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The Coming Terrorist Threat From Autonomous Vehicles
HughPickens.com writes: Alex Rubalcava writes that autonomous vehicles are the greatest force multiplier to emerge in decades for criminals and terrorists and open the door for new types of crime not possible today. According to Rubalcava, the biggest barrier to carrying out terrorist plans until now has been the risk of getting caught or killed by law enforcement so that only depraved hatred, or religious fervor has been able to motivate someone to take on those risks as part of a plan to harm other people. "A future Timothy McVeigh will not need to drive a truck full of fertilizer to the place he intends to detonate it," writes Rubalcava. "A burner email account, a prepaid debit card purchased with cash, and an account, tied to that burner email, with an AV car service will get him a long way to being able to place explosives near crowds, without ever being there himself." A recent example is instructive. Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were identified by an examination of footage from numerous private security cameras that were recording the crowd in downtown Boston during the Marathon. Imagine if they could have dispatched their bombs in the trunk of a car that they were never in themselves? Catching them might have been an order of magnitude more difficult than it was.
According to Rubalcava the reaction to the first car bombing using an AV is going to be massive, and it's going to be stupid. There will be calls for the government to issue a stop to all AV operations, much in the same way that the FAA made the unprecedented order to ground 4,000-plus planes across the nation after 9/11. "But unlike 9/11, which involved a decades-old transportation infrastructure, the first AV bombing will use an infrastructure in its infancy, one that will be much easier to shut down" says Rubalcava. "That shutdown could stretch from temporary to quasi-permanent with ease, as security professionals grapple with the technical challenge of distinguishing between safe, legitimate payloads and payloads that are intended to harm." (And don't forget The Dead Pool.)
According to Rubalcava the reaction to the first car bombing using an AV is going to be massive, and it's going to be stupid. There will be calls for the government to issue a stop to all AV operations, much in the same way that the FAA made the unprecedented order to ground 4,000-plus planes across the nation after 9/11. "But unlike 9/11, which involved a decades-old transportation infrastructure, the first AV bombing will use an infrastructure in its infancy, one that will be much easier to shut down" says Rubalcava. "That shutdown could stretch from temporary to quasi-permanent with ease, as security professionals grapple with the technical challenge of distinguishing between safe, legitimate payloads and payloads that are intended to harm." (And don't forget The Dead Pool.)
The auto industry is utterly clueless compared to most industries about just how important security is when you "computerize" something. It's a toss up as to whether they or the medical device companies will be the first to produce a product with such shoddy security that a script kiddy can actually kill someone with a kit.
And no, that's not sensationalism. You don't see any of them reacting to the news of hacked vehicles at various conferences with a bold corporate initiative to hire a Chief Security Architect to implement a security process for all of their engineering teams to ensure the reduced hackability of their vehicles. You see "meh."
The problem is not terrorisst control, it is *State* control.
If cars can be remotely controlled, it is *inevitable* the State will require the ability to do so - to prevent crime, terrorism, for safety purposes, you name it.
All good reasons *but* with the appalling unintended outcome that the State will end up literally able to shut down at will every single car in the country, or have them lock their doors and drive themselves to the nearest police station.
The last ten years have seen the expansion of State power into the complete monitoring of all commuication - in the next decade or so, the State will gain control over personal transportation. States are terrible things. They are so unable to act with and with only their intended consequence that any power they have causes great harm.
Simply put code in the system to allow remote redirection and then in high density areas have a system scan a car using IR. If the car doesn't have a human shaped heat source in it then pull the car over and have an officer verify occupancy.
That just means that each terrorist attack will be preceded by a kidnapping.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I think your argument is invalidate by the fact that a group of normal people did fight back, even in the exact instance that is being referred to.
This. Before 9/11 - stay in your seat and cooperate. During and after 9/11 - take down the terrorists at any cost. Here's proof:
http://aviation-safety.net/sta...
As opposed to freedom fighters who blow people up in order to "liberate" them?
It's not the religion of Islam but the religion of violence - the idea that the ends justify the means - that creates terrorists. And violence is pretty much universally worshipped on Earth, in forms ranging all the way from ritualistic animal sacrifice to all-out war. Our future depends on if it's a true universal constant or a mere option that could potentially be unchosen before our luck runs out and we wipe ourselves out.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.