Computers and Privacy: Pick One.

“Ma’am, please calm down.  Your CD tray is not a cup holder.  I cannot help you clear your browser cache.  No, I’m not in India.” –Strongbad

You’d think they’d have learned about incognito browsing back in the Middle Ages.

I have no illusions of having any privacy when it comes to computers.  None.  The only computer that’s safe is one that has never been connected to the Internet.  And if that were the case, how would you then get all the cat pictures on the computer?

Be true to your cat.  It will wait until you’re dead before eating you.  But it won’t wait too long.

The only safe computer is one that’s not connected to . . . anything.

Sound paranoid?

Check out this article on Bloomberg (THE BIG HACK).  I’m probably not paranoid enough.  And I’m certain you’re not paranoid enough.

That article is really long, but it shows, step by step, how the Chinese managed to put hardware on computers that specifically bypasses all of the security protocols.  If this hardware is on your computer?  The only reason that they haven’t blackmailed you is that you’re not worth it to them to have their technology exposed.  It’s amazing – the chip that they put on that allows this to happen is smaller than your Mom’s patience on a hot day when the air conditioner is out.  And they made it small enough so it doesn’t even show up on the board – they put it in between layers of fiber on the printed circuit board.

This chip allows them to have access to whatever they want to on the system or reprogram it on the fly.

So, no.  The Chinese won’t blackmail you because they’d rather keep listening to everything.  And I mean everything.  How many motherboards in the Pentagon were made in China?  Yeah.  It’s big.

It could be worse.  It could be your wife.

But it’s not just the Chinese.  We’re doing it to ourselves, as well.  The National Security Agency has built a data center.  This data center has over 1.5 million square feet of storage, and will use 65 megawatts of electricity, and will use 1.7 million gallons of water a day for cooling.  It’s estimated that it will have storage of over a dozen exabytes (according to ZME Science, five exabytes is equivalent to all of the words spoken by human beings – ever) of storage.  If this sounds like Bill Gates’ guest house, well, you’re right.

But in this case this storage will be on real-time internet surveillance.  And as we’ve seen in the past, the NSA and the other three-letter agencies don’t really care about pesky things like the laws that prevent them from putting Americans under surveillance.  Nah.  That’s for amateurs.

This data center requires massive numbers of servers.  How many of them were made in China?

There is no privacy.  Our government might not even be able to keep its secrets . . . secret.  What chance do you have?

None.

The implications?

Imagine a Supreme Court nominee in the year 2050.  The nominee is 50 – and has spent almost their entire life online.  Imagine further . . . the browser history from when they were 14 showing up?  Sound silly?  It certainly isn’t – not after the last month’s bit of nonsense in the Senate.  I’m surprised they didn’t discuss fart jokes the nominee made in 1982.  Oh, wait, THEY DID.

Back to 2050:

“I see, Mr. Nominee, that in the year 2014, at the age of, what, 14?  At that age you seemed particularly fascinated with oil-covered girls wearing bikinis.  How can you defend that in light of our desperate oil shortage and the man-made global cooling?  And bikinis were outlawed several years ago as hate clothing, I must remind you.  Did 14 year old you have NO IDEA of the pain you would cause the future?  I respectfully ask the committee chair to put some more coal in the stove?  We have to get more precious CO₂ into the air to hopefully warm our atmosphere.”

And there’s a further rumor (I have no idea if it’s true or not) that one particular Supreme Court Justice changed his vote on the constitutionality of Obamacare due to blackmail obtained from his electronic records.  A rumor, I must stress.  But not something I made up (Link) like that story of how Bret Kavanaugh and I broke into that ancient Egyptian site and found the Ark of the Covenant®.  Yeah, it was really the Arc of the Covenant™, which contained the geometry homework of Moses.

So, if you’re true to yourself, you’ll never go on a daytime talk show.

I became convinced that computers were fundamentally insecure due to Ben Franklin’s old adage:  “Three can keep a secret, if two are dead.”

Computers give their greatest value to us when we link them together.  The Internet is just that – linked computers, talking to each other, and sharing information.  And most of it is super important, too!  Like what the Kardashians did this week.  Or where Ben Affleck is at this current moment (and if he’s sober).  And how Russians have a campaign against Star Wars™.  Not the space-based missile defense.  The movie.

But all kidding aside, the networking of information systems has allowed amazing amounts of information to be shared across the world, allowing us to be more well informed.  Or, if you spend actual Internet time on the Kardashians, more entertained.  This communication has made our systems more efficient, and has allowed us to negotiate better, to learn new skills taught by people thousands of miles away.  But connectivity and value creation comes at a price.

The ways that computers can be compromised is amazingly large:

• Hardware Exploits – As described above. This is fairly new.  Makes you wonder about how our fighter jets would perform if we ever went up against China?  Might just fall out of the sky?
• Viruses – These won’t stop, and will get cleverer as time goes on, and more systematically destructive.
• Day One Vulnerabilities – These are errors in the operating system that allow bad guys to get in to the system. They’re everywhere.
• Backdoors – These are pre-programmed into operating systems so that folks like the (cough) NSA (cough) can get in anytime they want. They could likely watch me type this in real time.  But they can come on over and chat with me while I do it.  If they bring the beer.

I may be the last person who doesn’t pay bills online.  I also don’t bank online.  When my identity got compromised (The Lighter Side of Identity Theft) I actually signed up for Lifelock®.  The folks at Lifelock™, when I got compromised again, noted it was good.  Online banking was the source of a lot of tragedy that they’d seen.

So in a world where everything is offensive to someone, and everyone’s secrets aren’t really secret, how can we have a civil society?

Have no shame.  It seems to work for the Kardashians.