Cyberphobia
Identity, Trust, Security and the Internet
Edward Lucas (Bloomsbury, 336pp, £20, Oldie price £16.50) IN A BOOK intended to make our flesh creep, Edward Lucas, a senior editor at the Economist, claims that ‘our dependence on computers is growing faster than our ability to forestall attackers’. At the same time he argues that ‘in all other walks of life we trade off freedom, security and convenience’ and therefore ‘our dealings with computers and networks should be no different’. Adarsh Matham of the Sunday
Standard (Kenya) felt that Cyberphobia is really two books in one. ‘The first book is an extensive, fairly wellresearched horror tome that justifies the title and introduces the readers to the kinds of dangers that individuals, corporations and countries face from increasing intrusion of the internet into our everyday lives.’ The second book, on the other hand, is ‘a very political tome’ and ‘in trying to find solutions for the problems in the first book, Mr Lucas risks getting his book labelled as propaganda’. For example, ‘we are told that Chinese and Russian hacking is dangerous, while American and British hacking is benevolent.’ Matham concluded that ‘if you can tune out this second book, Cyberpho-
bia is an informative albeit tedious read’. Hugo Rifkind, writing in the
Times, agreed that Cyberphobia consists of two books, but preferred the second one: ‘It’s just a bit more interesting once we get to the second half of this book, when Lucas starts to focus on corporations, governments and militaries.’ However, Rifkind was
‘We are told that Chinese and Russian hacking is dangerous, while American and British hacking is benevolent’
disappointed that he did not ‘entertain the suggestion that all of this broad, tumbling chaos and vulnerability might actually be good for us’. It seemed to Rifkind that ‘whether we are states, hackers, scammers, or simply angry people with social media accounts, we’ll all be able to do each other a hell of a lot of damage. Perhaps we’ll just have to learn to treat each other a little better.’
Sunday Times reviewer Oliver Thring said that the book ‘will delight the intelligence agencies, plaudits from whom bedeck the jacket’, but that ‘those who champion the internet’s lawlessness, for noble or nefarious purposes, will not relish its call for constraint’.