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Cybersecurity is a complex and contested issue in international politics. By focusing on the 'great powers'--the US, the EU, Russia and China--studies in the field often fail to capture the specific politics of cybersecurity in the Middle East, especially in Egypt and the GCC states. For these countries, cybersecurity policies and practices are entangled with those of long-standing allies in the US and Europe, and are built on reciprocal flows of data, capital, technology and expertise. At the same time, these states have authoritarian systems of governance more reminiscent of Russia or China, including approaches to digital technologies centred on sovereignty and surveillance. This book is a pioneering examination of the politics of cybersecurity in the Middle East. Drawing on new interviews and original fieldwork, James Shires shows how the label of cybersecurity is repurposed by states, companies and other organisations to encompass a variety of concepts, including state conflict, targeted spyware, domestic information controls, and foreign interference through leaks and disinformation. These shifting meanings shape key technological systems as well as the social relations underpinning digital development. But however the term is interpreted, it is clear that cybersecurity is an integral aspect of the region's contemporary politics.
You are being lied to by people who don't even exist. Digital deception is the new face of information warfare. Social media has been weaponised by states and commercial entities alike, as bots and trolls proliferate and users are left to navigate an infodemic of fake news and disinformation. In the Persian Gulf and the wider Middle East, where authoritarian regimes continue to innovate and adapt in the face of changing technology, online deception has reached new levels of audacity. From pro-Saudi entities that manipulate the tweets of the US president, to the activities of fake journalists and Western PR companies that whitewash human rights abuses, Marc Owen Jones' meticulous investigative research uncovers the full gamut of tactics used by Gulf regimes and their allies to deceive domestic and international audiences. In an age of global deception, this book charts the lengths bad actors will go to when seeking to impose their ideology and views on citizens around the world.
Cyberwars in the Middle East argues that hacking is a form of online political disruption whose influence flows vertically in two directions (top-bottom or bottom-up) or horizontally. These hacking activities are performed along three political dimensions: international, regional, and local. Author Ahmed Al-Rawi argues that political hacking is an aggressive and militant form of public communication employed by tech-savvy individuals, regardless of their affiliations, in order to influence politics and policies. Kenneth Waltz’s structural realism theory is linked to this argument as it provides a relevant framework to explain why nation-states employ cyber tools against each other. On the one hand, nation-states as well as their affiliated hacking groups like cyber warriors employ hacking as offensive and defensive tools in connection to the cyber activity or inactivity of other nation-states, such as the role of Russian Trolls disseminating disinformation on social media during the US 2016 presidential election. This is regarded as a horizontal flow of political disruption. Sometimes, nation-states, like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, use hacking and surveillance tactics as a vertical flow (top-bottom) form of online political disruption by targeting their own citizens due to their oppositional or activists’ political views. On the other hand, regular hackers who are often politically independent practice a form of bottom-top political disruption to address issues related to the internal politics of their respective nation-states such as the case of a number of Iraqi, Saudi, and Algerian hackers. In some cases, other hackers target ordinary citizens to express opposition to their political or ideological views which is regarded as a horizontal form of online political disruption. This book is the first of its kind to shine a light on many ways that governments and hackers are perpetrating cyber attacks in the Middle East and beyond, and to show the ripple effect of these attacks.
Developing nations have seen many technological advances in the last decade. Although beneficial and progressive, they can lead to unsafe mobile devices, system networks, and internet of things (IoT) devices, causing security vulnerabilities that can have ripple effects throughout society. While researchers attempt to find solutions, improper implementation and negative uses of technology continue to create new security threats to users. Cybersecurity Capabilities in Developing Nations and Its Impact on Global Security brings together research-based chapters and case studies on systems security techniques and current methods to identify and overcome technological vulnerabilities, emphasizing security issues in developing nations. Focusing on topics such as data privacy and security issues, this book is an essential reference source for researchers, university academics, computing professionals, and upper-level students in developing countries interested in the techniques, laws, and training initiatives currently being implemented and adapted for secure computing.
