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The Internet was, famously, created to withstand a bomb outage. In 1998 Matt Blaze and Steve Bellovin said it, in 2002 it was still true, and it remains true today, after 50 years of development: there are more efficient ways to kill the Internet than dropping a bomb.

Take today. The cybersecurity company Crowdstrike pushed out a buggy update, and half the world is down. Airports, businesses, the NHS appointment booking system, supermarkets, the UK’s train companies, retailers…all showing the Blue Screen of Death. Can we say “central points of failure”? Because there are two: Crowdstrike, whose cybersecurity is widespead, and Microsoft, whose Windows operating system is everywhere.

Note this hasn’t killed the *Internet*. It’s temporarily killed many systems *connected to* the Internet. But if you’re stuck in an airport where nothing’s working and confronted with a sign that says “Cash only” when you only have cards…well, at least you can go online to read the news.

The fix will be slow, because it involves starting the computer in safe mode and manually deleting files. Like Y2K remediation, one computer at a time.

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Speaking of things that don’t work, three bits from the generative AI bubble. First, last week Goldman Sachs issued a scathing report on generative AI that concluded it is unlikely to ever repay the trillion-odd dollars companies are spending on it, while its energy demands could outstrip available supply. Conclusion: generative AI is a bubble that could nonetheless take a long time to burst.

Second, at 404 Media Emanuel Weiburg reads a report from the Tony Blair Institute that estimates that 40% of tasks performed by public sector workers could be partially automated. Blair himself compares generative AI to the industrial revolution. This comparison is more accurate than he may realize, since the industrial revolution brought climate change, and generative AI pours accelerant on it.

TBI’s estimate conflicts with that provided to Goldman by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, who believes that AI will impact at most 4.6% of tasks in the next ten years. The source of TBI’s estimate? ChatGPT itself. It’s learned self-promotion from parsing our output?

Finally, in a study presented at ACM FAccT, four DeepMind researchers interviewed 20 comedians who do live shows and use AI to participate in workshops using large language models to help write jokes. “Most participants felt the LLMs did not succeed as a creativity support tool, by producing bland and biased comedy tropes, akin to ‘cruise ship comedy material from the 1950s, but a bit less racist’.” Last year, Julie Seabaugh at the LA Times interviewed 13 professional comedians and got similar responses. Ahmed Ahmed compared AI-generated comedy to eating processed foods and, crucially, it “lacks timing”.

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Blair, who spent his 1997-2007 premiership pushing ID cards into law, has also been trying to revive this longheld obsession. Two days after Keir Starmer took office, Blair published a letter in the Sunday Times calling for its return. As has been true throughout the history of ID cards (PDF), every new revival presents it as a solution to a different problem. Blair’s 2024 reason is to control immigration (and keep the far-right Reform party at bay). Previously: prevent benefit fraud, combat terorism, streamline access to health, education, and other government services (“the entitlement card”), prevent health tourism.

Starmer promptly shot Blair down: “not part of the government’s plans”. This week Alan West, a home office minister 2007-2010 under Gordon Brown, followed up with a letter to the Guardian calling for ID cards because they would “enhance national security in the areas of terrorism, immigration and policing; facilitate access to online government services for the less well-off; help to stop identity theft; and facilitate international travel”.

Neither Blair (born 1953) nor West (born 1948) seems to realize how old and out of touch they sound. Even back then, the “card” was an obvious decoy. Given pervasive online access, a handheld reader, and the database, anyone’s identity could be checked anywhere at any time with no “card” required.

To sound modern they should call for institutionalizing live facial recognition, which is *already happening* by police fiat. Or sprinkled AI bubble on their ID database.

Databases and giant IT projects that failed – like the Post Office scandal – that was the 1990s way! We’ve moved on, even if they haven’t.

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If you are not a deposed Conservative, Britain this week is like waking up sequentially from a series of nightmares. Yesterday, Keir Starmer definitively ruled out leaving the European Convention on Human Rights – Starmer’s background as a human rights lawyer to the fore. It’s a relief to hear after 14 years of Tory ministers – David Cameron,, Boris Johnson, Suella Braverman, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak – whining that human rights law gets in the way of their heart’s desires. Like: building a DNA database, deporting refugees or sending them to Rwanda, a plan to turn back migrants in boats at sea.

Principles have to be supported in law; under the last government’s Public Order Act 2023 curbing “disruptive protest”, yesterday five Just Stop Oil protesters were jailed for four and five years. Still, for that brief moment it was all The Brotherhood of Man.

Illustrations: Windows’ Blue Screen of Death (via Wikimedia).

