Week 11. Interesting cases about online censorship and privacy

 Censorship and privacy can be hardly maintained reasonable for everyone in the field of internet communication. Some people, especially the ones who provide security may find censorship necessary while others like the ones for whom the censorship was made may find it unnecessary. Both censorship and privacy leave an effect on each other: if you have more privacy then there will be less censorship and if you have more censorship then there will be less privacy. Such divergence often leads to cases of violation of censorship or privacy which I will describe below in two interesting cases.

Anti-censorship organization GreatFire was attacked by Chinese censorship authorities

 

GreatFire is a non-profit organization that makes people of the Western civilization aware of the hard censorship cases in China that keep its citizens away from many information sources on the Internet. The combination of Chinese government actions to filter and censor Internet materials has become known as the Great Firewall. This is the case of bad censorship when people are restricted not from carefully selected materials but from a wider range of things. Such limitations are not made in social favor but to fulfill the needs and ideology of the government which gives this censorship mostly a negative appearance. GreatFire non-profit has been often targeted with DDoS attacks that were made presumably by Chinese hacker groups. In 2015 DDoS attacks coming from China on the websites that were against Chinese policies have become known as the Great Cannon.

Privacy rules were broken when Zoom was displaying data from people’s LinkedIn profiles

 

During a coronavirus, pandemic Zoom took advantage of massive usage of its service by having a secret service called LinkedIn Sales Navigator that was allowing some people to access LinkedIn profile data about other users. This feature was accessible during the meeting to any Zoom user who was subscribed to LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It allowed getting LinkedIn information about users such as location, real name, role on the job and other data. Some findings say that even when a person was joining Zoom meetings under a pseudonym the platform still was able to match this person to his LinkedIn profile. When this security breach was reported, Zoom disabled the LinkedIn Sales Navigator service completely and said that from now on it will take users’ privacy extremely seriously.

Sources:

https://www.techinasia.com/top-10-censorship-china-2015

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31967100

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/a-feature-on-zoom-secretly-displayed-data-from-peoples-linkedin-profiles/

Week 10. The security situation in Estonia according to Mitnick formula

 

 

Estonia is famous for its IT development and expansion of digital technologies in its territories, but t present times it cannot be taken seriously without additional cybersecurity measures and precautions. Estonian cybersecurity improvement had been growing drastically for more than 10 years and now it is at a very good level, that our country can even give help and advice to other countries about computer security related questions. According to Kevin Mitnick's three criteria, I can analyze the overall situation with cybersecurity in our country.

Technology 

The need for security in the governmental IT environment had emerged at the beginning of 21 century and become clear after the 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia. As a reaction to that, in 2008 the government has founded Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre which became part of NATO Centres of Excellence. The main goals of this organisation are to improve the cybersecurity technologies within NATO countries, enhance information security and develop new ways of cyber defence. In addition, the Estonian Defence League’s Cyber Unit has emerged in 2010. It is a unit with mostly volunteer IT specialists whose main goal is to protect private telecommunications infrastructure from outside-derived cyberattacks. The goals of those two organisations are crucial especially when it comes to different forms of communication. For example, during 2007 cyberattacks one of the main problems was the inability of the government and other structures to communicate with each other. Email services didn’t work because of spam, flooding and other network disruptions made by hackers. News sites were not able to post fresh news and thus were not able to communicate with the audience. Right now it would not be so easy to misuse any Estonian governmental site or communication system. Encryption, firewalls, digital signatures, two-factor authentication and other technologies are used for secure communication in our country.

Training

Training of Estonian government and IT companies to be ready to withstand a cyberattack had been increased since 2007. CERT-EE is an organisation that deals with cybersecurity incidents and manages the response to them in the country. Their main task is to regularly monitor the cybersecurity situation in our country and help governmental organisations and companies to stay secure in the network. They give advice on different types of security incidents and help to implement the best security solution. In addition to that, they understand that security does not end there. Citizens are also given advice and control in our country to stay secure in cyberspace. 

