Tech News
U.S. prepares to relinquish key oversight role for the Internet
The U.S. government announced Friday it was giving up its key role in charge of the Internet's technical operations, handing over those functions to "the global multistakeholder community."
The U.S. Commerce Department said it would seek "to convene global stakeholders to develop a proposal" for a transition away from US government oversight of the Internet's domain name system.
The move "marks the final phase of the privatization" of the Internet domain system, a statement said.
In 1997, the Internet domain system was handed over by the US government to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a non-profit group.
The decision comes with Washington under pressure following revelations about vast surveillance programs operated by the secretive National Security Agency to collect data through a variety of methods.
The end of the U.S. oversight role has no immediate impact for Internet users, and ICANN will continue to administer the network's key technical functions.
The shift seeks "to support and enhance the multistakeholder model of Internet policymaking and governance," said the statement from the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
The U.S. agency's role administering changes to the so-called "root zone" of databases underlying the Internet makes it a steward of that system, even though the functions are contracted out to ICANN and the infrastructure company Verisign.
"The timing is right to start the transition process," said Assistant Commerce Secretary Lawrence Strickling.
"We look forward to ICANN convening stakeholders across the global Internet community to craft an appropriate transition plan."
The statement said the U.S. hopes to "support and enhance the multistakeholder model," and "maintain the openness of the Internet" under any new system.
ICANN welcomed the announcement and said it was moving forward on a transition plan.
"We are inviting governments, the private sector, civil society and other Internet organizations from the whole world to join us in developing this transition process," said ICANN president and CEO Fadi Chehade.
"All stakeholders deserve a voice in the management and governance of this global resource as equal partners."
- ICANN administrator role unchanged -
ICANN said its role as administrator of the Internet's unique identifier system remains unchanged.
"The Internet's Unique Identifier functions are not apparent to most Internet users, but they play a critical role in maintaining a single, global, unified and interoperable Internet." ICANN said.
But the change leaves some questions unanswered on the future stewardship of the Internet.
Daniel Castro, analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, criticized the "negative" move.
"And the government knows it's negative," he told AFP. "That's why they released it on a Friday afternoon."
Castro said the change opens the door to other governments modifying the Internet architecture for political reasons.
"It's one thing for the US government to step back," he said.
"The concern is how do we make it work in practice. Given that other countries have said they will use the Internet for political purposes this threatens the long-term stability of the basic technical functions of the Internet."
In a blog post, Castro said the US has been a force for openness of the Internet.
"Internet users and businesses worry that countries such as Russia or China may manipulate ICANN to censor online content that is outside their borders," he wrote.
"Currently, the U.S. government acts as a deterrent... It is unreasonable, however, to expect all foreign governments to continue to respect ICANN's operating principles in the absence of the US government's oversight and protection of core values."
The leaders of the Internet technical organizations welcomed the news.
"The transition of the US government stewardship has been envisaged since the early days of (ICANN) functions contract," said a statement from the World Wide Web Consortium, Internet Engineering Task Force and other groups.
"This transition is now feasible due to the maturity of the Internet technical organizations."
[Image via Agence France-Presse]
'China's Twitter' files for public stock offering in U.S.
Weibo, the Chinese microblogging service often compared with Twitter, filed Friday for a U.S. stock offering seeking to raise $500 million.
The move will allow the popular Chinese-language social network to spin off from the Internet giant Sina, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The filing said Weibo had 129.1 million monthly active users in December and 61.4 million average daily active users.
"A microcosm of Chinese society, Weibo has attracted a wide range of users, including ordinary people, celebrities and other public figures, as well as organizations such as media outlets, businesses, government agencies and charities," the SEC filing said.
"Weibo has become a cultural phenomenon in China.
"Weibo allows people to be heard publicly and exposed to the rich ideas, cultures and experiences of the broader world," it added.
"Media outlets use Weibo as a source of news and a distribution channel for their headline news. Government agencies and officials use Weibo as an official communication channel for disseminating timely information and gauging public opinion to improve public services."