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Critical examinations of efforts to make governments more efficient and responsive Political upheavals and civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have obscured efforts by many countries in the region to reform their public sectors. Unwieldy, unresponsive—and often corrupt—governments across the region have faced new pressure, not least from their publics, to improve the quality of public services and open up their decisionmaking processes. Some of these reform efforts were under way and at least partly successful before the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2010. Reform efforts have continued in some countries despite the many upheavals since then. This book offers a comprehensive assessment of a wide range of reform efforts in nine countries. In six cases the reforms targeted core systems of government: Jordan's restructuring of cabinet operations, the Palestinian Authority's revision of public financial management, Morocco's voluntary retirement program, human resource management reforms in Lebanon, an e-governance initiative in Dubai, and attempts to improve transparency in Tunisia. Five other reform efforts tackled line departments of government, among them Egypt's attempt to improve tax collection and Saudi Arabia's work to improve service delivery and bill collection. Some of these reform efforts were more successful than others. This book examines both the good and the bad, looking not only at what each reform accomplished but at how it was implemented. The result is a series of useful lessons on how public sector reforms can be adopted in MENA.
The new US National Cyber Strategy points to Russia, China, North Korea and Iran as the main international actors responsible for launching malicious cyber and information warfare campaigns against Western interests and democratic processes. Washington made clear its intention of scaling the response to the magnitude of the threat, while actively pursuing the goal of an open, secure and global Internet. The first Report of the ISPI Center on Cybersecurity focuses on the behaviour of these “usual suspects”, investigates the security risks implicit in the mounting international confrontation in cyberspace, and highlights the current irreconcilable political cleavage between these four countries and the West in their respective approaches “in and around” cyberspace.
The Middle East is the region in which the first act of cyber warfare took place. Since then, cyber warfare has escalated and has completely altered the course of the MENA region's geopolitics. With a foreword by top national security and cyber expert, Richard A. Clarke, this is the first anthology to specifically investigate the history and state of cyber warfare in the Middle East. It gathers an array of technical practitioners, social science scholars, and legal experts to provide a panoramic overview and cross-sectional analysis covering four main areas: privacy and civil society; the types of cyber conflict; information and influence operations; and methods of countering extremism online. The book highlights the real threat of hacktivism and informational warfare between state actors and the specific issues affecting the MENA region. These include digital authoritarianism and malware attacks in the Middle East, analysis of how ISIS and the Syrian electronic army use the internet, and the impact of disinformation and cybercrime in the Gulf. The book captures the flashpoints and developments in cyber conflict in the past 10 years and offers a snapshot of the region's still-early cyber history. It also clarifies how cyber warfare may develop in the near- to medium-term future and provides ideas of how its greatest risks can be avoided.
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This text aims to fill a gap in the field of Middle Eastern political studies by combining international relations theory with concrete case studies. It begins with an overview of the rules and features of the Middle East regional system—the arena in which the local states, including Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Israel and the Arab states of Syria, Jordan and Iraq, operate. The book goes on to analyse foreign-policy-making in key states, illustrating how systemic determinants constrain this policy-making, and how these constraints are dealt with in distinctive ways depending on the particular domestic features of the individual states. Finally, it goes on to look at the outcomes of state policies by examining several major conflicts including the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Gulf War, and the system of regional alignment. The study assesses the impact of international penetration in the region, including the historic reasons behind the formation of the regional state system. It also analyses the continued role of external great powers, such as the United States and the former Soviet Union, and explains the process by which the region has become incorporated into the global capitalist market.
New Media Politics: Rethinking Activism and National Security in Cyberspace explores many of the questions surrounding the new challenges that have arisen as a result of the emergence of cyberspace, including cyber-activism, cyberterrorism, and cyber-security. The chapters in this volume provide case studies that span an array of geographies as they debate questions regarding conceptual issues in cyberspace and the relationship between politics, cyberterrorism and cyber-activism, as well as state and international regulations concerning cyberspace, resistance movements in cyberspace, and media frameworks concerning terrorism, civil liberties, and government restrictions. This collection will provide a venue for discussions on the diverse issues surrounding the theme of new media politics from international and interdisciplinary perspectives. The volume is divided into two parts, the first of which focuses on how cyberspace has been used in activism, acts of resistance and protests. The second part investigates issues related to how online media is used in terrorism and how governments have sometimes perceived cyberspace as a threat, leading at times to regulations which threaten to curtail liberties in the name of protecting the “security” of the state against enemies that may be seen as “internal” or “external.”