Disruptive Technology

Today I was thinking about how vulnerable we are becoming to technology that is intentionally disruptive, and I’m not talking about identity theft and credit card scams.

For example, there was an article in the LA Times a week or so ago that described how an inventor came up with a universal keychain remote who’s only purpose is to turn off TVs, any TV. People are buying these zappers who don’t like having to listen to TV’s in public places. They like to be able to zap the TV off with their little stealth remote so they don’t have to suffer through some horrid soap opera while they wait for their prescription to be filled, or their oil to be changed. Now this may seem like a fairly innocuous issue, but it suggests that there are loads of other things that people may choose to mess with that are not so harmless.

Suppose you had a stealth transmitter that would trigger the traffic lights to green every where you go (as emergency vehicles do in many places). Awesome! I would love to have one and you would too. But what if even 25% of the people driving had one? It would create total chaos because you would get used to not having to slow down for lights and you would find yourself running red lights and hurting people because the guy going perpendicular got there a little ahead of you and cancelled out your signal.

Or what if the guy behind you decides you’re going too slow for him, and has a phaser-like gun behind his grille that sends out a high energy pulse that scrambles the electronics in your car. Your car promptly dies as he cuts around you and flips you off. (This one is already in test, with police agencies in several places evaluating these to stop bad guys).

Or suppose some screwed up teenager builds for her science fair project a long distance “reader” that fits in her backpack and can demagnatize or scramble all the cards in your wallet from, say, 10 feet away.

Or imagine that someone has figured out how to screw up the transponder reader on toll roads and bridges that charges people’s accounts as they commute to work, causing everyone to get charged double for a whole day.

I could go on. The point is that as we get more and more wired, we also get more and more vulnerable. The sad truth is there are a lot of very very smart people who are also totally dishonest and out to prove how clever they are.

Question: Are our bureaucrats smart enough to insist on adequate protections for all these systems, and frequent upgrades to keep up with the hackers? I’m not optimistic.