The filing said Weibo's initial public offering (IPO) will be part of a "carve-out from Sina" but that Sina would "continue to provide us with certain support services" after it becomes independent.
Weibo reported revenues for 2013 of $188 million, triple the level of 2012, but has continually lost money, like its US counterpart, with accumulated losses of $274.9 million as of December 31.
But Weibo said it would work to increase the number of users and monetization as it strives for profitability.
The company did not indicate whether Weibo would file its IPO on the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange.
The lead underwriters will be Goldman Sachs Asia and Credit Suisse.
[Image via Agence France-Presse]
Mind your wallet: Why the cyber underworld loves bitcoin
By Jeremy Wagstaff
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Criminals may already have made off with up to $500 million worth of bitcoins since the virtual currency launched in 2009 - and you can double that if it turns out they emptied Mt. Gox.
Internet criminals, security experts say, are attracted to bitcoin because of its stratospheric rise in value, because it's easier to steal than real money, and because it's easier to trade with other criminal elements. But, they add, bitcoin will survive the damage.
"It's just growing pains," says Keith Jarvis, a security researcher at Dell SecureWorks. "Bitcoin is large enough and has enough momentum behind it to survive any public relations damage from this (Mt. Gox) case or anything else."
The fall of Mt Gox, the Tokyo-based exchange which filed for bankruptcy last month after saying it lost some 850,000 bitcoins to hackers, is certainly the virtual currency's biggest crisis.
But data collated by Reuters from specialist bitcoin industry websites and internet forums shows that more than 730,000 bitcoins were already missing to theft, hacking, cyber-ransom payments and other apparently criminal pursuits before Mt. Gox's collapse. That's nearly 6 percent of all bitcoins, and doesn't include dozens, possibly hundreds, of unreported cases of individuals who have lost bitcoins from their computers or online exchanges to hackers.
For sure, there's no way of telling who has these missing bitcoins, or whether they were converted to real money when the price was much lower. And of course some bitcoins may have been counted twice if criminals stole them from each other or they were put back into circulation and stolen again.
But there's no question that bitcoins have attracted the attention of cyber-criminals - as a currency and an asset worth stealing.
BEWARE MALWARE
A study by Pat Litke and Joe Stewart of Dell SecureWorks showed that as the price of bitcoin soared beyond $1,000 last year, so did the number of viruses designed to steal bitcoins from wallets - programs that hold bitcoins on user's computers or smartphones. Of the 140 types of such software more than 100 appeared in the past year.
Writing such viruses, says Stewart, is easy. "There's no sophistication involved in the storage of bitcoin in wallets. As for malware, it's some of the easiest stuff to write."
Indeed, this cyber-pocket picking wasn't criminals' first foray into bitcoins. Initially, they focused on using their control of large networks of infected computers - called botnets - to make their own bitcoins.
Bitcoins are created through a 'mining' process where a computer's resources are used to perform millions of calculations. For a while, says Kirill Levchenko, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego, criminals added malware to their botnets to turn infected computers into bitcoin miners.
This triggered predictions of doom for bitcoin - that the criminals would take over the mining of bitcoin through botnets and bring the whole currency crashing down. But as bitcoins become harder to mine - according to an algorithm that slows down their production the more people try to create them - this approach has proven less profitable.
In 2012-13, says Danny Huang, another researcher at the University of California, San Diego, they earned at least 4,500 bitcoins, a relatively small sum compared with the total produced. "Few botnets are mining bitcoins now," he said.
Instead, they've turned to stealing them from wallets, or, more lucratively, from exchanges.
According to data compiled last year by academics Tyler Moore and Nicholas Christin, of 40 exchanges tracked 18 had closed, with customer balances wiped out in many cases - not always, they point out, due to fraud. Since then, according to public reports, more than a dozen others have been hacked.
CURRENCY OF THIEVES
Cyber-criminals have also made use of the ease with which bitcoins can be traded without any third party - such as a bank or online payments service like PayPal - to use it as at least one way of paying for services between themselves.
