iSpy

For a long time, cyber-crime seemed like one of those harmless things that would only affect someone with the IQ of a plank of wood. Sure, someone somewhere in this world was diligently cooking up an elaborate new scheme to make you part with your money every week, but it essentially served the purpose of filler entertainment on slow work days. A doctor in the UK was looking for a “reliable and trustworthy” partner for an exciting new business opportunity and had magically narrowed down on you, you’d just won the Coca Cola lottery and were entitled to half a million dollars, a Nigerian prince wished to donate all his property to you and the Income Tax Department wished to refund you an amount greater than what you’d ever earned, out of the goodness of their hearts. You’d have to be a really gullible sort to fall for any of that – the sort who’d accept life-affirming advice dispensed by a suicide bomber, or be willing to pay Sreesanth to bowl badly when he would have done that anyway. It’s not something perfectly reasonable that you’d believe right away – like someone telling you about an omnipotent bearded fellow in the sky who controls everything that happens in this world.

This was, of course, until the Chinese came along. Suddenly, the Chinese weren’t just making bad products that you’d buy cheap but still regret when you realized it stopped working after the first week. The Chinese could now hack into your country’s central defence systems and scrawl upon the Ministry of Defence website “China wuz here” or “You no leave Arunachal? We attack! Last warning.” Cyber crime suddenly seemed to be the warfare of choice among the leading countries now that everyone had a nuclear bomb and could not physically attack each other. It turned out that China had trained thousands of hackers who’d sit all day and hack into their enemies’ defence secrets while watching YouTube videos of a tap-dancing cat wearing a bowler hat – and this was how wars would now be fought in the future.

Just as Barack Obama was getting ready with the final draft of his note “Rip into the Chinese PM and tear him to shreds over this whole cyber crime thing”, the NSA revelations came to light. Obama would’ve dejectedly recalled the famous quote cautioning people against enumerating their poultry before the onset of the hatching process, while China, which had so far been reduced to playing the meek Clarke Kent role, had now got its telephone booth. It turned out that the US had been cyber spying on the world all along, and here was conclusive proof that it had engaged in all the dirty, despicable, malicious, loathsome, repulsive, malevolent, depraved, nefarious, sordid, vile, low-life, reprehensible cyber stuff it was accusing China of, plus some more! It’s a bit like getting scared about being caught while stealing from the cookie jar, only for it to turn out that the person catching you was actually stealing the entire jar!

As is usually the case when something big happens with the USA, questions about US dominance were being raised. Would American hegemony & preeminence in world affairs finally come to an end? Had the US taken one step too far even for them to get away with it? Was the US finally a victim of its own hubris? Was this the beginning of the end for the greatest country in the world? Tune in at the same time next week to find out what REALLY happens. A lot of commentators felt that this might be the case, and came up with a number of well-reasoned arguments to bolster the case.

There was, however, one crucial thing that they missed out on. It seems that the US cyber spying included all mails, phone calls, text messages, Skype calls, Apple/Google data and Facebook, among others.

Facebook!

Think about it – as a citizen, even if I were to accept my government’s argument that all this spying was of utmost necessity to keep me safe, I’d still be mighty pissed if my tax money were being utilized to spy on people through Facebook. Facebook intelligence sounds like an oxymoronic term – after five years on Facebook I’ve yet to come across any information that comes close to qualifying as ‘intelligence’! I can understand that maybe they’d glean some important information through emails or phone calls – but Facebook? It’s not like you’d accidentally stumble upon a post on Osama’s wall that says:

“Ayman al Zawahiri has invited you to the event: Serial Blasts in Tokyo.

Date: 13^th June 2013. Time: 12:30 p.m. Venue: In & Around Tokyo Tower, Tokyo.

RSVP – Yes, I will attend; Maybe; Sorry, can’t make it”

Mullah Omar – Osama, costs are going up, we need to downsize. Organize suicide missions ASAP to trim workforce by 10%.

