Lauri Love: The realities of cyber security
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 538 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2020
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Stephen Sackur speaks to the accused computer hacker Lauri Love. For nations, corporations and all of us as individuals, the age of the internet has heightened vulnerability. Information and data - the most valuable of all commodities - are at risk from hackers, motivated by greed or national or ideological interest. Lauri Love was, from childhood, a gifted computer geek who joined a so-called hacktivist collective. He was charged with hacking secrets from the US military, and narrowly avoided extradition. What does his case tell us about the realities of cyber security?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker. |
| 0:07.0 | Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it. My guest today was, |
| 0:13.0 | by the time he hit teenage, already exceptionally gifted in computing, gaming and all those skills |
| 0:20.0 | associated with the word geek. While still in |
| 0:23.6 | his teens, he became involved with a collective of hacktivists. And by 2013, he was being accused |
| 0:29.7 | of playing a key role in the hacking of highly sensitive US military institutions, including the |
| 0:36.9 | army, the missile Agency, and NASA. |
| 0:40.7 | He was investigated by the UK authorities, and when charges were dropped, the U.S. government |
| 0:46.2 | stepped in, seeking his extradition to face charges in the states that could have resulted |
| 0:51.8 | in a 99-year sentence. In 2018, that extradition request was |
| 0:57.7 | rejected by the British courts, in part on grounds that Mr. Love's mental health would not |
| 1:03.4 | be adequately safeguarded in the US. So, for now, he is free, but his case has raised issues |
| 1:10.7 | which concern nation-states, corporations, and all of us as individuals. |
| 1:16.4 | How safe is our precious data and privacy? |
| 1:20.4 | Are the hackers, whether driven by greed or ideology, always one step ahead of the cyber defences put up to deter them. Well, Lowry Love |
| 1:30.8 | joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. This word hacker, would you describe yourself? Did you ever |
| 1:38.4 | describe yourself as a hacker? I have, yeah, I have happily described myself as a hacker since probably the age of |
| 1:46.2 | 12, 13, because in our culture, it didn't originally carry any negative stigma. So it's just somebody |
| 1:54.1 | who doesn't just accept that things work the way that they're described, but decides I'm going |
| 1:59.8 | to explore, take them apart, put them together in new ways and be innovative with the technology. So I think it's a positive |
| 2:05.6 | thing. Right. So the main motivation there might be curiosity, but I think the word has come |
| 2:12.1 | to carry a lot more baggage than that. These days, we think of hackers as people who are trying to break down |
... |
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