"Bitcoin made it much easier for them, because they have to trust each other even less. Even complete strangers can cooperate," said Juraj Bednar, a bitcoin security expert in Slovakia.
But while bitcoin has its advantages, it's not a perfect tool for the bad guys.
Take, for example, ransomware. Viruses which encrypt users' data and then demand payment for a key to unlock it have become increasingly sophisticated, says Dell Secureworks' Jarvis.
The most successful: CryptoLocker, which Jarvis believes is run by a Russian-speaking gang who are also behind a botnet called Gameover Zeus that targets financial websites.
Bitcoin often appears on CryptoLocker as an option for victims to pay up. Its appeal, says Bednar, lies in the fact that it needs no third party for the transaction to work.
But there have been problems. For one thing, the type of user to be infected by a virus wasn't likely to be the type who is technologically savvy enough to be familiar with bitcoin. Also, as bitcoin rose in value, it has become a more expensive option for the victim, forcing the criminals to lower their bitcoin ransom demands to match prevailing exchange rates.
TRACING TRANSACTIONS
Then there's bitcoin's transparency. All transactions are visible, and while they're just digits and letters, in theory they could be connected to an individual and the entire history of all the bitcoin's transactions traced.
Italian computer engineer Michele Spagnuolo, for example, was able to trace a number of ransom payments for CryptoLocker. The gains have been impressive: he and academics from Politecnico di Milano speculate that up to 6,757 bitcoins - then worth around $6 million - could be linked to those behind CryptoLocker late last year. That estimate of their total takings, he says, could be very conservative.
But the fact that such payments can be traced would raise a red flag for cyber-criminals, says Daniel Cohen of RSA, the security division of EMC Corp, even though there are online services that can "launder" bitcoins to hide their origin. "Sure, there are bitcoin laundering services, but still if I tie a wallet to an identity I can see every single movement," he said.
And, ironically, the success that some criminals have had in stealing bitcoins has made it less appealing to the underworld. RSA's Cohen says his team monitoring underground forums has noticed criminals lately see bitcoin as "volatile, seizable and, with the recent thefts, unsafe."
FIXES NEEDED
That's not to say bitcoin is out of the woods.
While the protocols underlying bitcoin have proved themselves to work, the weak links have been the software containing the wallets, whether on exchanges or on individuals' computers.
"The attacks on the exchanges did not in themselves indicate any particular weakness of bitcoin per se, but rather exploiting vulnerabilities within the exchanges," says Raj Samani of Intel Corp's internet security company McAfee.
Such holes are being addressed, says Dell Secureworks' Stewart, pointing to such innovations as hardware wallets to replace software ones. "We're just going to have to get into that mode of thinking," he says.
For now, bitcoin users remain a vulnerable target.
That was illustrated when hackers breached Mt. Gox's servers and its owner's blog this week to post files purporting to be Mt. Gox's transactions in bitcoin stretching back to 2011.
Amid the files lurked another surprise awaiting the unwary: a bitcoin-stealing virus.
(Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
AT&T near $4 billion deal to buy more spectrum and Cricket wireless franchise
U.S. regulators conditionally cleared AT&T's $4 billion deal for Leap Wireless on Thursday which gives the telecom giant more spectrum and the Cricket prepaid phone franchise.
The Federal Communications Commission said that it agreed to the takeover after AT&T made commitments to divest some spectrum and accept other conditions.
The modifications to the deal "will ameliorate the potential public-interest harms and that will help to ensure the achievement of the asserted public-interest benefits," the FCC said in a statement.
AT&T agreed to give up wireless spectrum in some markets to ensure access for some of its rivals.
The big telecom carrier also committed to deploy high-speed access in areas where it is gaining new spectrum and to allow customers of the Cricket brand to keep some low-rate plans and get trade-in credits for their phones when they migrate to the AT&T network.
The deal had been criticized by some consumer groups who said it would reduce competition in the wireless market, noting that Cricket was used by many low-income consumers who lacked the ability to subscribe to one of the major carriers.