Osama’s Status: New Jihadist track is totally inspiring. All set for my next big plan to teach the infidels a lesson – storm the Engineering college in Bristol!

[Ayman al Zawahiri, Ahmed Awlaki, Hafeez Saeed, Mohammed Atta and 133,654 others like this]

The weekly status meetings must be pretty depressing for the spy in charge of Facebook spying. Every Monday morning, when the NSA is taking stock of the situation, he’d probably be wishing for some terrorists to storm the building and take everyone hostage instead of being subject to this weekly ritual of humiliation.

NSA Chief: All right folks, what have y’all got for me this week?

E-Mail Spy: We have credible intelligence that a hostage attack is being planned in the heart of Rome.

Phone Calls Spy: There is reason to believe that a plane flying from a Texas airport could be hijacked in the next 2 weeks.

Text Messages Spy: We need to intercept an arms shipment that could be used for a terror attack – they’re likely to try and ship it in off the coast of Southern Florida.

Facebook Spy: Alice got wasted at the last party and kissed Doug. Josh went to Mexico for his holidays. Fallon put up pictures of his cat playing the piano.

Another fallout of this whole saga is that those looking at spying as an exciting, glamorous and jet setting career opportunity would need to do a bit of a rethink. The NSA activities should now replace James Bond movies as the point of reference for the life of a spy. Or, the James Bond movies could change to reflect the new age, sinister-but-boring reality of a spy’s life.

M: James, the terrorists have stolen the codes to detonate a nuclear device that could destroy the world. Our sources tell us that they’re currently on a train from Cairo to Alexandria.

James: Don’t worry, M – I’m on it. I’ll get into a helicopter and then climb down from the helicopter into that train and have an elaborate chase sequence after which I’ll jump off at the station and run after them through a crowded, exotic marketplace and then they’ll get into a taxi and a car will appear for me and there’ll be a long car chase ending in a crash after which I’ll again chase them on foot while showing off my parkour skills jumping from one building to another and then…

M: You’ll do none of that, James. What is this, 1980?

James (taken aback): Then what do you want me to do, M?

M: Nothing. You’ll log in to Facebook and click “Like” on the terrorist’s new status message. Then you keep your eyes on his Facebook page at all times. Inform me the minute there’s an update.

Ok. Maybe writing scripts for James Bond movies isn’t my thing. But one cant help shake off the feeling that you can’t be productive if you’re on Facebook all the time – even if it’s massive, global-scale spying that you’re doing. And if that’s what the US spying machinery shall be devoted to, the future indeed doesn't look very promising for American hegemony in world affairs.

Chequered Sport

Cars. Ever since Henry Ford’s legendary quote about the Ford Model T, telling people to bugger off if they didn’t like the car in black, cars have been the stuff of legend. Over the years, people have devoted their heart and souls to cars – writing about cars, making cars, fixing cars, reading about cars and driving cars. The thrill of the wind blowing in your hair as you zoom around in an open-top convertible, the sudden surge of raw adrenaline coursing through your veins as you hit pedal-to-the-metal and let the engine take over, the feeling of freedom as you power that beast down an inviting highway away from civilization – this is the sort of stuff that has driven people to heights of orgasmic delight. People wait in anticipation, drool dripping down their tongues, as Bugatti unveils its latest supercar. Debates punctuated with apoplectic rage do the rounds of the media and online circuits regarding Porsche’s latest off-roader. National pride gets linked with cars, personal self-worth is intrinsically connected to the type of car your own, entire eras have been defined by the kind of cars made…ah, the joy of cars. 

Sadly, though, I’m not much of a car person. This means that:

• My car is not an extension or a reflection of my personality (to be fair, I suppose small, functional and Korean would not be an extension of too many people’s personalities!).
• My car is not something I use to make a grand statement to reinforce my machismo.
• My car is not something I use to make a grand statement to offset any perceived lack of machismo.

