1989
I wish that we lived in a golden age, where ethical behavior was assumed; where technically competent programmers respected the privacy of others; where we didn’t need locks on our computers. I’m saddened to find talented programmers devoting their time to breaking into computers. Instead of developing new ways to help each other, vandals make viruses and logic bombs. The result? People blame every software quirk on viruses, public-domain software lies underused, and our networks become sources of paranoia.
Fears for security really do louse up the free flow of information. Science and social progress only take place in the open. The paranoia that hackers leave in their wake only stifles our work … forcing administrators to disconnect our links to networked communities. Yes, you can make secure computers and networks. Systems that outsiders can’t easily break into. But they’re usually difficult to use and unfriendly. And slow. And expensive. Computer communications already costs too much— adding cryptographic encoding and elaborate authentication schemes will only make it worse.
On the other hand, our networks seem to have become the targets of (and channels for) international espionage. Come to think of it, what would I do if I were an intelligence agent? To collect secret information, I might train an agent to speak a foreign language, fly her to a distant country, supply her with bribe money, and worry that she might be caught or fed duplicitous information.
Or I could hire a dishonest computer programmer. Such a spy need never leave his home country. Not much risk of an internationally embarrassing incident. It’s cheap, too—a few small computers and some network connections. And the information returned is fresh—straight from the target’s word processing system. Today there’s only one country that’s not reachable from your telephone: Albania. What does this mean for the future of espionage?
Whenever someone, tempted by money, power, or simple curiosity, steals a password and prowls the networks. Whenever someone forgets that the networks she loves to play on are fragile, and can only exist when people trust each other. Whenever a fun-loving student breaks into systems as a game (as I might once have done), and forgets that he’s invading people’s privacy, endangering data that others have sweated over, sowing distrust and paranoia.
Networks aren’t made of printed circuits, but of people. Right now, as I type, through my keyboard I can touch countless others: friends, strangers, enemies. I can talk to a physicist in Japan, an astronomer in England, a spy in Washington. I might gossip with a buddy in Silicon Valley or some professor at Berkeley. My terminal is a door to countless, intricate pathways, leading to untold numbers of neighbors. Thousands of people trust each other enough to tie their systems together. Hundreds of thousands of people use those systems, never realizing the delicate networks that link their separate worlds.