John Bergmayer at the activist group Public Knowledge said the deal "highlights the need for new policies that better address the problem of spectrum consolidation."
"The removal of Leap (and its well-known brand Cricket) from the marketplace is troubling because its low-cost, prepaid price plans are particularly attractive to low-income consumers," Bergmayer said in a statement.
"That said, the Commission has ameliorated some of this deal's negative effects."
The news comes amid a campaign by the parent of number three US wireless company Sprint angling to buy the fourth-biggest carrier, T-Mobile.
Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive of Japan's SoftBank, which owns Sprint, told an audience in Washington this week he wants to bring a "fight" to the top telecom carriers but needs to have the "scale" to make investments.
[Image via Agence France-Presse]
Black Harvard students take to Tumblr in fight against stereotypes
Black students at Harvard University, appropriating a line from a celebrated African-American poet, are harnessing social media to challenge racial stereotypes -- and inspiring similar blogs across the Atlantic.
I, Too, Am Harvard is a Tumblr blog, viewed more than 235,000 times as of Thursday, in which 63 students reveal some of the more frustrating and condescending remarks they've encountered at the Ivy League school.
"You don't sound black, you sound smart," recounted one student, who like the others inscribed the comment on a handheld blackboard.
"You're the whitest black person I know," recalled another, while a third student informed white peers: "The lack of diversity in this classroom does not make me the voice of all black people."
Similar blogs have since popped up at Oxford and Cambridge universities in Britain, and at some American campuses such as the University of Iowa.
The blog coincides with an eponymous play based on interviews with black Harvard students that takes its title from "I, Too, Am America" by the late African-American poet Langston Hughes.
"Our voices often go unheard on this campus, our experiences are devalued, our presence is questioned," the blog states.
"This project is our way of speaking back, of claiming this campus, of standing up to say: We are here. This place is ours. We, TOO, are Harvard."
Just over 1,100 of Harvard's 21,000 students are African-American, according to its provost's office.
The core of the student body hails from higher-income white American families who can shoulder the $56,000 cost of tuition and accommodation.
On the web: www.itooamharvard.tumblr.com
[Image via Agence France-Presse]
Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg: I called Obama to complain about NSA spying
By Alexei Oreskovic
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg blasted the U.S. government's electronic surveillance practices on Thursday, saying he'd personally called President Barack Obama to voice his displeasure.
"When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government," Zuckerberg said in a post on his personal Facebook page.
"I've called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform," the 29-year-old Zuckerberg continued.
The phone call and Zuckerberg's 300-word missive on Thursday come amid a series of revelations about controversial government surveillance practices that were leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
"The president spoke last night with Mark Zuckerberg about recent reports in the press about alleged activities by the U.S. intelligence community," a White House official said.
The official declined further comment and referred to the National Security Agency's statement released earlier on Thursday saying recent media reports that allege the NSA has infected million of computers around the world malware and that the NSA is impersonating U.S. social media or other websites are inaccurate.
Facebook, which operates the world's No. 1 Internet social network with 1.2 billion users, declined to comment beyond Zuckerberg's post.
Secret documents published on news website The Intercept on Wednesday showed that the NSA impersonated Facebook web pages in order to gather information from targets. When those people thought they were logging into Facebook, they were actually communicating with the NSA. The agency then used malicious code on the fake page to break into the targets' computers and remove data from them.
Last year, Facebook moved to encrypt all its pages, making such impersonation more difficult.
Previous media reports based on leaked Snowden documents detail how the government may have tapped into communications cables that link data centers owned by Google Inc and Yahoo Inc, intercepting user data without the companies' knowledge or cooperation.
"The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they're doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst," Zuckerberg said in his post.
(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; additional reporting by Mark Felsenthal in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Leslie Adler)
[Image via Agence France-Presse]
European Union plugging in to idea of a 'universal' mobile phone charger
The European Union took another step on Thursday towards the mandatory introduction of a common mobile phone charger, which could power-up all makes of handsets.
The European Parliament in Strasbourg voted in favour of draft legislation which lists among the "essential requirements" of electrical goods approved by the EU a compatibility with "universal" chargers.
