I’ve written in the past about the growing interconnection between technology, government and the citizenry.
My most recent post on that trilogy reported on technology being developed by the U.S. government to help folks in foreign countries “connect” when governments disrupt their Internet and cell service.
Seems like that same technology might be handy right here at home.
A couple weeks back, San Francisco’s Bay Area Transit Authority shut down underground cell service at some of its stations. The transit authority did it to try and disrupt a planned protest over the fatal shooting of a man by transit police. The police found out about the planned protest on an organizer’s website.
Benson Fairow, BART deputy police chief said this to a local TV station about the shutdown: “It wasn’t a decision made lightly. This wasn’t about free speech. It was about safety.”
A lot of people disagree with the chief’s assessment.
In fact, the hacking group called “Anonymous” retaliated by releasing personal data belonging to more than 2,000 public transport customers in the San Francisco area.
But the story here is the growing use of technology — by government and against it — in an environment when the technology available often outruns the ability to control it and to measure its proper use.
The Associated Press reported today that the rush to digitalize medical records can save money and save lives. But many systems used to store the information are vulnerable to hackers or simply have no protection at all — “human error.”
This story, also filed out of San Francisco, reported that Southern Medical Legal Consultants put the data on a Web site it believed only its employees could access. The detailed medical and insurance records of 300,000 Californians were available to the public, no hacking skills needed. Accessing the data did not even require a password.
On the other side of the coin, a recent “tweet” by a Los Angeles rapper about the availability of internships with the police (not true) led to a deluge of calls to a Los Angeles Police Department substation in Compton that snarled the phone system for two hours.
Every day, the marketers and advertisers offer consumers more devices and more outlets to share more information about themselves and others. Government and business encourage consumers to use the Web for all life’s business. And those who would do ill will using the technology become savvier.
Where will it all end?
Resources:
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/…
- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/13/…
- http://thedailyedge.thejournal.ie/…
- http://www.pcworld.com/article/238042/…
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/…
- http://www.canadianbusiness.com/blog/…
- http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/12/…
- http://www.sfgate.com/…
- http://www.npr.org/2011/08/16/…
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