Wendy M. Grossman is the 2013 winner of the Enigma Award. Her Web site has an extensive archive of her books, articles, and music, and an archive of earlier columns in this series. She is a contributing editor for the Plutopia News Network podcast. Follow on Mastodon.

As the world and all knows by now, the UK is celebrating this year’s American Independence Day by staging a general election. The preliminaries are mercifully short by US standards, in that the period between the day it was called and the day the winners will be announced is only about six weeks. I thought the announcement would bring more sense of relief than it did. Instead, these six weeks seem interminable for two reasons: first, the long, long wait for the announcement, and second, the dominant driver for votes is largely negative – voting against, rather than voting for.

Labour, which is in polling position to win by a lot, is best served by saying and doing as little as possible, lest a gaffe damage its prospects. The Conservatives seem to be just trying not to look as hopeless as they feel. The only party with much exuberance is the far-right upstart Reform, which measures success in terms of whether it gets a larger share of the vote than the Conservatives and whether Nigel Farage wins a Parliamentary seat on his eighth try. And the Greens, who are at least motivated by genuine passion for their cause, and whose only MP is retiring this year. For them, sadly, success would be replacing her.

Particularly odd is the continuation of the trend visible in recent years for British right-wingers to adopt the rhetoric and campaigning style of the current crop of US Republicans. This week, they’ve been spinning the idea that Labour may win a dangerous “supermajority”. “Supermajority” has meaning in the US, where the balance of powers – presidency, House of Representatives, Senate – can all go in one party’s direction. It has no meaning in the UK, where Parliament is sovereign. All it means is Labour could wind up with a Parliamentary majority so large that they can pass any legislation they want. But this has been the Conservatives’ exact situation for the last five years, ever since the 2019 general election gave Boris Johnson a majority of 86. We should probably be grateful they largely wasted the opportunity squabbling among themselves.

This week saw the launch, day by day, of each party manifesto in turn. At one time, this would have led to extensive analysis and comparisons. This year, what discussion there is focuses on costs: whose platform commits to the most unfunded spending, and therefore who will raise taxes the most? Yet my very strong sense is that few among the electorate are focused on taxes; we’d all rather have public services that work and an end to the cost-of-living crisis. You have to be quite wealthy before private health care offers better value than paying taxes. But here may lie the explanation for both this and the weird Republican-ness of 2024 right-wing UK rhetoric: they’re playing to the same wealthy donors.

In this context, it’s not surprising that there’s not much coverage of what little the manifestos have to say about digital rights or the Internet. The exception is Computer Weekly, which finds the Conservatives promising more of the same and Labour offering a digital infrastructure plan, which includes building data centers and easing various business regulations but not to reintroduce the just-abandoned Data Protection and Digital Information bill.

In the manifesto itself: “Labour will build on the Online Safety Act, bringing forward provisions as quickly as possible, and explore further measures to keep everyone safe online, particularly when using social media. We will also give coroners more powers to access information held by technology companies after a child’s death.” The latter is a reference to recent cases such as that of 14-year-old Molly Russell, whose parents fought for five years to gain access to her Instagram account after her death.

Elsewhere, the manifesto also says, “Too often we see families falling through the cracks of public services. Labour will improve data sharing across services, with a single unique identifier, to better support children and families.”

“A single unique identifier” brings a kind of PTSD flashback: the last Labour government, in power from 1997 to 2010, largely built the centralized database state, and was obsessed with national ID cards, which were finally killed by David Cameron’s incoming coalition government. At the time, one of the purported benefits was streamlining government interaction. So I’m suspicious: this number could easily be backed by biometrics and checked via phone apps on the spot, anywhere and grow into…?

In terms of digital technologies, the LibDems mostly talk about health care, mandating interoperability for NHS systems and improving both care and efficiency. That can only be assessed if the detail is known. Also of interest: the LibDems’ proposed anti-SLAPP law, increasingly needed.

The LibDems also commit to advocate for a “Digital Bill of Rights”. I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble: “digital rights” as a set of civil liberties separate from human rights is antiquated, and many aspects are already enshrined in data protection, competition, and other law. In 2019, under the influence of then-deputy leader Tom Watson, this was a Labour policy. The LibDems are unlikely to have any power; but they lead in my area.

I wish the manifestos mattered and that we could have a sensible public debate about what technology policy should look like and what the priorities should be. But in a climate where everyone votes to get one lot out, the real battle begins on July 5, when we find out what kind of bargain we’ve made.

Illustrations: Polling station in Canonbury, London, in 2019 (via Wikimedia).

Wendy M. Grossman is the 2013 winner of the Enigma Award. Her Web site has an extensive archive of her books, articles, and music, and an archive of earlier columns in this series. She is a contributing editor for the Plutopia News Network podcast. Follow on Mastodon.