Policy

Estonian government understands that any cyberattack may be oriented on absolutely any citizen of our country no matter what office or position it occupies. For example, the 2007 cyber-attacks on Estonia have shown that some cyber-attacks may be sophisticated and oriented on banking systems to suspend accounts or cause major disruptions in the whole banking system but some are simple stupid phishing that may affect thousands of people who were not aware of the attack. Because of that our government security requirements are the same for any citizen. One of the tasks of NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence is to create new standards and security requirements. Any service providers on Estonian territory whose resources are vital for society are required by the government to manage their ICT risks. All government authorities must have a mandatory security baseline.  By such measures, Estonian government controls and keeps the country secured from cyberattacks. 

Analyzing the Estonian cybersecurity situation I can say that our country is indeed a well-secured state, which keeps developing in this field and it is reasonable. Regularly over 300 cyber incidents are recorded by Estonia’s national computer emergency response team which means that the cybersecurity in Estonia should not stop improving.

Sources:

https://e-estonia.com/how-estonia-became-a-global-heavyweight-in-cyber-security/

https://www.bbc.com/news/39655415

Week 9. Opposite examples of HCI

 

An example of bad design

Many inventions were meant to make our lives easier however not all of them succeeded in that because of bad ergonomics and interaction with the user. The same happens in IT where interaction between the user and the machine plays a major part. Some developers do not pay much attention to the design of their finished product or make it sophisticated intentionally which may bring the user experience to a disaster. One such example is the booking system of Irish low-cost airline Ryanair. 

 

Ryanair booking page

 

 

While booking, the user faces a drop-down menu with lots of important options hidden from his sight. Because of that if he would not check all the options, some extra costs will be applied. A bad user experience in such important cases as the booking is inapplicable because it requires planning of a trip and money spending what people find stressful and bad design makes the user experience even worse. I suppose the only reason why people are still using the services of this company is because of extremely low flight costs, otherwise, the bad user design would spoil the whole business for that company. 

Another bad example of the design is the Aliexpress search bar and its large variety of options. In that case, the options are not hidden in additional menus but their abundance worsens the user experience. Also, each product has additional specifications which often cannot be understood by trivial users.  Aliexpress website often presents too much useless information for the user and the important one gets lost. 

 

 Aliexpress laptop description.

 

However, a good example of search page design is Google. For many years Google tried to make its search engine extremely ergonomic, fast and understandable for any user with any experience. It does not offer search settings first place as many other searches do but tries to rely on its own algorithms which determine the most relevant answers to user's search queries. Because of that, the major part of users gets satisfied with the result in about 10 seconds.

 

 Google Advanced search

 

 For the more deep and specific search users always may try the more detailed search provided by Google, which also has a good design and it is easy to understand. In my opinion a good design and accessibility is the reason why Google is still the most popular search engine. Google Chrome web browser is also based on good user design combined with a fast and reliable application what makes it the most popular web browser amongst others.

 

 

 

 Sources:

Oleg B. (Aug 16, 2021). “27 Bad User Experience Examples”. Plerdy. (Access date: 28.03.2022). https://www.plerdy.com/blog/top-website-ux-and-design-mistakes/

JAYE HANNAH. (updated on: JULY 30, 2021). “10 Classic UX Design Fails That Teach Us How Not to Do UX”. CareerFoundry. (Access date: 28.03.2022). https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/10-classic-ux-design-fails/

 

 

 

Week 8. Depiction of an IT professional in Estonia

 

