Wednesday 27 June 2012

dossier or when hacks attack

Having the ability to wield death-dealing thunderbolts from above under the technology of drones of course supposes that the same capabilities for all are not that far behind. Spying via satellite was a bit more of a challenge until all but the sharpest telemetry was disseminated to everyone; such advances lower the common denominator.

The early and eager adoption quickly slide from the anodyne and helpful, I think, like traffic control and emergency response to clawing to the top to relegate disagreements to aerial slap-fights between UAVs and reduce war to supposedly surgical gaming. It’s all very tit-for-tat. Now, as I suspect is the case for most electronic items of private and public (government) convenience, like cellular phones, RDIF passports and identity cards, automated voting machines, x-ray airport scanners and even QR tagging (I suspect some merry pranksters are already swapping out the 2-dimensional bar-code that one’s phone scans to retain a completely different message and reminder), some in the industry are pointing out that these systems are quite susceptible to hacking and reprogramming. Maybe drones really do keep us safe and the security is impenetrable or maybe suffering such cautious criticism is intentional, providing plausible deniability should an grave accident happen, falling out of the sky, causing a crash or targeting the wrong person and provoking war. Governments could always say their Skynet was hijacked. Having such power at one’s disposal to keep one’s hands clean also demands greater responsibility in the business of propagation, investigation and staying well-informed.