Time to revisit the doping case of Karmila Valieva, the 15-year-old Russian figure skater who was allowed to compete in the February 2022 Winter Olympics despite testing positive for the banned substance trimetazidine on the grounds that banning her from competition would cause her “irreparable harm”. The harm was never defined, but presumably went something like careers are short, Valieva was a multiple champion and the top prospect for gold, and she could be later disqualified but couldn’t retroactively compete. An adult would have been disqualified there and then, but 15-year-old was made a “protected person” in the World Anti-Doping Agency’s 2021 code.

Two years on, the Court for Arbitration of Sport has confirmed she is banned for four years, backdated to December 2021, and will be stripped of the results, prizes, medals, and awards she has won in the interim. CAS, the ultimate authority in such cases, did not buy her defense that her grandfather, who is prescribed trimetazidine, inadvertently contaminated her food. She will be eligible to compete again in December 2026.

In a paper, Marcus Camposa,b, Jim Parrya, and Irena Martínková conclude that the WADA’s concept of “protected person” “transforms…potential victims into suspects”. As they write, the “protection” is more imagined than real, since minors are subjected to the same tests and the same sanctions as adults. While the code talks of punishing those involved in doping minors, to date the only person suffering consequences for Valieva’s positive test is Valieva, still a minor but no longer a “protected person”.

A reminder: besides her positive test for trimetazidine, widely used in Russia to prevent angina attacks, Valieva had therapeutic use exemptions for two other heart medications. How “protected” is that? Shouldn’t the people authorizing TUEs raise the alarm when a minor is being prescribed multiple drugs for a condition vastly more typical of middle-aged men?

According to the Anti-doping Database, doping is not particularly common in figure skating – but Russia has the most cases. WADA added trimetazidine to the banned list in 2014 as a metabolic modulator; if it helps athletes it’s by improving cardiovascular efficiency and therefore endurance. CNN compares it to meldonium, the drug that got tennis player Maria Sharapova banned in 2016.

In a statement, the World Anti-Doping Agency said it welcomed the ruling but that “The doping of children is unforgivable. Doctors, coaches or other support personnel who are found to have provided performance-enhancing substances to minors should face the full force of the World Anti-Doping Code. Indeed, WADA encourages governments to consider passing legislation – as some have done already – making the doping of minors a criminal offence.” That seems essential for real protection; otherwise the lowered sanctions imposed upon minors could be an incentive to take more risks doping them.

The difficulty is that underage athletes are simultaneously children and professional athletes competing as peers with adults. For the rules of the sport itself, of course the rules must be the same; 16-year-old Mirren Andreeva doesn’t get an extra serve or a larger tennis court to hit into. Hence 2014 bronze medalist Ashley Wagner’s response to an exTwitter poster calling the ruling irrational and cruel: “every athlete plays by the same rules”. But anti-doping protocols are different, involving issues of consent, medical privacy, and public shaming. For the rest of the field, it’s not fair to exempt minors from the doping rules that apply to everyone else; for the minor, who lacks agency and autonomy, it’s not fair if you don’t. This is only part of the complexity of designing an anti-doping system and applying it equally to minors, 40-something hundred-millionaire tennis players, and minimally funded athletes in minority sports who go back to their day jobs when the comptition ends.

Along with its statement, WADA launched the Operation Refuge report (PDF) on doping and minors. The most commonly identified doping substance for both girls and boys is the diuretic furosemide followed by methylphenidate (better known as the ADHD medication Ritalin). The most positive tests come from Russia, India, and China. The youngest child sanctioned for a doping violation was 12. The report goes on to highlight the trauma and isolation experienced by child athletes who test positive – one day a sporting hero, the next a criminal.

The alphabet soup of organizations in charge of Valieva’s case – the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, the International Skating Union, WADA, CAS – could hardly have made a bigger mess. The delays: it took six weeks to notify Valieva of her positive test, and two years to decide her case. Then, despite the expectation that disqualifying Valieva disqualifies her entire team, the ISU recalculated the standings, giving Russia the bronze medal, the US the gold, and Japan silver. The Canadian team, which placed fourth, is considering an appeal; Russia is preparing one. Ironically, according to this analysis by Martina Frammartino, the Russian bench is so strong that it could easily have won gold if Valeeva’s positive test had come through in time to replace her.

I’ve never believed that the anti-doping system was fit for purpose; considered as a security system, too many incentives are misaligned, as became clear in 2016, when the extent of Russian state-sponsored doping became public. This case shows the system at its worst.

Illustrations: Kamila Valieva in 2018 (via Luu at Wikimedia).

