Book review: Knowledgeable about the digital war in Syria

in The past year, the united states has done everything to stop Huawei from installing 5G, the fifth generation mobile networks in Europe. It is suspected among other things, that the it giant can build in ”backdoors” for the chinese government, which then imperceptibly would be able to tassa after our private data.

more and more are beginning to realize that the infrastructure that gives people a voice, while giving authorities the ability to intercept it. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad realized this early.

His father, Hafez al-Assad saw in the 1990s, the internet as a tool for foreign influence, with the result that only a fraction of the country's inhabitants even had a computer. But when Bashar will take over as president in 2000, he began a rapid digitalisation, for, like the China to create an authoritarian capitalism, which anyway was high-tech.

– a writer with a background in computer security – shows in the ”They can't stop us”, was this made possible by american technology.

He writes that the regime despite EU sanctions have built up a large part of its digital infrastructure with the help of Ericsson. The company also offers its refined monitoring system ”Cellnet drop 2”. But the syrians decide for Siemens, supplemented with a system for the DPI (”deep packet inspection”) from the French Qosmos, 2016 was bought up by the Swedish technology company Enea. With the help of the european snokarsystem, run on powerful american Bluecoat-computers, could Assad seek out, imprison and execute dissidents.

To this bloody trade was not a major scandal, is in itself a further scandal.

But then Beijmo written his documentary-style book as a political suspense novel, dig not so deep in these shops. He allows us to mainly follow Bassel Khartabil, a syrian-hackers who, with the help of the Swedish aktivistnätverket the Telecomix and anonymiseringsverktyget Tor helps the opposition of syrians to communicate with the outside world.

It is difficult to distinguish partsinlagor, documented facts, and blurry memories.

ingenious, for the power games behind the ac power is fully charged with high voltage. But literary berättargrepp – incorrectly spoken language, or non-disclosure of information – can interfere in the political non-fiction, among other things, that it makes it difficult for the reader to independently assess the credibility. In this case, it is difficult to distinguish partsinlagor, documented facts, and blurry memories.

Such deliberate imprecision must be weighed up by the literary qualities that ”They can't stop us” is unfortunately missing. We will not know Bassel Khartabil or the other hackers in depth, and their environments are described according to the expectations, with constant references to their ”love for code and beer”. Without a subtle or unexpected observations, the story becomes blodfattig.

When the 5G network is in place, among other things, to speed on the ”internet of things”, that is to say, the sum of the all connected objects, everything from refrigerators to cameras. Thus the risk of more physical data – such as diets, diseases, alcohol intake, and sleep habits – to fall into the wrong hands.

Beijmos initiated the book bring life into the conversation about how much the security and convenience of the digital surveillance host. And the debt of the it companies in our pensionsportföljer had, when al-Assad's security service finally tracked Bassel Khartabil and killed him.