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CyberTerrorism - Reality or FUD?
Random Utinni writes "The director of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit (part of Homeland Security) claims that terrorist hackers are poised to create total chaos. He predicts all sorts of scenarios, from changing the formulae for medications to causing cars to explode after a few weeks of driving. Is this guy fearmongering for an increased budget, or is he on to something here?"
Reminds me of the up coming horrors of Y2K that amounted to a few slot machines not working after midnight.
;).
Although chicken littles can be right once in a while given the sheer number of warnings tossed about, and then no one listens to them when they should have
Many years ago, I worked for a small company that had a contract to service the massive dot matrix signs that are spaced every few miles along the Southern California freeway network.
As part of the job, we were given a portable ascii terminal to enter test pattern data directly into the sign controller. Just for fun, we held an internal contest to think up 'What was the worst possible thing that we could type into the portable terminal for posting over the freeway at rush hour'.
The winner?
"INCOMING NUKE ATTACK - EST 15 MIN"
Just imagine the bedlam .
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
If only this kind of fear-mongering worked for things that matter on a broader, deeper scale...
I'm thinking particularly of the incessant decay of the US quality of life due to the usurpation of our systems of agriculture, education, health, and welfare by private interests. The failure to properly develop these systems is leading inexorably to the collapse of the USA. No one is afraid because the frog in the slow boiling pot never knows its predicament till it's too late.
People should also be trembling at the insane schemes being used to divert of the people's wealth through the "war-funnel" directly into the pockets of a few industrialists, primarily to fund the further usurpation of the people's government by corporatists.
For some reason, even after the horrors of Nazism, our current brand of Fascism doesn't seem to scare people, even as it undermines and threatens our lives in a thousand subtle ways. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the society we live in are becoming increasingly dangerous to our own health. Yet no one stirs as their neighbors are snatched up from empty factory floors and sent to foreign lands to be maimed and killed to enrich Halliburton. No one even blinks as petroleum and agriculture collude to foster diseases that keep the pharmaceutical stocks ballooning.
east timor, petroleum, nafta, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, 9-11, coyness, illegal surveillance, gmo seeds, data mining, mad cow disease, mandatory testing, guantanamo bay, rampant privatization, obtuseness, selling off the commons, executive war crimes, strip mining, the war on terra, faux news, cafta, kissinger, allende, iraq, bunker busters, missing billions, media culpa, torture, abu ghraib, reality television....
The connections are clear and simple. The machine now bleeds the people, everywhere, without conscience.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
-- thinkyhead software and media