During last year's lockdown I began to write an article that never had the light and which aimed to make people reflect on the phenomenon of fake news that I have had the audacity to associate with the most invasive cyber threats of recent years.
If the word "fake news" were introduced in the various reports relating to cyber threats, I am sure that we would obtain very interesting numbers, probably higher than those of the Phishing, for example, which represents the most used attack vector in absolute according to the latest Clusit report.
More or less, the article began like this:
Working for an American company, the term “storytelling” has been used extremely frequently for some time now. What is surprising, perhaps not too much, is that despite having such a beautiful language and rich in terms, it is common and consolidated practice in Italy, at every level, to rely on foreign terms, most of the time English. I must say, however, that there is something particular in this word, something that I cannot describe but that arouses a kind of wonder and amazement in the listener, as soon as it is evoked. It is enough to use it to make a reasoning appear embellished, whether it is valid or not, and here, as if by magic, the interlocutors light up as if the deepest concept of all time had been expressed.
It has now become commonplace, so much so that we don't even notice it anymore, so much so that, perhaps, we have stopped asking ourselves what we really mean when we talk about storytelling or we know what we are talking about but, in all probability, we have forgotten it.
During the coronavirus emergency, our role is clear. It was recommended to us "Carry out orders" and to do our part by respecting the rules as, moreover, should always happen in a democratic and community context. My actions have an impact not only on myself but also on the people around me and with whom I interact and so, on the contrary.
Yet, during this never-before-lived experience, we have a somewhat asymmetrical attitude towards those who are trying to face and resolve the emergency and we can only obey and trust.
And here is the key word: confidence. Let's look at what Treccani tells us about this very important term.
fidùcia sf [from Lat. trust, der. di fidĕre "to trust, to trust"] (pl., rare, -cie).
Attitude, towards others or towards oneself, which results from a positive evaluation of facts, circumstances, relationships, for which one trusts in others or one's own possibilities, and which generally produces a feeling of security and tranquility: f. in God, in men, in human fraternity, in science, in social progress; f. in victory; f. to succeed; f. in his own star, in his own strength; f. in the outcome of a business; look with f. to the future; stop f .; f. unlimited, absolute, unconditional; to have, to nourish f .; lose the f .; give a certificate, a proof of f .; inspire f .; earn, deserve, enjoy, have the f. someone's; put away your f. well, or badly; abuse of f. of others. Of use com. the expressions: people of f., of mine, of yours, of his f., trustworthy people who are used in delicate and important matters; doctor, lawyer of f., the one who is freely and habitually chosen by the client; position, job, position of f., of responsibility, delicate, which relies only on safe, trustworthy people.
In constitutional law, vote by f., Vote by which the parliament approves (or, if the vote gives a negative result, disapproves) the political guidelines and the corresponding action of the government; motion of f., the proposal, made by one of the Chambers, to resort to the vote of confidence; question of f., request by the government to resort to the vote of confidence for the approval or rejection of amendments and articles of bills: the government has decided to ask the question of trust.
In civil law, f. testamentary (or fiduciary testamentary disposition), disposition of will for which the subject who receives the good is the apparent beneficiary, having the obligation to transmit that good to another person (who normally could not be the direct heir of the testator).
Trust is a “heavy” word that embraces broad scenarios and that represents an important responsibility in those who give it and in those who receive it.
This is to say that we must trust in those who are trying, with many difficulties, to face a problem for which no one was prepared. Therefore, we must have faith in central institutions, local administrations, doctors, scientists and, last but not least, those who tell us what is happening, namely journalists and conductors.
Trust ... must we have it unconditionally, especially considering the world we live in? A world in which we are bombarded every day with a huge amount of news stating everything and the opposite of everything?
Here, perhaps, is the fundamental point: communication management.
Both on the part of the institutions and on the part of the media, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, the way in which it was communicated caused a leak of news that generated profound discussions but also irrational reactions towards everything and everyone, starting with the famous episode relative to those who crowded the stations of the north to escape to the south so much so that, as the days went by, we realized that that irrational reaction was still triggered by an equally irresponsible gesture.
Therefore, there seemed to have been an opportunity to reflect on how, in parallel with medical efforts, the coronavirus should and could be addressed in terms of communication, thinking precisely about one storytelling of the emergency.
Instead, the narrative of the crisis continued on tracks that relied on terms, practices and habits that, unfortunately, have negatively characterized communication for some time, well before the spread of Covid-19.
