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Tech Devolution
Posted 28 Feb 10
One aspect of the continuing, astonishing pace of technological development is how quickly sophisticated capabilities become available to everyday joes. The military-industrial complex is losing control of cutting-edge technology faster than ever. Just this week, three examples hit the news:
It is now cheap and easy to jam GPS navigation systems. One small device can knock out receivers for a radius of several kilometers. Even better: for a few thousand dollars extra, you can actually spoof locations! I expect this to start showing up in techno-thrillers and caper movies no later than next year.
Second, high-speed license plate scanning is now available to auto-repo companies. For the cost of the camera and a $600/mo. subscription fee, you can drive around (at up to 80 mph) checking parking lots, highways, etc for cars under a repossession order. That’s nice enough, at least for bottom-feeding collection agencies, but the larger question is: what happens to the collected data? This technology won’t stay in the, um, responsible hands of bounty hunters and repo men forever, and once large numbers of entities are using it, one could imagine all sorts of uses for vehicle tracking. Stalking, for example.
Finally, widespread commercial use of video surveillance, and effective conscription of cellphone call data, allowed authorities to rapidly discover a complete record of the Dubai assassination team. Even ten years ago this would have been impossible; now it’s everyday. (What’s most surprising is that the team, widely believed to be from Mossad, didn’t realize how easily they’d be found.)
Human ingenuity ensures a proliferation of unexpected uses for new inventions. It’s a brave surprising new world.
This post indexed as: Crime, Intelligence, Technology
How did we miss the cyber attack on the Australian government by ‘Anonymous’?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEc80U46hIQ
and the article: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1191386/Hackers-threaten-government-websites
Ideas?
That looks like a fairly standard DDOS attack. From snippets in the news, the US gov’t is routinely targeted as well (the White House servers, for example, are extremely well defended). I actually think the Google-type sneaky infiltrations are more worrisome; targeted phishing has proven more effective than I would have expected in slipping keyloggers and other such spying applications onto sensitive networks.
Still, how much is hype? The US military is certainly ramping up its capacity, and “cybergeddon” style fearmongering is in the news constantly.
A few months ago I talked with a guy who knows utility SCADA systems — the control software used by utilities, the power grid, etc. When you see headlines like “Hackers can turn the lights off down the entire eastern seaboard!” SCADA is what they’re talking about. Anyway, my acquaintance says it would be really, REALLY hard for someone to actually do that.
Not to say the hackers won’t be able to sometime in the future. But it’s not worth worrying about today.
With nothing more than box cutters, small arms, and a few thousand lunatic followers, al-Queda has convinced us to blow a couple trillion dollars chasing after them. That’s going to hurt our economy, and our country, far more than some denial-of-service runs against whitehouse.gov.