on online advertising technology can also be used for public opinion manipulation.
For this purpose, your data will be collected in other countries, and articles with specific trends will appear as recommendations to you, and your political opinions will be manipulated without your knowledge. It is the modern digital society where such a worst situation can occur. In order to protect a democratic society, it is important to protect your information first.
Guide people in a particular direction based on big data. This means that AI is finding a desire that it is not even aware of. AI is reading your mind from the data so far.
And I'm trying to make a decision.
This is nothing but an influence on human thoughts. It means that the time has come to be able to do such things in no time after the spread of the Internet.
■ Data collection capabilities have evolved since the era of eavesdropping
If it is a nation, it collects or monitors information about individuals and groups in a particular country so that it has an advantage. Depending on whether the target is the government, the media, or the company, the perspective will change, but the information gathered in this way will also be the basic material for creating an external strategy.
In fact, espionage agencies and others have been collecting such data through intelligence activities for a long time. In the old days, they tried to know the policy of the country by eavesdropping on the talks of leaders and senior officials and monitoring telephone calls.
Now, by simply downloading data via the Internet, it is possible to instantly know what is happening in this country, including economic and social activities and speech space.
Furthermore, it is becoming possible to turn it over and to weaken the flow by giving specific information to specific people. Aiming for that, in some countries, the nation is forcibly sucking information from every corner of society.
With a wide variety of all kinds of data, the accuracy of data and AI analysis will be further improved.
■ A sense of caution that increases in GAFA that can transcend nations
Nowadays, there are concerns that major platformers (data infrastructure companies) such as GAFA may become huge and too powerful and pose a threat to democracy.
Therefore, in Europe, the GDPR (EU General Data Protection Regulation), which strictly regulates the handling of data, has been enacted, and in the background of the debate about the necessity of GAFA regulation in the United States, the meaning of restraint to the existence that can transcend such nations. There is.
Recently, Apple and Google have restricted tracking on the Web only in response to such anxieties and dissatisfactions.
During the Interpol era, I was also paying attention to "monitoring software" that can monitor data with any application. Surveillance software is called spyware and is now used in quite a few countries.
Until now, government agencies themselves have spent a huge amount of money to develop monitoring technology, but now it is possible to perform similar monitoring with a system made by the private sector. Only a few companies in the world sell surveillance software exclusively to government agencies in this area. It is said that none of the companies that provide the service sell it to other than public institutions.
Photo = iStock.com/kohei_hara * The photo is an image--Photo = iStock.com/kohei_hara■ Private monitoring software that can enter the target's brain
When I was at Interpol, I actually had the opportunity to see a demo of a private surveillance software.
There, a video is played first, and a presentation is given, such as "looking into the other person's head."
Then, a state in which messages, phone calls, photos, phonebooks, communication history, search history, etc. can all be accessed from the e-mail in the smartphone is displayed on the screen. In other words, all the actions of the targeted person will be naked.
You can really see all of that person. It's an image of getting into the brain.
The reality is that private companies provide the services that make this possible.
What is widely known now is the system called "Pegasus" sold by a company called NSO Group in Israel and the system called "Finfisher" provided by Gamma Group in the United Kingdom. However, they are used in dozens of countries and are said to be so powerful spyware that the government of a country with a manufacturing company has an influence on who to sell to.
Regarding NSO spyware, it has been announced that the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the US Ministry of Commerce added it to the "Entity List" (list of companies subject to US product export ban) in November 2021. From that fact, we can see the power of the company's system.
■ All the person correlation charts of the target person are visualized
So how is the information gathered by spyware used?
Of course, you can see emails and SNS exchanges, of course, when you actually see the demo, the importance of the content is of course, but the metadata is very useful information. Metadata is of great value, especially for intelligence agencies.
Metadata is information data such as various files, that is, if one message is taken as an example, it is not the content of the message, but the individual who communicated with whom, by what means, and for how long. It is the data related to the communication activity of.
By doing so, it is possible to visualize what kind of people's networks are in the world. The image is that a correlation diagram of the people who are interacting with each other is completed.
It is also possible to visualize individual and group communication and information traffic networks using metadata.
Photo = iStock.com/Orbon Alija * The photo is an image--Photo = iStock.com/Orbon AlijaUltimately, the network of the target person, such as the target, is grasped by adding the human intelligence (human intelligence information) collected at the site by intelligence personnel and the like. If you look at the database, you can see at a glance who is connected to whom, when, who, where, and what.
■ IT industry interest is from 5G to 6G
5G (5th generation mobile communication system), which has been fully introduced in the world since 2019. Although the introduction of 5G with the new Corona-ka is lacking in topicality, the IT industry is actually heading toward 6G.
The United States started 5G on a trial basis in 2018. Then, in April 2019, the United States and South Korea launched a 5G communication service that can be used on smartphones. In China, the three major telecommunications carriers, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom, have started 5G communication services since November of the same year.
Regarding this 5G, Huawei of China sold 5G communication equipment at a low price and expanded its share to the world, which led to the conflict between the United States and China over the communication infrastructure.
With 5G, the delay in communication during communication is less than 1 millisecond (1/1000 second), and there is no time lag when voices reach even by telephone. In addition, multi-connections that can connect 1 million devices at the same time per square kilometer are possible, data communication is stable, and power consumption is low.
And development has already begun on the next-generation communication standard (6G) for 5G.
■ 6G eliminates the boundary between the real world and digital space
6G is said to have 10 times the communication speed compared to 5G. The number of devices that can be connected at the same time has increased 10 times, and the power consumption has been reduced to 1/100.
Everything from the city to the things around us is expected to be seamlessly connected to the network, faster than 5G, and more connected.
There will no longer be a difference between the real world and digital space. And for that, many digital devices are used, and everything is converted into data. The point is that our lives are made up of data.
How is such data used?
Data is accumulated more and more, and it is analyzed and visualized. As a result, a large "flow" that was previously invisible to the human eye can be seen. All of this is supported by the data that is collected without our knowledge.
■ Data from private companies influences Japan's national policy
With the new Corona, NTT DoCoMo and others were predicting the flow of people in the city. That prediction also takes statistical values based on the location information of mobile phones.
Noboru Nakatani "Super Introductory Digital Security" (Kodansha + α new book)There is no point of view of "personal information protection". The important thing is that such services from the private sector will also influence national policy.
Various keywords have appeared in the latest digital situation that we have seen so far. Smartphones, PCs, smartphone payments, IoT, 5G——. It can be considered that all user data collected from such devices and systems will be linked.
The more data you collect, the easier it will be to get to know your users. Without our knowledge, our data is being accumulated more and more at this moment.
---------- Noboru Nakatani Former police officer Born in 1969 in Kanagawa prefecture. Former Director General of Cyber Security, Interpol. He joined the National Police Agency in 1993. Chief of Foreign Affairs Division, Kanagawa Prefectural Police, Assistant to National Public Safety Commission, Chief of Economic High-Tech Crime Division of Interpol (International Criminal Police Organization), Chief of Information Systems and Technology Bureau. He has served as the first general director of the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI) and the international section chief of the Commissioner-General's Secretariat of the National Police Agency. From 2019 he is an executive officer of Yahoo. Managing Executive Officer of Z Holdings since 2020. Group Chief Trust & Safety Officer. Managing Director of Information Technology Federation of Japan. ----------
(Former police officer Noboru Nakatani)
