Progress is a funny thing. The obsession with being connected to the Internet at all times, in all places, from all devices, can, does and will have unintended consequences for society. Some of these are obvious. Some of them are not. But the worst of these consequences may not be “unintended” at all. Rather, it may be part of what is at least a vaguely goal-directed plan, on the part of your government, to make you a criminal – and therefore to put you under the government’s boot.
The joke before Y2K, the “millennium bug” that was going to occasion the collapse of society, was that everything from your computer to your toaster was going to stop working. One hilarious commercial depicted the morning of Jan. 1, 2000, as a man out jogging passes a variety of things that have gone berserk. The ATMs are spitting money. Errant missiles are flying through the sky. Phones and computers have burst into flames. All of this was supposed to happen because some software did not account for the digit flip from 19XX to 20XX when the calendar changed.
Just how this was going to cause widespread calamity, rather than simply prompt a few computer programs to display incorrect dates, was never adequately explained. An entire industry devoted to correcting the Y2K bug grew to address and repair the problem, and when the year 2000 came without widespread disaster, we were assured that this meant the repair efforts had worked. It could not have been the case that the problem was never a significant one, we were told; no, it had to have been that what we did to fix the problem fixed it just in time. Whew. That was a close one.
The Y2K threat may have been real or it may have been ridiculous. It did, however, have a verifiable “stop” date. Recent reports have raised similar issues of vulnerability, again in your home appliances and in your daily life, but on an ongoing basis. According to Peter Edwards, the Internet connectivity now enjoyed by home appliances represents a sinister security threat in “smart” households. According to Edwards, cyber-criminals are attacking Internet-enabled refrigerators, coffeemakers and other appliances, because these have less security protection than tablets and smartphones.
“[A security study] reported that more than 750,000 malicious email messages were sent out from more than 100,000 household gadgets, including a fridge, between Dec. 23, 2013, and Jan. 6, 2014,” Edwards reports. He quotes a Computer Sciences professor named David Skillicorn, who is deeply suspicious of his home machinery. “Skillicorn said he wouldn’t trust a thermostat or garage door opener that can be turned on and off from a cellphone,” he writes.
The article explains that your Internet enabled appliances, which run operating systems like Windows or Android, can be co-opted by hackers’ malicious code in the same way your computer or phone can be hijacked. Once taken over by the hacker software, the appliance is used to send spam (containing virus links, for example) or to mount denial-of-service attacks. A hacker who had co-opted multiple Internet-equipped refrigerators and garage door openers could use their combined power to inundate an Internet target with email or other malicious activity.
This threat is primarily an external one; it is limited to your machinery being used to harm others without your knowledge. But any equipment you own that incorporates a webcam or just a microphone could be used to spy on you. Just this week, reports began to emerge of a bug in Google’s Chrome browser that involves its “microphone permissions policy.” When you give the browser access to your computer’s microphone in order to have a two-way conversation or use text-to-speech software, other browser pop-pups and windows enjoy the same permissions. This could allow a disguised banner ad to transcribe a conversation after the user believed the tab had been closed. As of this writing, that vulnerability has not been fixed.
Multiple incidents have been reported of webcams being used to spy on laptop and computer users. Some of the hacks used to do this are sophisticated enough that the webcam appears to be off while it is running. Last year, the 2013 Miss Teen USA, among others, had her photograph taken by her webcam after a hacker co-opted the device. The hacker in question was arrested last September.
So, this is where progress has brought us: A world in which our modern technology can do anything, is connected to everything, and should bestow on us a world of convenience and interoperability. Yet instead we are now draping handkerchiefs over our webcams and worrying if our refrigerators are spamming the neighbors with plaintive messages from fictional Nigerian princes. That suspicion, that fear, that sneaking, lurking dread is the unintended consequence of our advancement as a society: We are paranoid and getting worse.
A superb example of the new paranoia, this emerging suspicion of new technology, occurred in Ohio recently. A man who had his prescription lenses inserted in a Google Glass unit (so that he can wear the headset all the time as he would his glasses) went to a movie theater in Columbus to watch the new “Jack Ryan” film. Halfway into the movie, his glasses were yanked from his face and he was dragged out of the theater by the authorities. He was then interrogated by Homeland Security thugs four a whopping four hours before they finally decided he had not illegally recorded the movie.
Government overreach and abuse of authority is yet another unintended consequence of progress. When technology is all sufficiently advanced to pose a security threat, we must be suspicious of every component of it. When this is true, all citizens possessing technology are themselves potential threats. In the police state that it is the Democratic Party’s America, there are no free citizens and no one is innocent until proven guilty. There are only technology users, and those users must be guilty of something. If they aren’t now, they soon will be, with or without their cooperation.
Media wishing to interview Phil Elmore, please contact [email protected].
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