Il sensationalism,gross analysis, hasty search for good and bad, of heroes and enemies of the homeland. At a time when Italians cannot help but trust what they are told, the confusion , misinformation they have spread as much as the virus, making communication more and more difficult and, in fact, almost nullifying the opportunity to finally propose a quality narrative, never before of vital importance.
And all this because today, the reading, the study, the search for the truthfulness of the news is the privilege of a few while the majority of people listen to political barkers and partisan journalists who, in order to collect votes, on the one hand, and influence public opinion on the other hand, even in such a critical situation as this one, he uses communication in a factious and instrumental way.
All this, whether you like it or not, falls into the category of fake news.
"Fake" or "fake news" continue to be terms that do not do justice to the extent of the phenomenon we are experiencing because it would be more correct to speak of handling or misinformation which are undoubtedly not new concepts but which, compared to the past, are enriched with further implications.
Having ascertained that, by now, most of the population prefers to learn any type of information from "social networks", regardless of the importance of the topic, it is possible to state that among the main risks there is that which can be considered valid and clearly false information.
This situation is further magnified by the so-called "Backfire effect" that is the phenomenon according to which "When you contest false but already consolidated information, you end up confirming it even more because, unfortunately, you are reluctant to change your opinion".
We can affirm that all the cultural sectors of contemporary society are victims of "fake news" even if the greatest concentration appears to be on scientific content.
The personal point of view is that disinformation in this sector finds fertile ground to spread because it is mainly based on ignorance of basic concepts.
The fact that scientific language is extremely specific allows those who create disinformation to obtain immediate and remarkable success, negatively affecting the academic world which risks losing credibility. It is also emblematic that when falsehoods concerning health arise, the damage caused risks becoming irreparable.
Many studies have been carried out in this regard and what emerges is that there is a belief on the part of many in defining the role of "tech companies" as central, technological companies that, far from functioning as mere "platforms", play a more in line role with the characteristics and requirements of the companies.
The great power of these companies does not end in uploading content to a platform but, on the contrary, it rises thanks to the selective and punctual control of what we see since this is their business model.
And the final goal, as for politics, after all, remains to increase their audience of users, smoothing his hair, to use a somewhat "French" euphemism, by modifying the flow of information in spite of their alleged neutrality.
To this end, they make extensive use of sophisticated algorithms, data analysis, data matching and profiling techniques thanks to which a large amount of information collected is processed, granted to third parties without, very often the consent of the interested parties or with an unconscious consent; data that are used, together with the collection, in advertising promotion and micro targeting through social media.
I muzzle they are another tool used in a notable way. As we know, these are programs that access the network through the same type of channels used by human users and that allow, among other things, through specific algorithms, to perform precise tasks such as data activities. scraping e web-scraping which give rise to the extraction of data and information on a given page to use them in other contexts.
In the virtual square, false or incorrect information, whether of a commercial or political nature, is hidden, sent to a micro target of people on the basis of data collected by powerful companies web marketing, without the interested parties being aware of it.
More and more often the "public debate", focused on highly complex and difficult to solve issues, which concern the future of all, is distorted and transformed into real campaigns of consent marketing, made only of slogans that fill the public space.
Basically, the tech companies they are stimulated, even from an economic point of view, to prioritize sensational content since they are more likely to attract attention as well as to foster the polarization and radicalization of debates.
The pervasive feeling is that the disinformation circulating on the platforms is the result of a project organized and led by actors who have understood very well some basic principles of the digital economy through which to obtain large advertising revenues.
All of this continued to spread uncontrollably so that, in October 2018, the main digital platforms signed a "code of conduct" to combat online disinformation. This is a beginning but it represents a fundamental step in the fight against a problem that is potentially capable of threatening citizens' trust in the institutions, as reaffirmed within the EU.
The objective of the European Union, among other things, is to manage a package of self-regulation rules on a voluntary basis, suitable for combating web disinformation.
In fact, by joining this project, every web company has set itself rules to combat disinformation in all EU member states.
From all this it is clear that information has been transformed into "communication" and that, at the same time, disinformation has developed, which undoubtedly represents a complex and changing phenomenon, and which can be used as a new weapon, for political, economic or military purposes.
Today, disinformation techniques are so many and highly refined that they represent a threat to the security and stability of a country. For this, as anticipated, I have the audacity that we can consider them as one cyber threat.