 In Estonia, professional IT specialists must have a wide variety of skills and knowledge to be eligible for working in a quickly developing information technology environment. One of the main qualities that a professional specialist must have is understanding the basics of how a computer works. Throughout 20 years many improvements and changes have been made in computers and other digital devices. Some parts of PC like processors have been changing significantly, some devices like smartphones have been invented and some devices like floppy disks became obsolete. Many less significant things have changed as well and now it is almost impossible to keep up with all the inventions in the IT field, so a good specialist in Estonia must have general knowledge of how devices and their parts work. The same can be said about programming. In those 20 years, Java frameworks and libraries had become immensely big, Python and JavaScript gained more popularity, but some languages became forgotten. Therefore as in Estonia, there are a lot of IT companies a wide general experience in many programming languages is required.
In the previous paragraph, I spoke about the quickly developing IT world and that a specialist must have a good general knowledge of everything, however, this is not enough to achieve great results. The most important in my opinion are problem-solving skills. IT is logic and consistency, those basics have not changed throughout 20 years, because they are the foundation of information technology. While most of the machines still rely on binary numbers those qualities are playing the most important part. IT specialist years of working are a great value for measuring how many problem-solving skills this individual has. Because the skills are a matter of time and passion.
So the third quality is the attitude of a specialist. He must have a passion to solve problems in IT, he must have an objective to improve his skills every day because most of the IT tasks are not easy, and possibly that is the main reason why IT specialists are so valuable in our country. During the last 20 years, more people got involved in IT bringing more competition to the field. So in comparison with IT specialists 20 years ago, you should also be active online to show that you really are a specialist and to not get lost among others who may probably be less experienced. At present, IT specialists must be active in forums and platforms such as Stack Overflow or GitHub to share knowledge and learn from others as well.
And the fourth quality is a profound education in the IT field. It is important because it may give a future specialist all features described above in one place and in a relatively short time. Throughout 20 years, education in the IT field had made considerable changes. Many new programmes are now offered and subjects became more oriented on what IT specialists are doing at their work. Modern subjects in Information Technology universities put a big emphasis on practice and large enterprises try to make education easier and fun by developing programs for learning, writing books and filming videos.
In conclusion, I can say that at present in Estonia, where the IT field is expanding quickly, any of the qualities mentioned above are important to be a professional IT specialist. Any newcomer in IT should be orienting on those qualities to reach proficiency in IT.

Week 7. Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics. Rule 7: Help keep flame wars under control

 

Anger on the Internet is a usual phenomenon when people start swearing at each other for a miserable reason. Such action is called flaming and can be done on purpose when discussing a controversial subject or because of an emotional outburst. Both are caused by anonymity on the Internet, but a good society must try to be sensible with any type of communication. Because of that, Netiquette rules were made in which rule number 7 says to keep the flame wars under control.

 

"An example of flaming"

 

 I think that this rule is correct because of the decision not to prohibit it completely but to keep the flaming under control. People need expression and many of us may find flaming fun and amusing to look at, but when it keeps on going and turns into a war of words, nobody will find it interesting, but rather problematic. For example, 4chan tries to deal with flaming but it often fails to do so. Many people visit imageboards to start flaming or troll someone, thus they got used to visiting such sites only to have fun, but not for constructive talking. The same I can say about controversial groups on Facebook or YouTube. A lot of flaming happens on official pages of platforms because it happens to be that the platform does everything in the teeth of its users. 

 

    "Dogs kill rats YouTube video. Massive flaming in the comment section. Some find it good some find it terrible"

 

 

A very good example is YouTube official site. Before YouTube hid dislike count it was clearly seen by the like/dislike ratio and by hateful comments how many flaming is being made there. By these examples, I want to show that too much flaming will cause only negative outcomes. People will start to massively hate the specified resource, and they will come on this resource just to spread more flaming there.

My personal experience when I was dealing with flaming happened and keeps happening in YouTube, Instagram and Vkontakte social networks. I do not find much flaming on Twitter or Reddit however, maybe because I don’t visit any controversial discussions there.