While the bill has the informal backing of the EU's 28 member states, it is now up to the European Commission, the EU's executive, to detail what a common phone charger should look like and the conditions under which it would be imposed on the industry.
If adopted in its current form, the legislation would include all "radio" products, meaning any piece of equipment which receives or emits radio waves with the purpose of communication, including mobile phones, GPS systems, tablets and wireless car door openers.
The Commission said the legislation, which would come into effect in three years' time, was a direct response to consumer concerns.
"We must have a common charger for all mobile phones -- all citizens are in favour of it," said Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner responsible for the bill, adding she will now examine which legally binding measures are required to ensure compliance.
Belgian Socialist MEP Marc Tarabella welcomed the bill's approval, saying it would mark the "end of drawers filled with 1,001 cables and different chargers."
"We want to force manufacturers to make their phones compatible so that a simple, common charger can simplify the life of citizens, while also reducing the costs of purchase and lessen waste," Tarabella said.
If adopted, the legislation would supercede a voluntary system of standardisation created in 2010, following an agreement among phone producers including Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung.
European mobile phone manufacturers welcomed parliament's vote, arguing that the earlier agreement, which expired in 2012, laid the groundwork for industry-wide standardisation.
However, Digital Europe, the organisation representing handset manufacturers such as Apple, Blackberry, Motorola and Nokia, warned that the distinction between chargers and connectors, the plug connecting to the appliance itself, was an important one.
"We are committed to industry harmonisation but a lot of our members want to reserve the right to innovate around the connector," said Paul Meller, Connect Europe's communications director.
[Image via Agence France-Presse]
General Motors knew of deadly ignition switch problems in 2001
General Motors knew of problems with its auto ignition switches, blamed for numerous crashes and 12 deaths, as early as 2001, three years before previously thought, fresh data shows.
GM's updated chronology of the problem, sent to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, says a report during pre-production work on the Saturn Ion in 2001 pointed to a problem.
And two years later a service technician experienced the same problem that hundreds of drivers later experienced, a stall while driving related to a heavy key ring moving the ignition position.
That raised questions about why it took the US auto giant until last month to issue a recall and why the NHTSA did not act, despite being aware of complaints that the ignition would turn off while the car was in motion.
This shut-down would also turn off a car's electrical systems, preventing airbags from deploying in the case of an accident.
GM says it knows of a total 31 crashes and 12 deaths tied to the problem. Earlier it had reported 13 deaths, but this week corrected that, saying one had been counted twice.
Last month GM announced the recall of 1.6 million cars sold in North America between 2003 and 2007, including some of its most popular models: the Chevrolet Cobalt and HHR, the Pontiac G5, Pursuit and Solstice, and the Saturn Ion and Sky.
GM said a highway or off road jolt, or a heavy set of keys, could move the ignition into "off" or "accessory" position, leading to a shutdown of the car's electrical systems.
But the company still has not explained clearly why it took so long to act. New GM chief executive Mary Barra, facing her first crisis, has started an internal investigation and promised transparency.
Two committees in the US Congress have said they will launch probes into the issue, and media reports say the Department of Justice is also now investigating.
Meanwhile, analysts say GM is likely to face lawsuits that could lead to potentially hefty damage claims against the company on top of the recall costs.
GM spokesman Greg Martin said Thursday that the company is "fully committed to learning from the past while embracing the highest standards for quality and performance now and in the future."
Singapore plans to regulate Bitcoin exchanges and vendors
Singapore's central bank said Thursday it will regulate "intermediaries" for the Bitcoin virtual currency to prevent them from being used for money laundering and terrorist financing.
Intermediaries such as Bitcoin exchanges and operators of vending machines were "particularly vulnerable" to being used for such purposes, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said in a statement.
MAS said it will introduce regulations requiring middlemen that "buy, sell or facilitate the exchange of virtual currencies for real currencies to verify the identities of their customers and report suspicious transactions".
