Over the last few days I’ve seen several stories published (CNET/Reuters, CNN, and others) about the supposed threat to US computer systems from hacking attempts originating in China. What they don’t seem to mention is that it sounds like most of these “attacks” are just routine scans and non-targeted attempts to exploit known vulnerabilities; the kind of thing that happens everywhere on the internet every second of the day, and has nothing to do with any particular country. Reporting this as “news” is like the LA Times publishing a front page story about how the traffic on the 405 was really bad yesterday.
The conspiracy theorist in me worries that this is an attempt to scare the public into thinking negatively about the potential for problems that is there with such an interconnected system as the internet, and wondering if there will be a move to cut off access from countries that are deemed to be a “threat”. If this happens, there better be some serious protesting by free speech advocates. The internet is (in some cases) the only avenue of expression for people in oppressive countries to let everyone else know what is going on; without that we would have to rely on what the big media organizations tell us about international events, which is almost always watered down and filtered at many levels.
7 Comments
How could they possibly be cut off entirely? Are you saying that the Chinese would have their own internet? Is that even realistic? Could that government even enforce it? Seems crazy to me.
yeah, me no gets it either…
They could if they chose to; I was more referring to the US cutting off access to China. Of course, they couldn’t do it easily - they would have to essentially cut off all access to outside of the US (over high speed lines, which they could conceivably do), since once you get out then you could eventually get anywhere.
They would also have to filter the phone system to not allow direct calls to or from a certain country (which has been done in the past) or any country for that matter. Of course, there would still be difficult (and lower speed) workarounds, but to cut off communications for almost all of the population would certainly be possible.
I don’t think it’s likely, since as I said, it would essentially involve heavily censoring US internet access, but there are lots of things that I never would have thought our government would do.
I don’t think they would be able to get away with that one either. It would make since for the US to just find (in so many words) a better way of security for the computer systems.
You should stop feeding the conspiracy theorist in you. Maybe it’ll move out.
Na, I like thinking of stuff like that. It’s not like I’m getting obsessed with it or anything, it’s just interesting to consider.
My feelings on conspiracy theories in general is that they are usually crap, but then again there are so many gullible people in the world and just enough smart ones to realize how gullible the gullible ones are, that it would seem to me that there’s bound to be some conspiracy-type stuff going on all over the place.
There are two types of conspiracy theorist. One kind has an alert, questioning mind which spots holes in ‘official’ stories, the other is someone who has a pathological need to believe that something out there is the cause of their feelings of helplessness. The latter is easily spotted and dismissed, but the former plays a vital role in pointing out government excesses and corruption and should at least be paid some heed and respect.