 

"Instagram flaming"

 

 

Nevertheless, controversial topics in YT and VK are full of hate and flaming and unfortunately, platform managers have not done anything vital so far to stop it. Yes, Instagram and YouTube try to control the words posted in comments but people often bypass these checks. I may highlight that the audience and its manners play a crucial part in the size of flaming. If you would start flaming in a polite community, people will not mention it or notice your bad manners and ask to be polite. In another community with a less sensible audience, the started flaming will be supported by others and will grow in size drastically. It's like lighting a flame in water and in gunpowder. One will not start, the other will explode in a moment. The useless flaming not only create a bad atmosphere but also monopolizes bandwidth for useless swearing. So after all those examples, I can say that it is really important to keep the flame wars under control.

Week 6. What impact does the copyleft have on choosing a software license for one's project?

 

     

        The traditional approach to copyright restricts the freedom to copy works, and in contrast, copyleft seeks to use copyright laws to expand the rights and freedom of people in IT. People use the concept of copyleft so that anyone in the world has the right to use, modify or distribute both the original work and works derived from it, and no one could restrict this right. In general, it can be said that under copyleft, all derivative works should be distributed under the same license as the original work.

The choice of the strong copyleft can be made by developers who want to make an open-source software and allow people to reuse, distribute and remix their work but to keep this development free for everyone. This technique may have a strong effect of making resources and programs free, especially if the software under this license became popular and highly demanded. It may have an effect only if it will be implemented while publishing the first, original program. In another case, for example, when remixing a project, it will not be as successful and probably another license that the project had will not allow doing so. In my opinion, most of the big companies that want to use copyleft will choose this option, because the bigger their project was the more hard work was made. I don't think that developers would want to give their creation to the world knowing that others may resell it and make money, while the developers followed a good manner of copyleft and did not. Therefore they would want others also to follow that idea of free sharing and refusal from sales and implement the strong copyleft.

The weak copyleft choice may be based on the same reasons as the choice of strong copyleft, but with the addition of some exceptions. Especially in the case of creating software libraries. In this case, it more depends on how the product will be used than following the strict rules as in the previous type of copyleft license.

The smaller the project is, the lesser work was made and the easier the developer may let his project go. That means small projects may choose no copyleft at all. This option brings most of the freedom for the users because it allows them to freely use code, remix it and make a profit out of it. This may be the case with enthusiastic people who write small pieces of code, experiment with them or really generous developers who devote their software directly to society.

 

 

 Used materials:

(May 10, 2021). “All About Copyleft Licenses”. Fossa. (Access date: 06.03.2022). https://fossa.com/blog/all-about-copyleft-licenses/

 

(February 09, 2022). “Difference between Copyright and Copyleft in FOSS”. Geeksforgeeks. (Access date: 07.03.2022). https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-copyright-and-copyleft-in-foss/

 

Ayala Goldstein. (October 24, 2020). “Open Source Copyleft Licenses: All You Need to Know ”. WhitesourceSoftware. (Access date: 07.03.2022). https://www.whitesourcesoftware.com/resources/blog/open-source-copyleft-licenses/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 5. Opinion about copyright

 

 

As the World Wide Web was invented in 1989 and web browsers started to appear in the next decade, a new technology of information exchange was introduced to humanity. It gave people access to text resources, films, music that others have uploaded to the Internet, it allowed file exchange or sending of private messages to friends or colleagues. But as copyright holders joined the Internet, the problems have started. It is obvious that businessmen who possess copyrighted material would want to make more profit, especially in such a popular place, so copyright rules started to seize the freedom of the Internet.

In my opinion, copyright rules that exist today have failed to be fair a long time ago. I would like to point out that the ones that make copyright rules tend to protect only large companies - copyright owners, but never mention how fair those rules would be for everybody else. So, copyright rules are now oriented towards making even more profit for the ones who already makes a great deal of money. I absolutely agree with the Swedish Pirate Party members and authors of this book that copyright rules that we have now must be rethought and reconstructed. The use of private message exchange is now at risk as never. Governments and officials are on the side of the large companies and one day they may stop thinking of human privacy in favor of companies. In addition, making messages non-private would even attract governments as they will have a possibility to track criminal activity. I also agree that companies prefer to enlarge their copyright and other capitalist importance even if they do not have a foundation for such actions. And because of that consumers’ rights to use or copy works are becoming even more miserable. 