The requirements will be similar to regulations imposed on money changers and remittance agencies that deal with cash transactions, the central bank added.
"Singapore, like most jurisdictions, does not regulate virtual currencies per se, as these are not considered as securities or legal tender. MAS' regulation of virtual currency intermediaries pertains specifically to the money laundering and terrorist financing risks they pose," it said.
Central bank deputy managing director Ong Chong Tee said "consumers and businesses should take note of the broader risks that dealing in virtual currencies entails and should exercise the necessary caution".
Singapore, a regional financial hub, will be one of the first countries to regulate virtual-currency exchanges and ATM operators, according to the central bank.
Zennon Kapron, the Shanghai-based managing director of Kapronasia, a consulting firm which deals with Bitcoin issues, has said that Singapore's openness to new payment methods, talent pool and established status as a financial centre made it attractive for Bitcoin firms to operate, along with Hong Kong.
But Bitcoin has suffered a number of setbacks in Asia.
Tokyo-based MtGox, one of the longest-established Bitcoin exchanges, has collapsed due to a suspected theft worth nearly half a billion dollars.
Late last month, Autumn Radtke, the 28-year-old American boss of a Singapore-based Bitcoin exchange, was found dead at the base of an apartment block in the city-state, with police recording an "unnatural death".
Tech giants using offshore cash piles to earn tax-free interest from the U.S. government
LONDON (Reuters) - Four of the biggest U.S. technology groups collectively hold an estimated $124 billion in U.S. Treasury debt, much of it offshore, earning them tax-free interest, the UK's Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) said on Thursday.
The finding means Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp, Google Inc and Cisco Systems Inc hold a large proportion of the $254.9 billion held in their foreign subsidiaries in U.S. Treasuries, according to securities filings reviewed by the London-based BIJ, a not-for-profit news organization.
Bringing the money home would trigger a tax bill, so the companies keep it offshore, partly to fund foreign expansion but also, executives say, to avoid a tax hit.
Democratic party Senator Carl Levin, who has campaigned for years against tax avoidance, was quoted saying by the BIJ that if U.S. corporations invested offshore funds in U.S. government debt, this income should face U.S. taxes.
"Those funds ought to be treated as having been repatriated and subject to U.S. tax," Levin said.
Corporations including Apple have lobbied for changes so they would not have to pay U.S. tax on income earned outside the United States and brought home. Many other countries, including Britain, only tax income earned within their borders, though some international companies have been accused of reducing their bill via sophisticated offshore accounting arrangements.
Some U.S. companies say a "territorial" type of tax system would avoid double taxation and ensure all businesses compete on equal terms. Tax campaigners say it would encourage companies to shift profits overseas.
Google said it responded to tax incentives offered by governments while following tax rules in every country where it operates. The other companies declined comment, but have previously said they pay all the tax they should.
(Reporting by Tom Bergin; Editing by David Holmes)
[Apple HQ via Shutterstock]
Japan vows to tackle corporate spying after alleged leak of Toshiba technology
By Kaori Kaneko
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan vowed on Thursday to fight industrial espionage after domestic media reported technology and information from local companies, including chipmaker Toshiba Corp, had been leaked to rivals from other countries.
"Safeguarding Japan's cutting-edge technology and preventing leaks are extremely important," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters. "The government as a whole will respond to ensure that such a thing doesn't occur again."
Suga declined to discuss specific cases but several media outlets said police had arrested a former engineer at a Toshiba affiliate on suspicion of improperly providing technical data to South Korea's SK Hynix Inc.
The Nikkei newspaper also reported on Thursday that police had arrested in 2012 an unspecified number of people in Yokohama and Aichi for alleged leaks of industrial secrets to Chinese companies.
Cybersecurity is a key issue for the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which acknowledges it cannot adequately protect its own computers and networks.
The media reports said Tokyo police are probing the alleged leak of technology related to Toshiba's flagship NAND memory chips. A Toshiba spokesman said the company could not comment on the matter while it is the subject of a police investigation.
Tokyo police also declined to comment. A Hynix spokesman said the company was checking the report and had no further comment.
