Eric Schmidt and WikiLeaks founder talk “radicalization of internet educated youth”

As the book “The New Digital World” is published this week by Google’s Eric Schmidt and co-author Jared Cohen, a transcript of a “secret” meeting held between the two men and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has come to light. The transcript of this meeting – as well as the audio (uploaded this week) has been being mined by the public, revealing notes such as the one appearing today involving “internet educated youth” as spoken about by both Assange and Cohen.

While the original intent of those involved in this meeting was the exchange comments which would eventually be used in the book The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future, it would appear that it wasn’t Schmidt or Assange that approved of the transcript of the meeting being published by WikiLeaks. The WikiLeaks team is part of the subject being spoken about, this youth which is becoming radicalized in our modern internet age.

Jared Cohen: I am just wondering, on the human side of this, you have such experience of the world you described earlier. …some combination of technical and altruistic people and what amounts to a kind of subculture that you’ve been in for some 15 years now.. So you know about how the subculture works. And that subculture needs to either I guess stay the same or expand in order to do the work that you are describing, and so since our book is about ten years away…

Julian Assange: It’s dramatically expanded…

JC: What are the patterns there in terms of the people part, rather than the…?

JA: That’s the most optimistic thing that is happening. The radicalization of internet educated youth. People who are receiving their values from the internet… and then as they find them to be compatible echoing them back. The echo back is now so strong that it drowns the original statements Completely. The people I’ve dealt with from the 1960s radicals who helped liberate Greece and.. Salazar. They are saying that this moment in time is the most similar to what happened in this period of liberation movements in the 1960s, that they have seen.

Assange continued by expanding on the idea that young people are changing the way our society acts and thinks with the tools they’ve created for themselves with the internet. This age we’re in now, he says, is one in which the technical generation that created the internet – and those that are coming in with the web as a given – are becoming politically educated. JA: This is the political education of apolitical technical people. It is extraordinary, in the same way that the young… Lisa Shields: A-political? Do you mean one word?

JA: One word. People are going from… young people are going from apolitical to political. It is a very very interesting transition to see. Lisa Shields is another of the very few people in the room during this conversation, she having been mentioned in our first short glimpse into this environment last week. This isn’t the last time we’ll be jumping in to this set of ideas being explored by Schmidt and Cohen – now that the book is out, we’ll be leaping in all week long! Eric Schmidt and WikiLeaks founder talk “radicalization of internet educated youth” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.

US, China agree to work together on cyber security

China and the United States will set up a working group on cyber-security, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Saturday, as the two sides moved to ease months of tensions and mutual accusations of hacking and Internet theft. Speaking to reporters in Beijing during a visit to China, Kerry said the United States and China had agreed on the need to speed up action on cyber security, an area that Washington says is its top national security concern.

Cyber security, Kerry said "affects the financial sector, banks, financial transactions, every aspect of nations in modern times are affected by the use of cyber networking and obviously all of us - every nation - has an interest in protecting its people, protecting its rights, protecting its infrastructure". Earlier, China's official Xinhua news agency quoted Foreign Minister Wang Yi as telling Kerry in their meeting that China and the United States should make joint efforts to safeguard cyberspace.

Cyberspace should be an area where the two countries can increase mutual trust and cooperation, Wang told Kerry, according to Xinhua. Beijing and Washington have traded accusations in recent months of massive cyber intrusions. The United States says hacking attacks emanating from China have targeted U.S. government and corporate computer networks among others, stealing government and commercial data.

A U.S. computer security firm released a report in February saying a secretive Chinese military unit is believed to be behind a wave of hacking attacks against the United States.

China claims it is the victim of large-scale cyber attacks from the United States, though it has given few details. Wang repeated to Kerry the Chinese government's oft-stated position that it opposes any form of hacking. The working group announcement follows other recent calls for dialogue and cooperation. Officials and business executives attending a China-U.S. Internet Industry Forum in Beijing this week sought to find common ground.

"It's important to have a dialogue on this, but it's also important that the dialogue be a means to an end, and the end is really ending these practices," Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Robert Hormats, who spoke at the forum, told Reuters in an interview. Last month China's premier, Li Keqiang called for both sides to stop the war of words over hacking.

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Assad sympathisers hacked FIFA Twitter accounts

Two of FIFA's Twitter accounts were hacked on Monday in the latest wave of cyberattacks claimed by Syrian government sympathisers.

Zurich: Two of FIFA's Twitter accounts were hacked on Monday in the latest wave of cyberattacks claimed by Syrian government sympathisers. A series of corruption allegations were made on the official accounts of FIFA President Sepp Blatter and the World Cup, some linked to 2022 World Cup host Qatar, including one libelous post about the Emir of Qatar. "It was decided that the president Sepp Blatter is to step down due to corruption charges," the hackers posted using the (at)FifaWorldCup account. With FIFA unable to regain control of either account, which have more than 500,000 followers combined, the media department confirmed by e-mail that they had been hacked.

"We are looking at this issue at the moment," FIFA said in a statement. "In the meantime, to avoid any doubt, we kindly ask you to verify and check any statements that you see on a FIFA twitter account with the FIFA Media department." The Syrian Electronic Army — hackers sympathetic to Syrian President Bashar Assad — posted messages claiming it had posted the tweets. The group also recently claimed to have hacked the Twitter accounts of the BBC Arabic service and broadcaster Al-Jazeera.

One message Monday also taunted Twitter, which has shut down other SEA accounts. "Twitter (hashtag)Failure... You can't stop us!" read one of 14 rogue posts on the official World Cup account. The hackers also reminded FIFA that the Syria national team was kicked out of the 2014 World Cup qualifying tournament in 2011 for fielding an ineligible player. "The decision to disqualify the Syrian team on a technicality was found to be politically based," one message read.

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