When it comes to military preparedness and communication, it really boils down to two things -- speed and security. Speed, especially over great distances, can make the difference between success and failure of a campaign. From the marathon runners of ancient Greece to smoke signals to horseback couriers to the telegraph to radio to satellite to the Internet itself, getting messages where they need to go quickly is key.
However, the messages must also get there securely, lest the enemy know your plans and communiques. Encrypting technologies are as old as communication itself -- invisible ink, replacement algorithms, the Enigma machines of WWII are but a few examples. In today's world of military communication, speed is easy -- security is not.
Web 2.0 technologies truly make moving information over the Internet even more efficient than ever before. In older parlance, we used to refer to Web 1.0 as a "pull" technology, meaning the user had to actively go out and find the needed information. Now, Web 2.0 technologies such as RSS, blogs, Tweets, wikis, etc. actually "push" the information to the end user. For example, I have an RSS subscription to BBC's news site on my browser. When I want to see the headlines, I click on the subscription, and all of the headlines are revealed. They change on a regular basis, so only the newest headlines are available. If I see an article I'm interested in, I click on the feed and am taken to the BBC website with that article.
Combining this with AJAX can make a truly useful, dynamic web portal for all sorts of information. The term "mashup" represents the sense of a dashboard -- all of the feeds that you want to see, on the screen at one time, updating at fixed intervals. Adding AJAX into this mix makes everything even more efficient, as only those parts of the screen that need to update will do so -- the entire page need not refresh at the same time!
While speed is easy in this scenario, I would be much more concerned about the security issue. It seems that in today's world it is much easier to be the person breaking the code than the one making the code. Black hat and gray hat hackers abound, and not all of them have our country's interests at heart. I would suggest that a new military-only network might be a solution. This network can be designed from the ground up to be hardened, secure, fast enough for streaming audio and video anywhere in the world, and with the right protocols to help the military branches work in unison. This network would have limited interfacing with today's Internet, probably at specific, highly secure locations. Personal emails from military personnel would pass through these interface locations, be scrubbed, and then passed on to the open Internet. Tweets and blogs most likely would work the same way -- this way IP addresses could not be used to track the locations of military units and the contents of all posts would be subject to scrutiny. (This may seem a bit severe, but there have been stories coming out of Iraq about missions being compromised by Tweets.)
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I wholeheartedly agree with you that security is a key issue for military intelligence agencies using Web 2.0 tools. Your idea of a dedicated military network doesn’t seem all that far-fetched to me. I think it is a good way to help ensure the secrecy of information transmitted online. In addition to secure hardware, the military should start implementing Web 2.0 training, of sorts, for soldiers. As you mentioned, certain military operations have been derailed by a simple tweet. I’m sure the soldier simply did not realize the possible ramifications of his action. Many people don’t stop to think that if they put information out there for their friends to see; many times their enemies can see it also. Without reminding people of this fact, all the hardware and software imposed security measures will be futile.
ReplyDeleteThe government intelligence and military communities do have their own networks - there is no way putting wikis or blogs out on the Web, susceptible to hacking, would work. The real problem lies in hauling laptops around to exotic and/or hostile locations and then making sure they aren’t left in a taxi somewhere.
ReplyDeleteAmholt -- are these military-only networks set up to handle the same types of protocols as the open Internet? The reason for my suggestion was to indicate that a new military network could be created from the ground up to allow for entirely new protocols, or at least more robust protocols than are possible on the current Web. One of the issues always faced is backward compatibility. This is why such things as video streaming are still difficult online -- all protocols must be agreed upon or you end up with numerous different standards. Look at the mess between Flash video, Silverlight, H.264, etc.
ReplyDeleteI think that what makes security so much more daunting in the world of Web 2.0 is the way attackers can work with more anonymity. In the "old" days of espionage, you had to infiltrate an agent into an opponent's organization. The agent was there on the spot and if found out could be caught and interrogated. Now, a spy can be safe in a physically removed location and infiltrate electronically. If caught, the activities can be halted and perhaps the source even traced, but the human agent may be unreachable by counterespionage personnel, making it harder to stop another attack in the future. This another reason why security is so crucial.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like you know an awful lot about military intel. I completely agree with you that security should be a much high priority than speed. Further, you discussed the possibility of the users being undereducated in the implementation of the technology. Perhaps if the military is going to use such networks they should make all users aware of the ramifications that a negligent act may impose
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