NAND memory chips, used to store data in smartphones and tablets, are a key source of profit for Toshiba, whose key competitors in the business include South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and U.S. chipmaker SanDisk Corp.
Toshiba's shares fell 0.9 percent on Thursday, compared to the 0.1 percent drop in Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei average.
(Additional reporting by Miyoung Kim in Seoul; Editing by William Mallard and Miral Fahmy)
Nearly 4,000 WWI diaries detailing trench warfare, gas attacks and horseback battles made available online
First-hand accounts of trench warfare, gas attacks and horseback battles digitised by National Archive and Imperial War Museum
First-hand accounts of trench warfare, gas attacks and battles involving horses and machine guns, are contained in nearly 4,000 diaries released online on Thursday to mark the centenary of the 1914-18 world war.
The diaries, digitised by the National Archives in a joint project with the Imperial War Museum, reveal the sheer stoicism and black humour that helped troops – on both sides – survive the slaughter in Belgium and northern France. They include accounts of the battle of Loos in September 1915, a notoriously unsuccessful and bloody offensive in which the British army used poison gas for the first time and suffered more than 60,000 casualties in less than a month.
An intelligence report of the army's 12th division in northern France, dated 10 July 1915, records: "A brown paper kite was found on night 8/9th in front of the right section of our line … covered with German writing, of which the following is a rough translation: 'You can fill your trenches with devils – we Germans fear nothing in the world, and we Germans await victory … Englishmen, how badly you shoot! You will be served as the Russians'."
The message added that while German soldiers had "wine, sausage and meat", the British were "hungry and thirsty".
An intelligence report later that week reflects the eerie nervousness of the soldiers keeping watch at night and hearing every movement in the enemy trenches. "Two cats and a dog are under suspicion as they have been in the habit of crossing our trenches at night: steps are being taken to trap them if possible."
Some of the war diaries are almost swashbuckling in tone. An account of an attack by the Indian army's Mhow Cavalry Brigade, on 1 December 1917 in northern France after promised tanks had failed to arrive, records: "Lieut Broadway had already killed two Germans with the sword when he was treacherously killed by a revolver shot by a German officer who raised one hand in token of surrender keeping the other behind his back. This German officer was immediately killed by a lance thrust from a man following Lieut Broadway."
On the same day, a "patrol galloped up to the trench and crossed it, pretending not to see the Germans who let them go by. They then turned about and galloped back under heavy machine gun fire … Too much cannot be said of the spirit and conduct of all ranks of the Central India Horse throughout the day".
William Spencer, military records specialist at the National Archives said the diaries showed "advances in technology that made it the world's first industrialised war with many mounted troops going into battle at first with swords on horseback and ending the war with machine guns and tanks".
But the diaries also drive home the extent of casualties in battles of attrition where soldiers got nowhere. A record of the battle of Loos, by Colonel S E Hollond, notes: "The preliminary bombardment lasted 4 days. There was practically no reply."
But the British artillery failed to destroy the German defences. Moreover, "the wind was shifty … The gas and smoke never went over the German trenches but came back over our own men and gassed a good many of them".
In their first assault British troops were "wiped out" by heavy machine gun and rifle fire. Out of 800 men and 20 officers of the 5th Camerons (Highlanders) 700 men and 18 officers are described as having been "knocked out". Col Hollond adds: "Yet they reached their objective with the remaining 100 men and 20 officers. This is a feat I think of which the 5th Camerons can be justly proud." The Kings Own Scottish Borderers, meanwhile, lost all their officers "and 3/4 of their men".Three days into the battle, Colonel Murray Threipland of the Welsh Guards recorded that he had "no more sound men at the front". He added: "Either too bad to move, or Germans have got them. We have recovered no officers' bodies; it only meant lives lost to get them, and I refused to allow it."
The diaries include a sketch of dummy figures deployed by British troops in a tactic called "Chinese attacks" after deception techniques developed by Chinese military strategists.
The diaries are available online via the National Archives' first world war 100 portal.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2014
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