A rchive Date
[ 22-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Computers ]
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[A high-tech world, wired for trouble
By HARTLEY STEWARD
Toronto Sun
May 21, 2000
I don't think we have even come close to understanding what the Internet will eventually mean to mankind.
We've tended to see it mostly as an aid to business. Our futurists have concentrated on predicting the Internet's influence on the nature of commerce. Which businesses will be the winners and which the losers?
Too, we have been dazzled by the high-tech possibilities for our own efficiencies, comfort and entertainment. We thrill to visions of a life made easy - or, at least, easier - by new technology. We revel in the speed it has added to communication.
We have let ourselves be convinced the Internet is benign; a force only for good.
I fear we are badly mistaken.
I think we have unleashed a monster, which has not yet begun to flex its muscle; which has not yet begun to explore its capacity for evil. I think we are in for a good many years of chaos, damage and destruction. We will be visited by many a crisis before we have harnessed this beast.
So far it seems only a few whiz kids have toyed with our future. One by knocking out of commission a half-dozen of the world's most sophisticated sites and the other by unleashing a virus that seemed determined to wipe out the computer world.
Kids at play. Kids looking to cause a little mischief, have a little fun, actually managed to harass half the high-tech world, causing billions of dollars in damage and scaring the pants off adults whose very livelihood depends on computers.
Surely that was just the beginning. A tool of vandalism as powerful as the Internet will attract world-class vandals. Never mind tipping over a woodpile after dinner. Let's shut down the Toronto Stock Exchange before lunch.
Think what a concerted effort to create chaos and havoc could do. Imagine what possibilities terrorists around the globe will find in a world of connected computers.
Do you think for one minute that well-financed cells of terrorists are not at this very moment planning to fulfil our worst nightmares? You just know that thousands of youngsters, their just causes burning in their breasts, are attending universities everywhere learning the true potential of the computer.
That fellow in the hacker club beside you could well be plotting the destruction of the world, as you know it. Don't give him your password.
I think we are about to experience a reign of high-tech terror only possible in a world as wired as ours. I think we will see governments held hostage by terrorist organizations that have taken control of vital computer-run centres.
It is no wild flight of fancy to imagine a group gaining control of the computer system which maintains the hydro grids. What might they be able to demand in return for not shutting down the electrical supply on some freezing December night? Free a few prisoners? You got it.
Will we see manned launches into space threatened by terrorists on the other end of a bank of computers hacked into NASA's Houston control centre? "Houston, we have a problem" takes on a whole new meaning.
While we are occupied on one front containing cyberterrorists, here comes the modern-day mob, chips at the ready.
How long until the international criminal element becomes sophisticated enough to abuse the system? Is there a new generation of Corleones attending MIT in preparation for the day they take over the family business?
Why hold up a bank when you can download pre-laundered money by the millions via your handy internal modem? Why kidnap a rich man's child when you can extort all the money you could want with embarrassing information you've hacked out of his computer files?
You can bet we'll be visited with schemes and scams to separate us from our money, custom made for the Internet.
Shadydotcom, here we come.
Between the kids, the terrorists and the crooks, there will be no more dangerous place than your neighbourhood Internet portal.
It will be an interesting race between hackers working on behalf of the forces of evil on one side and law enforcement agencies and their techies on the other.
Will Interpol and other international police forces move fast enough in the future to protect us from cybercrimes, or will the bad guys have a free run at us? Stay plugged in.
Steward appears Tuesdays and Sundays. E-mail: hartleysteward@canoemail.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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