It is no coincidence, in fact, that when the integrity and stability of a country are called into question, the intelligence services play a fundamental role in combating these forms of threat. Moreover, the intelligence services themselves have been interested in a transformation that has led them to assume a connotation capable of facing the new security challenges.
Without going into the details of what is meant by intelligence and aware that the reader can, however, learn it from different sources (v.link), precisely because it is necessary to deal with new hybrid and, above all, asymmetrical threats, its role becomes fundamental.
Intelligence is closely linked to what happens in the international arena, especially with regard to the balance of power between states but also to the global market.
This link is even more true if we think of those areas of the world where there are no conflicts of a traditional nature but which suffer from the phenomena of vulnerability originating from economic conflicts, advanced forms of terrorism of various matrix and attacks implemented with new methodologies that need to specific forms of intelligence.
Traditional "security threats" have evolved to arrive at more complex cyber threats operated by actors which, fundamentally, can be divided into two macro-groups:
- government actors which are very structured and extremely dangerous by virtue of the fact that they have huge economic and human resources. We can represent the threats they are authors of in two classes: cyber warfare which is a kind of digital warfare as well cyber espionage representing digital espionage.
- non-governmental actors of which terrorist groups belong (cyber terrorism), criminal organizations (cyber crime) and other actors attributable to individuals moved by religious, political and ideological impulses.
All this leads us to think that criminal actions will increasingly make use of technologically advanced tools such as artificial intelligence whose purpose will be to destabilize international relations and have an induced perception of security, so to speak.
One possible weapon is that of the "Deepfake", based on processes that exploit the principles of artificial intelligence to modify and superimpose images and videos starting from the originals so as to elaborate others in which the subjects perform actions, speak and move in absolutely not real contexts, thanks to machine learning techniques such as "Generative adversarial network".
Then there are the "Fake people", people who do not exist in reality but who are the protagonists of virtual videos that generate strong feelings such as anger, mistrust, compassion, fear or discomfort according to the aims they pursue.
The development of a cyber intelligence effective is an incontrovertible reality that must adapt to changed scenarios based on the analysis of open sources, on the processing of big data, on the development of artificial intelligence techniques with which to cope with cyber warfare and guarantee the defense of the community.
From here, the link with what this article has purported to highlight is evident, namely: "News", "information", "disinformation" enter and permeate within the "media" system and the "intelligence" system and to avoid that such pervasive technologies can "explode" the communication and information system with unimaginable repercussions on society itself, it is essential that intelligence plays a central role in guaranteeing security.
In summary, we are faced with an extremely complex system within which it is almost impossible to establish the source of a news or verify its truthfulness. This is because who generates fake news it tends to equate any opinion or opinion on a given topic with the result that everyone feels like "top experts". Moreover, it is extremely amplified by social networks.
The drama is that faced with all this, the majority of users are helpless also and above all by virtue of the fact that, by now, they accept any news provided to them by newspapers, TV or social networks.
There seems to be a grim similarity between the times when censorship, regardless of the political power of the country in which it operated, was concerned with blocking information and the current time when other bodies of power sift, evaluate, modify and construct a huge amount of useless and irrelevant information by confusing and manipulating the recipient of this information, ie the average user, alas unable to resist.
I think it is essential, at this point, to invest in a modern and effective one cyber intelligence able to develop skills cyber counter intelligence that goes beyond the mere defensive role and is, on the contrary, much more proactive and aimed at being able to operate in the cyber dimension even with attacks and simulations, whose purpose may be to hinder the opponents who gradually materialize in this scenario.
Last but not least and we will never tire of emphasizing it, we need to invest in training all users towards a growing sensitivity of IT security so that ever greater and ever more complex risks can be detected, analyzed and addressed.
To learn more:
Pope Francis: "Technologies are a gift, use them correctly" - CorCom (corrierecomunicazioni.it)
Intelligence - Information system for the security of the Republic (sicurezzanazionale.gov.it)
Protecting human rights in the era of cyber warfare First page
Web and disinformation: the role of intelligence (diricto.it)
Fake news: the new era of cyber warfare | Trizio Consulting
Deepfake and manipulated videos: how the dark side of artificial intelligence works - Il Sole 24 ORE
What is the backfire effect, which does not make us change our mistaken beliefs - Wired
Opposing Generative Network - Wikipedia
Fake people, what they are and why they should be kept an eye on | The Bo Live UniPD
Photo: US Air National Guard / Prime Minister's Office / Twitter / web
