On the Internet: A Breakdown of Trust

Drip, Drip, Drip: How Wikileaks Exploits Human and Technological Weakness

To read above article click on "Drip, Drip, Drip" above. begin quote below.

 There is no kill switch for the Internet for the White House. Yet when Congress was exploring ways to secure computer networks, a plan to give the president the power to shut down Internet traffic in an emergency was dismissed by corporate leaders and privacy advocates (FILE).

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"You could take a computer, bury it in the ground, make sure you never turn it on. But as soon as you turn it on and have people look at it, you have to trust the people." Bruce Schneier, British Telecom's chief security technology officer

Historians, anti-war activists and armchair observers of human nature have had plenty to mull over in recent years thanks to the online group WikiLeaks.

The Web site has published hundreds of thousands of stolen U.S. military and diplomatic documents from as recently as February of this year and as far back as the 1960s. The latest round of leaks, involving diplomatic cables, has renewed efforts by the U.S. government to tighten security on its computer systems.  But cyber-security experts point out the leaks were less a breakdown of technology than of trust. end quote.

I think that the President not having the power to shut down the internet in an emergency is both a good thing and a bad thing simaltaneously.  In the first place shutting the internet down might do damage to internet infrastructure technology that likely is not designed to withstand this kind of shutdown so incredible amounts of both information and technology could be lost during this shutdown.

However, the flip side of this is that the right kind of co-ordinated attack upon the internet in any one country or worldwide simultaneously might damage or temporarily end all or part of the internet leaving much information as well as technology permanently disabled or temporarily disabled. So, I think more thought is needed into backing up important information of all kinds in case these kinds of cyber war kinds of events occur, especially if they are a concerted effort by one country that has enough skilled manpower to successfully put forward such an attack.

In regard to the breakdown of trust, if we are to believe the story of the U.S. Government that an army private in Iraq with hacking skills downloaded onto a re-recordable CD labeled "Lady Gaga" all the U.S. State Department and Pentagon information, I think it is fair to say that this is a breakdown of trust.  So, then the next question has to be: "How will the world and especially the U.S. deal with this kind of breakdown of trust?"

In another article I mentioned that since I worked as a computer programmer and computer operator in my early 20s,   I have a knowledge of how the internet is designed and of how it functions through layers of programming interfaced with TCP/IP (transmission control protocol/Internet protocol) which allows multiple computer languages and interfaces to all "talk or communicate"  with each other through various kind of technological media.

In regard to both information and trust my statement would be: "The Internet is an accident waiting to happen". The reason for this is the question: "What happens with an almost infinite number of people are given access to almost all knowledge on earth?" The answer must be: "Almost anything."

For this reason I consider the internet to be both one of the best technological things ever invented while simultaneously being potentially one of the worst accidents in the world waiting to happen.

A good example of the problem is illustrated by the invention of the automobile. It also is one of the best things invented but just in the United States between 40,000 and 60,000 people die in them every year. So, something that does a lot of good can also kill and maim simultaneously. So, do we end the internet to prevent loss of life and wealth? Or just like with the automobile consider that its use and positive good outweighs the deaths and maimings it causes every year?