// February 4th, 2008 // 4 Comments » // Blog & Tech Items, Brain Dump
With the USA as our only neighbour, there are times where it has it’s advantages, and there are other times where it does not.. We’ve been able to watch the paranoia in American society escalate to some pretty bizzare levels since 9-11, lay blame on everyone else, and come out with some of the most insane statements ever.
There is an old truism – we can not stop progress. The truism has been used to justify investments in technologies that could potentially not only harm people but wipe out the entire planet. While we cannot stop the progress, we still should think carefully about the consequences of the technologies that we invent. Particularly because since September 11, 2001, we are all wondering when will the next terrorist attack occur.
Yes, most of you are wondering when the next attack will occur and that is a damned shame, yet the fact that EVERYTHING seems to be tied to the threat of a terrorist attack is a bit much.
CNN revealed a curious fact – terrorists have used Google Earth to get access to aerial views of airport facilities. Obviously it would be ridiculous to argue that tools like Google Earth should not be built because terrorists might use them. Yet, after hearing this on CNN one cannot help but wonder: what other seemingly innocent software technologies are we building that can be used to harm us?
It’s ridiculous to argue, “yet … one cannot help but wonder” – so is it ridiculous or not? The reality is that terrorists, rapists, murderers, and pedophiles have used Google Earth. But wait, so have researchers, scientists, charities, and every other possible person out to do good. So what if terrorists have used Google Earth to look at airports? Are you of such limited capacity that you believe G-Earth is the only form of information available to terrorists and that we must shut it down for the sake of airport security?!
I could not help but remember when recently a sales person, who was trying to sell me solar energy equipment, used Google Earth to locate my house. That was not a comfortable feeling. There is something about Google Earth that makes us very defenseless. Perhaps it is just our perception and whoever would want to get the map would get it anyway, but nevertheless it is not a comfortable feeling watching a cross-hair zoom into the White House or my house.
Sorry, there is nothing about GE “that makes us very defenseless”, absolutely nothing at all. First off, you provided the sales person with your address and did not express to them what that information could be used for. Second, Where does you providing your address to someone, and them looking it up on Google Maps for the purposes of a demonstration during a sales process, translate into complete defenselessness? What is it that they can actually do with that? You told them where you live, and now they know that you have an ideal roof for solar panels, you have a back yard, and that it was sunny the day the image was taken. It really does beg the big ‘so what’ question, doesn’t it?
Now, the cross-hair thing. Would you feel better if it was a big fluffy bunny pointing to your house, or the White House? Wasn’t the White House burned before there were computers, terrorists, or cross-hairs that make you all weak in the knees?
So let’s look at the rising social networks. Certainly they are harmless, right? Well, things are not so clear cut. Just like we are using LinkedIn to establish business connections, terrorists might use it to figure out who is connected to whom. When you search for a person, LinkedIn tells you how you are connected to them. What can be exploited is the fact that if you are just one degree away from someone, you know who they know. This information can be used to reconstruct a subset of the network.
Sure, you can look at my profile, see that I am connected to nearly 1000 people, yet what can you actually do with this information? I also realize that being an open networker on LinkedIn means that at some point, there exists the possibility that I could end up with a terrorist in my connection list – but so what? All it means is that I have a connection on a public forum. It doesn’t mean that I am one, nor does it mean that I supported one. A quick look at just about anything would point this out, yet am I about to stop using it because said terrorist now knows I’m connected to 1000 other people?
Just because something is cool does not mean that it is not dangerous. And beyond cool, we can be just a bit more careful. Does Google Earth need to have the White House address by default? Probably not. And it is not even that cool anyway.
Everything is dangerous when used to inflict harm. I remember once I saw a demonstration by someone who showed MULTIPLE ways of killing someone with a winter scarf (ironically he was demonstrating why taking away a pair of nail clippers is a bit dumb). Does this mean winter scarfs are dangerous – no, what it means is that it is up to the individual to determine how to use something and that progress should not be halted due to an EXTREMELY SMALL percentage of the population. The fact that the default address is that of the White House, only shows the limited view of someone at Google in regards to the rest of the world.
It is the ongoing agenda of paranoia in the US which needs to be stopped. If the default address was that of the Vatican, would the thought of terrorism even emerge? Sure, you’d get some religious nuts complaining that it didn’t default to their spiritual center, but the link between terrorism and a possible target wouldn’t even come up – but mention a US landmark and sadly, the first thing to come to a negative mind is that of a possible terrorist attack and how this application is hindering ‘the war on terrorism’.
It’s funny how something like Google Earth gets dragged through the mud and associated with terrorism, yet pre-paid cell phones are OK. The untraceable phones used in crimes are in the good books simply because it’s an anti-big-brother thing, yet a useful tool extrapolated to the extreme becomes bad. Sure, the majority of smart people in the world see through this useless article, yet it’s not them we’re worried about now is it?
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