Wendy M. Grossman is the 2013 winner of the Enigma Award. Her Web site has an extensive archive of her books, articles, and music, and an archive of earlier columns in this series. She is a contributing editor for the Plutopia News Network podcast. Follow on Mastodon

It was tempting to skip wrapping up 2023, because at first glance large language models seemed so thoroughly dominant (and boring to revisit), but bringing the net.wars archive list up to date showed a different story. To be fair, this is partly personal bias: from the beginning LLMs seemed fated to collapse under the weight of their own poisoning; AI Magazine predicted such an outcome as early as June.

LLMs did, however, seem to accelerate public consciousness of three long-running causes of concern: privacy and big data; corporate cooption of public and private resources; and antitrust enforcement. That acceleration may be LLMs’ more important long-term effect. In the short term, the justifiably bigger concern is their propensity to spread disinformation and misinformation in the coming year’s many significant elections.

Enforcement of data protection laws has been slowly ramping up in any case, and the fines just keep getting bigger, culminating in May’s fine against Meta for €1.2 billion. Given that fines, no matter how large, seem insignificant compared to the big technology companies’ revenues, the more important trend is issuing constraints on how they do business. That May fine came with an order to stop sending EU citizens’ data to the US. Meta responded in October by announcing a subscription tier for European Facebook users: €160 a year will buy freedom from ads. Freedom from Facebook remains free.

But Facebook is almost 20 years old; it had years in which to grow without facing serious regulation. By contrast, ChatGPT, which OpenAI launched just over a year ago, has already faced investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission and been banned temporarily by the Italian data protection authority (it was reinstated a month later with conditions). It’s also facing more than a dozen lawsuits claiming copyright infringement; the most recent of these was filed just this week by the New York Times. It has settled one of these suits by forming a partnership with Axel Springer.

It all suggests a lessening tolerance for “ask forgiveness, not permission”. As another example, Clearview AI has spent most of the four years since Kashmir Hill alerted the world to its existence facing regulatory bans and fines, and public disquiet over the rampant spread of live facial recognition continues to grow. Add in the continuing degradation of exTwitter, the increasing number of friends who say they’re dropping out of social media generally, and the revival of US antitrust actions with the FTC’s suit against Amazon, and it feels like change is gathering.

It would be a logical time, for an odd reason: each of the last few decades as seen through published books has had a distinctive focus with respect to information technology. I discovered this recently when, for various reasons, I reorganized my hundreds of books on net.wars-type subjects dating back to the 1980s. How they’re ordered matters: I need to be able to find things quickly when I want them. In 1990, a friend’s suggestion of categorizing by topic seemed logical: copyright, privacy, security, online community, robots, digital rights, policy… The categories quickly broke down and cross-pollinated. In rebuilding the library, what to replace it with?

The exercise, which led to alphabetizing by author’s name within decade of publication, revealed that each of the last few decades has been distinctive enough that it’s remarkably easy to correctly identify a book’s decade without turning to the copyright page to check. The 1980s and 1990s were about exploration and explanation. Hype led us into the 2000s, which were quieter in publishing terms, though marked by bursts of business books that spanned the dot-com boom, bust, and renewal. The 2010s brought social media, content moderation, and big data, and a new set of technologies to hype, such as 3D printing and nanotechnology (about which we hear nothing now). The 2020s, it’s too soon to tell…but safe to say disinformation, AI, and robots are dominating these early years.

The 2020s books to date are trying to understand how to rein in the worst effects of Big Tech: online abuse, cryptocurrency fraud, disinformation, the loss of control as even physical devices turn into manufacturer-controlled subscription services, and, as predicted in 2018 by Christian Wolmar, the ongoing failure of autonomous vehicles to take over the world as projected just ten years ago.

While Teslas are not autonomous, the company’s Silicon Valley ethos has always made them seem more like information technology than cars. Bad idea, as Reuters reports; its investigation found a persistent pattern of mishaps such as part failures and wheels falling off – and an equally persistent pattern of the company blaming the customer, even when the car was brand new. If we don’t want shoddy goods and data invasion with everything to be our future, fighting back is essential. In 2032, I hope looking back shows that story.

The good news going into 2024 is, as the Center for the Public Domain at Duke University, Public Domain Review and Cory Doctorow write, the bumper crop of works entering the public domain: sound recordings (for the first time in 40 years), DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Agatha Christie’s The Mystery of the Blue Train, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s play The Front Page. and the first of Mickey Mouse. Happy new year.

Illustrations: Promotional still from the 1928 production of The Front Page, which enters the public domain on January 1, 2024 (via Wikimedia).

Wendy M. Grossman is the 2013 winner of the Enigma Award. Her Web site has an extensive archive of her books, articles, and music, and an archive of earlier columns in this series. She is a contributing editor for the Plutopia News Network podcast. Follow on Mastodon