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Cybercrime and Transparency

February 21, 2015 future, Writing Comments Off on Cybercrime and Transparency

 

Image courtesy kapersky.com

Obama Signs Executive Order Encouraging Private-Sector Companies To Share Cyber Security Information

Transparency is creeping ever closer.  I know people online bitch and moan about the lack thereof, but the truth of the matter seems to be that, inch by inch, policy by policy, transparency is seeping into our lives (whether we like it or not).  President Obama recently signed an executive order regarding the sharing of information between the govt. and private corporations with an eye towards combating cybercrime in a more wholesale fashion, which (for a change) pushes the latest steps in airing our undergarments to governmental/corporate collaboration (rather than exploring the boundaries of personal liberties).

But is a monolithic front to cybercrime really the most ideal solution?  Hackers (the really l33t ones at least) seem to be individualists, they have target preferences, unique ways of looking at problems that might not be easy to defend against as a single data-crunching system.  There is a certain amount of nimbleness required, which is why the bounty system (where corporations pay a bounty to programmers for each bug or hack reported and proven) seems to be as effective as it is, rather than engaging rooms full of people combing through the code.

Transparency and Trees on the Ground

February 19, 2015 future, Writing Comments Off on Transparency and Trees on the Ground

Image from www.abovetopsecret.com

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/sep/02/paulbrown

 

Oh I love this one.  I may call Lockheed to see what the status is, because the original article is from the turn of 2k, which puts it a touch out of date.

But it’s “clever”.  I love clever.  I love the idea of re-purposing things, of taking a technology designed for a single type of efficiency and adapting it for another.  I feel there is no f*cking reason that we can’t get our sh*t together and fix things when we break them.  That’s what we DO.  As a species, we solve problems.  If we can’t adapt, we make things adapt.

At the same time, I am fascinated by what goes WRONG when you try this as well.  This seems like a perfectly reasonable plan.  Laying down tree seeds instead of mines.  It was reportedly in testing and working well, the engineering had been done, the plans had been laid.

And then *poof*.  It’s gone.  Not another word.

I’ve got reasonably strong Google-fu, so if there is anything publicly available out there, I ought to be able to find it.  But nothing, nada.

Now I know it’s never pleasant to have to go online, or in front of a board, or to your parents or boss or best friend and report that this *really* cool expensive idea just didn’t pan out.  Fail fast and silently, that’s the Silicon Valley way.  But one of the benefits of transparency is that someone out there might just have the solution to your problem.

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