It would be nice to say that we need to fight with the breaking of human moral rights and make copyright rules more sensible. But I do not think that the idea would gain much support. After I have noticed the increase of copyright rules' importance on the internet in 2019, I started to present facts to the people I used to talk to and listen to their opinion. Unfortunately, most of them agreed with the copyright statements preventing individuals from using content and consumers from sharing it without permission of the owner. I do not blame people, but I think that they have already lost their freedom on the Internet because of the copyright owners and their bad intentions. Companies are not stupid, they study their consumers. And they make everything possible to extract profit and to keep doing the same for a long time. So all their steps are careful, sometimes left unnoticed, but in the longer perspective, their actions bring total destruction to human freedom on the Internet. For example, they study how much people earn and how much people are ready to spend on services. If YouTube would have proposed its premium subscription back in 2010, people would not have accepted it. But with the years, YouTube started to increase the number of advertisements and enforced more and more copyright restrictions so that now it is impossible to watch a video without terrible 30 seconds of ads, download anything from YouTube or use copyrighted materials without spending money first. All other services have also caught up with this trend, some of them are making money out of literally rubbish. The internet becomes a big playground for the capitalists and a jail for any individual endeavor. Therefore I am very pessimistic about any changes in copyright rules for now. I think people have to rethink their usage of the internet, and it will come after some time when people will get tired to pay so much for nothing. People must understand that copyright rules are not rights of justice and equity. They lead us astray and will continue to do so.

 

 

Used materials:

(The book itself) http://falkvinge.net/wp-content/uploads/large/The%20Case%20For%20Copyright%20Reform%20(2012)%20Engstrom-Falkvinge.pdf

Christopher McFadden. (July 03, 2020). “YouTube's History and Its Impact on the Internet”. Interesting Engineering website. (Access date: 27.02.2022). https://interestingengineering.com/youtubes-history-and-its-impact-on-the-internet

“Copyright Timeline: A History of Copyright in the United States”. Association of Research Libraries. (Access date: 27.02.2022). https://www.arl.org/copyright-timeline/

 

 

 

 

Week 3. How social networks are influencing the news media.

 

At present times, people often use social network platforms as a news source however, it was not so 10 years ago, people would visit news sites to stay informed about local and global occasions. In this blog post, I would like to talk about how social networks are influencing traditional news resources.  As the US Reuters Institute statistics show, Facebook and YouTube are the leaders in usage as the news resources amongst other social networks. More news groups and channels are created and more messages are being sent on those platforms. But it does not mean that news channels are left with no readers, as they are also creating pages in social networks and sometimes gain even more views as they would have on their separate news sites. 

 

Diagram of news source usage by age. Source

 

The first influence that social networks brought is an increase in the importance of the authenticity of the information. In Facebook, any human can fake the news in their posts and no one restricts them to do so. They spread rumours and may deceive thousands of people in no time. And because of that traditional news channels receive more trust as they hire well-educated people and therefore give more official information than the one users may post.

The second large influence is the fast changes that prevail in social networks which made a good competition for news channels such as CNN, DW or BBC that joined the social networks. They had to make their content more attractive, more trustworthy and overall give up the conservative television style. For example, a traditional format of news broadcasting would not suit a trivial YouTube user. But using the short video format with highly concentrated information, and an attractive or provocative topic would change the result completely. For example, it can be easily noticed on the BBC YouTube channel page when switching the filter to the “most popular” and back to the “newest first”. There are tens of millions of views on short, catching content, but mediocre interviews and reports are left without even one million of views. With all the fast changes in the world and fast accessibility to information resources, people get tired of long articles and reports, so a new format of news would suit people better.

