Despite all the technology it’s now easier for us to fall over
One of the most recent great inventions of our time is the worldwide web, or as it is termed, the internet. A great invention, and as an aid to communications without parallel, the nearest thing that I can think of to compare it with is Morse Code and the Telegraph of many years ago. But like all good things it is much abused, and it did not take long for the criminal element to realise just what they could use it for.
Instead of, as years ago, robbing a bank with a sawn off shotgun and balaclava masks, it is now being carried out from the comfort of an easy chair in a warm sitting room with very little chance of being caught. From banks, fraud, theft or whatever you like to call it, the money is switched around the world so fast that it is practically impossible to trace.
Obviously you cannot put the blame on the inventor, just as you cannot blame those that invented firearms, it is the person that uses it in the wrong way that is to blame. But when the internet came along it was so far in front in technology that the governments of the world were left floundering and no-one has ever found a way to stopping the big three organisations for letting this all go on under the said governments noses.
It should be quite obvious to anyone that the next war to break out will be done by manipulation of the internet so that they can hack into our computer-controlled electric power stations. Now just how long can we manage without electricity? Not very long I fear, and please do not tell me we have back-up generators for just such an occasion. All electric cut off, all computers go down, batteries do not last long.
People walk around with the whole world in their hand, be it talking, writing or pictures, just recently Armageddon nearly arrived on our doorstep in the shape of hacking into hospitals and industries and blackmailing them into paying to get their computers back online, and to-date as far as I know, no-one has any idea of who organised this. Please do not talk to me about ways of stopping computers being hacked into, all codes can be broken in this day and age, far easier and quicker than the breaking of the German Enigma Code in the war.
Now if two young men can hack into the United States military and the FBI with very basic systems in their bedrooms, and these people were said to be suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, Lord help us if someone with the brains of Alan Turing gets into this hacking, just where would it end?
I wait to read that the above cannot happen and why. Please do not forget that back in history, Enigma could not be broken, Pearl Harbour could not happen, and now a multitude of countries have atom, hydrogen bombs and much worse, but by cutting off electricity you take over that country without damaging the infrastructure.
I now wait for the deluge of protests all printed on a computer, as writing has long been forgotten.
Mr K Beddis, Yockleton
