Friday Techday: a Game of Clouds

Most of you have heard about the latest outrageous computer hack – this time of Equifax. There is no database system that can’t be hacked, either from the inside or the outside. Information Security is a misnomer since no data can be secure once it is joined to a network. This, and the increasing trend of “Cloud” which is paying someone you don’t know to hold onto your data in some place that may or may not be in the US of A, creates a velvet revolution against your liberty.

One aspect is the increase in access by implacable actors. If your data and information is stored on a system with an antenna, it can be hacked. How? Using the fairly benign capabilities that you use to update your system, receive and send messages and phone calls – you can do it, and the vendors do it without your knowing.

Under the cloak of being good, evil occurs. Tesla responded to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma by remotely extending the life of the battery, and therefore driving range so folk could escape the zones of destruction.

If they can do that, what else can they do?

If they can do it, who else can?

But remote updates are Good, therefore DoD is going forward with remote updates to the F-35. If DoD can send an update, what’s to stop a malevolent force?

Then there’s the capture of 66% of America’s defenses. First the Intelligence Community, now DoD. Only State escaped, but not to worry, since Hillary’s felonious efforts to escape American scrutiny delivered State into Putin’s hands. Given Manning, now a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Snowden of Moscow we are the most transparent government in history. That your data was exposed and then sold is of no matter to them since you lack their virtue and superior ethics.

Jeff Bezos now possesses capabilities far beyond Trump. He owns the shooting part of our defenses, if not the nukes yet. He’s got the spies. And a world class logistics operation that reaches to all levels of our own and the globe’s economies. And his own communications medium (the WaPo is one giant advert for Amazon), and his own NASA. His personal wealth is greater than most states, and most countries. We’ve reached a stage last seen before America existed – individuals who are nations unto themselves. Can they be trusted to be Stark or Lannister? Is it worth your liberty?