"A fake encrypted messaging app cooked up over beers by Australian cops and the FBI has led to 800 arrests across the world and the confiscation of 100 million pounds ($141.5 million USD, $182.66 million AUS) in cash, six tons of cocaine, assault rifles, luxury cars, motorcycles and watches," Daily Mail. The app was named ANOM. "With a sleek website which pretended ANOM was based in Switzerland, and charging a subscription fee, crooks were conned into thinking they were safe from the law. But it was actually a Trojan Horse, re-routing all their secret messages to FBI special agents and the Australian Federal Police." Three cheers and all that, but how safe are ordinary citizens from: (a) crooks and (b) government surveillance? On 7 May, Colonial Pipeline which supplies oil to Southeastern US from Houston, Texas was hit by a ransomware cyberattack, Wikipedia. "Colonial Pipeline's CEO told a Senate committee on Tuesday the company paid $5 million ransom one day after Russian based cybercriminals attacked its IT network," CNBC. "The US has recovered most of the $4.4 million ransom paid to a cyber- criminal gang responsible for taking the Colonial Pipeline offline last month," BBC. Last week, "The world's largest meat processing company has been targeted by a sophisticated cyber-attack," BBC. "Chinese cybercriminals are targeting the Indian power sector, according to a report by US-based cybersecurity company Recorded Future," Business Insider. "10 distinct Indian power sector organisations, including 4 or of the 5 Regional Load Despatch Centres (RLDC) .... have been identified as targets in a concerted campaign against India's critical infrastructure, said the report." The government denied there was any effect on power supply, ignoring the "massive power outage in Mumbai in October 2020", Times of India (TOI). While giving clean chit to China our government is using the internet as a weapon against citizens. "Activist Rona Wilson's computer was compromised for over 22 months before the Pune Police raided his home in New Delhi and arrested him as co-accused in Bhina Koregaon violence, claimed Massachusetts-based digital forensics firm Arsenal Digital," The Tribune. Hackers used malware to plant the evidence. The government is sparing no effort or cost in getting people to perform financial and social activities using digital media so that all our information. will be accessible at the click of a button. Naturally, this makes Indians "among the most targeted user groups in the world in terms of cyber threats, the Norton Cyber Security Insights report, 2021," news18. 2.7 crore (27 million) people, which was 45% of "adult internet users faced identity threat in 2020" and "spent a total of 1.3 billion hours collectively attempting to resolve cyber crime crisis". Ransomware first appeared in 1989 when "floppy discs were sent to addresses all over the world obtained from a mailing list", CNN. "Law enforcement traced the effort to PO Box owned by Harvard-taught evolutionary biologist named Joseph Popp", who was arrested. Popp died in 2007 and no one knows why he did it. The Indian government has asked social media messaging platforms to trace the originator of any message that does not please authorities, The Indian Express (TIE). WhatsApp has gone to court against the order saying, "End-to-end encryption ensures that no one can read the message, except for the sender and the receiver. This includes WhatsApp itself," TIE. It said that to trace one message it would have to be able to trace every message and this would would be tantamount to "mass surveillance". The government is going to digitise all our health data which will apparently enable it to "collate and analyse data in a much better way". That is exactly opposite to what the government is doing during the second wave of the coronavirus when it did everything in its power to hide how many millions were infected and how many hundreds of thousands died due to lack of hospital beds and oxygen. "Insider whistleblower accounts, especially from Facebook last year, provided details of how successfully the Modi machine, through its Indian public policy head's offices, pressurised the platform to toe a party line by insisting it turn a blind eye to fast proliferating, virulent hate speech against Muslim minorities in particular," The Wire. The Indian government wants us to be completely exposed. If outsiders attack, tough luck.
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