You would think that we have taken it as seriously as we could, this recent spate of spoof websites, fake e-mails and chats and smears of politicians and journalists.
It’s been condemned by the prime minister, a public demonstration has been held, the cybercrime unit is on it. It has been described as an attack on free expression and democracy.
All that is right and proper but it still fails to spell out the full nature of the crime. We are witnessing an attack on the state.
That’s not quite the same as an attack on democracy. If we were not a democracy, this wave of fake news would still constitute an attack on the state.
If anyone and anything – not just any journalist but any authority – can be spoofed, how can anyone be sure what’s true anymore?
Partly, it’s because the targets include the state broadcaster, the prime minister, the leader of the opposition and at least one MP. It’s also because the evident purpose of the attack is to undermine faith in the working of state institutions responsible for order and good governance.
To understand why, we need to unfold just what’s new about these attacks and what they’re communicating.
We’ve seen people smeared and news about them faked before. What is new about this attack – what it ostentatiously flaunts – is its scale and speed: the range of its victims and how rapidly the attacks shifted from one to the other.
This attack was not intended to be undetected. Deception is not the aim. On the contrary, like a terror attack, it wants to draw attention to itself. It wants to shock and awe us at the nature of the enemy.
The ease of the attack is part of the message: this can be done to anyone and to many at once. If it reminds you of anything, it’s the sheer power of the bomb blast that killed Daphne Caruana Galizia, which was far beyond what was needed to kill her but an essential part of the terrorising message of impunity that it transmitted.
Here the message is: spoofing communications – from websites to e-mails to chats – is easy. It can happen to anyone if your enemy is dangerous enough.
If anyone and anything – not just any journalist but any authority – can be spoofed, how can anyone be sure what’s true anymore?
These spoofs were obvious fakes; they had to be for us to take in the message. But they bank on us to conclude that it’s just a matter of time, technology and expertise to make a spoof virtually undetectable to the untrained eye.
Here then is another reason why it’s an attack on the state. These spoofs are not a simple attack on truth, understood philosophically. They’re not just an attack on the credibility of individuals. They’re an attack on the credibility of evidence, any evidence. They’re intended to make you doubt your own eyes.
Our cybercrime unit should seek international assistance if it hasn’t done so already
They’re an attack on the evidence offered – in their own forums – by journalists, or the police, or by the government and the opposition.
The aim is to plant radical doubt in any evidence, offered by any authority.
If that succeeds, we can never eradicate reasonable doubt in the minds of readers, juries or voters. Fissures will have been created in the very foundations of our decision-making system. Democratic engagement on issues would be rendered pointless. Faith in the fairness of our justice system would be destroyed.
The attack was meant to be blatant not hidden. But it is also meant to get us to create competing lists of prime suspects, to turn us into a nation of conspiracy theorists (well, more than we already are), each one of us a son or daughter of Inspector Clouseau, suspecting everyone and no one.
Even if someone is eventually arraigned, the risk is that enough suspicion will remain – that the evidence itself is deep fake – that a satisfying resolution will continue to escape us.
To see these attacks in their proper perspective, therefore, is not just an exercise in understanding what has happened, in seeing that it’s not just an attack on this or that individual, that it is more serious than we thought.
Perspective helps us see what action is now needed and where its justification and legitimacy come from. Being attacks on the rule of law and good governance, we are therefore dealing with a threat to state security, the state’s ability to fulfil its duty to protect us and guarantee stability. Counteraction should be proportionate.
It is essential that the perpetrators are caught. They need to be identified in a manner that snuffs out doubts about whether the evidence against them is itself fake.
Our cybercrime unit should seek international assistance if it hasn’t done so already. Such a request should not be seen as a sign of weakness. It’s recognition of the kind of crime we are dealing with: cross-border, with implications for the EU, as such, given that security and rule of law are at stake, apart from free expression and media.
Another set of actions should follow. The Daphne Caruana Galizia inquiry report has identified instances where fake news was seeded in social media and then spread by state officials or partisan organisations to undermine a lone journalist (Caruana Galizia). The inquiry condemns these practices but, at the time, these practices were not given their due importance by other media houses.
The practices themselves clearly have to stop. The spreading of fake news – under the guise of ‘innocently’ providing a link that might interest readers or to ‘report’ what has been said elsewhere – is not just malicious in itself. It helps create a general environment in which fake news can flourish.
If political organisations do not desist on their own accord, then media organisations should call them out. Aiding the spread of fake news should be recognised for the scandal that it is: an attack on our security and way of life.