And finally, the third change that social networks made is a good connection with the reader and publisher. News posts on Facebook can receive comments, be reposted thus being actively discussed and judged. That means people may express their opinion in a fast and easy way, share their experience and tell others if this post is real or fake. That also makes a higher competition for the news publishers and forces them to think about the audience.

In a conclusion, I would like to bring up the second point again. I think that the biggest change social networks made to the news are people’s expectation of different content from the news resources. It must be short, fast, tempting and stand out from others so that more people watch it. Unfortunately, some news channels prefer unhealthy competition to achieve popularity but we can hope that their indecent methods will start playing an opposite role after some time.

 

Used sources:

Alina Blackwood. (March 23, 2021). “Social Media Impact On News”. IO Technologies Blog. (Access date: 13.02.2022). https://blog.iotechnologies.com/social-media-impact-on-news/

Nicole Martin. (November 30, 2018). “How Social Media Has Changed How We Consume News”. Forbes. (Access date: 13.02.2022). https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolemartin1/2018/11/30/how-social-media-has-changed-how-we-consume-news/?sh=4ae01d4d3c3c

Ruth A. Harper. (2010). “The Social Media Revolution: Exploring the Impact on Journalism and News Media Organizations”. Inquiries Journal. (Access date: 12.02.2022). http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/202/the-social-media-revolution-exploring-the-impact-on-journalism-and-news-media-organizations

 

 

 

 

Week 2. Two technologies one of which has become obsolete and another survives to this day

 

Today I will describe the technology of using floppy disks as storage that became obsolete after some time and technology that is still in use - a keyboard.

Became obsolete - a floppy disk

First of all, a floppy disk. It is an obsolete way of storing something on your computer which was invented in the late 1960s. Its principles of work are based on magnetic recording when data is stored on a magnetized medium. The first development of floppy disks was performed by IBM  and it made them quite big: disks had a size of 8 inches in diameter. But later on, their format was reduced thanks to technological progress. However, they still had a small storage capacity and low data transfer speed which decreased their popularity in 21 century as optical disks and flash drives had better qualities. Nevertheless back at the time floppy disks were a really common phenomenon, so the software developers decided to use a symbol of a floppy disk for a save button. This symbol is still used in most of the programs.

Floppy disk. Source

Survives to the present day - a keyboard

A modern keyboard has not changed a lot since the 19 century when it was used in teleprinters. Of course, the keys now cause a digital response of the machine instead of a mechanical one as it was in teleprinters, the key location has also changed, but the technology overall didn’t suffer any big changes. We still use button pressing as a primary way of an input in modern IT 

A flexible keyboard. Source

A keyboard is a flat computer input device with buttons located on its surface to type into the computer specified information. As I have mentioned, they were first used in typewriters and evolved into a modern computer keyboard in the late 20 century. A set of characters that are represented on keys of a keyboard is called a layout and it is standardized. However, some minor parts differ depending on the language peculiarities. In addition, some of the keys on a keyboard represent characters, but not all of them. There are keys that are used for system commands such as Alt, Shift or Enter. Keyboard producers are experimenting with developing new types of keyboards for more flexibility and ergonomics however, an original rectangle-shaped keyboard remains the most demanded one, making this technological invention in demand.

Sources list:

“The Floppy Disk”. IBM website. (Access date: 05.02.2022). https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/floppy/

“Floppy Disks”. Computer History Museum. (Access date: 06.02.2022). https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/261 

Abbad Liberman. “Keyboard standards”. TDIL website. (Access date: 06.02.2022). https://www.tdil-dc.in/index.php?option=com_vertical&parentid=12&lang=en

Iris Lee. “ History of a computer keyboard”. (Access date: 06.02.2022). https://www.sutori.com/en/story/history-of-a-computer-keyboard--kBQp4fKPzop4ryV5CcdH6xtN