Don’t get me wrong, I do get excited and exclaim “Whoa!” at the sight of a two-door convertible that just zipped by – but it’s more of a distant appreciation, along the lines of “Sure, that’s a cool car – but it’s not like I’m going to give up an arm and a leg to own it. And neither will I feel like I haven’t amounted to anything in life if I don’t end up owning that car”. If one fine day it turns out that junk mails don’t lie and an obscure person from a strife-torn African country deposits a truckload of money in my bank account, there are probably a lot of expenditures that would make the list above “buy a super-fancy car”.

Which brings me to Formula 1. I’m not exactly sure what to make of Formula 1. Even though I’m not much of a car person, I do follow a lot of sports, and Formula 1 happens to be one of them. I have absolutely no idea why. I’ve always had a complex relationship with Formula 1 – love-hate would be too simplistic a term to describe it. There’s something very odd about Formula 1. It combines the primal, unadulterated thrill of racing with the robotic, mechanized dullness of technology to create an utterly perplexing proposition. Five minutes after a frantic, incident-strewn start where 20 cars almost crash into each other, a typical Formula 1 race degenerates into lap after lap of mind-numbing monotonicity. Yes, there are pit stops where a clumsy mechanic might add a touch of excitement, or the odd spectacular car-crash – but beyond that there’s very little to hold your attention. In essence, a Formula 1 race is 2 hours of excruciating dullness interspersed with judiciously rationed portions of edge-of-the-seat action. Rarely do 20 people putting their lives at risk contrive to look as tedious as they do in Formula 1.

There are two dead giveaways that Formula 1 is actually rather boring:

1. Presence of hot women: While I’m not complaining about this, the presence of hot women in Formula 1 betrays a lack of confidence shown by the organizers of the sport – they’re worried that enough people may not bother with the sport and so they feel the need to bring in loads of hot women to just stand around and look pretty. Think about it – the only other sports that use hot women are American sports, which are packaged as this ultimate male fantasy extravaganza and geared towards boosting TV ratings with all their timeouts, or the IPL that is anyway made-for-TV and tries too hard.
2. Fake excitement displayed by commentators: If you ever listen to an F1 commentator speaking, it always sounds like he’s right at the edge of his seat. You’d think he might fall off any minute, but he manages to stay at the edge of his seat for 60 laps without falling off. At first, this might fool you into thinking that there IS actually something happening, until you realize that what he’s saying is something fairly mundane like “Ooh, Fernando really needs to look after his tyres. Sure, there’s no one within 20 seconds of him, but with the sun beating down on the tracks there’s always the chance that his tyres will turn to jelly. Maybe that’ll happen in another 20 laps, but we’ll keep saying it every two laps so that you think this is all very exciting and his tyres will turn to jelly any minute.” It just feels like they’re trying to overcompensate. Even in the case of cricket, which is another sport that has its fair share of boring passages, this doesn’t happen. Cricket commentary is infused with generous doses of complete gibberish such as “You can tell that Praveen Kumar is serious about his bowling whenever his shirt is no longer tucked in”. This immediately indicates that there’s absolutely NOTHING in the match worth talking about; the commentator simply picked out a card from a hat that said “Random comments to spew that cannot be proved or disproved in any way and is too innocuous to result in any controversy” and read what was written on the card.

Another problem with Formula 1 are the teams – the teams are all named after car companies (or an energy drink company). How can you cheer for a company? In which other sport would you say, “Oh, I’m cheering for Accenture. I’m a big fan of theirs!” or “How could you cheer for Coca Cola? Unilever is so much better!” It just makes you sound like a complete sell-out.

Perhaps that’s the problem. Even though we’ve jettisoned our college dreams of never being a sell-out and changing the world for the practical reality of paying the rent, it’s not something we like to be reminded of. And when racing is turned into an elaborately complex, big-companies-spending-millions spectacle, a little bit of that simplicity that we’d like to cling on to is lost.