Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 00:04:38 -0400
From: Gord Sellar <gord-AT-alcor.concordia.ca>
Subject: Technology, Design, and Hacking


Okay, yes, this is linked to the WTC/Pentagon stuff. But I'm in Canada,
fairly removed from everything so despite by general unease and discomfort
with just about everything involved, I think there's something that might
be worth talking about on this list. People are currently avidly discussing
the problems of security in the US, specifically at immigration points and
in airlines. I haven't been active on any of my mailing lists in a while
and haven't been completely abreast of the news because I've been out of
town, on holiday, but I haven't heard one person talk about the way that
this whole set of actions constitutes a whole new set of problems to
designers of technology.

Now, I'm using the term "technology" strictly in terms of artifacts;
objects that are designed to serve a purpose, and not in the way Foucault
talks about parts of social structures and so on as "technologies" (let's
leave that aside for now, though it also is an area that could be discussed
here). For example, the internet. I assume everyone here is aware of
arpanet and the roots of the whole technology of the "digital
revolution"... it was not originally conceived as a medium by which people
could find new ways of distributing porn (which IIRC is the main moneymaker
online now, isn't it?), disseminating ideas, and selling products. Our
current use of the Net represents a kind of "hacking" of the original
technology, one which has already resulted in a change in all kinds of
parts of this technology (software, and both personal and shared hardware
-- like routers, say) but also will result in more changes -- proposed
backdoors on online PCs for law enforcement access, decryption software of
this or that type, etc.

Now, airplanes are very specific technologies. They are designed to fly
people from one place to another. They are not designed to be big fat bombs
that you fly into buildings. But we've discovered that for someone willing
to use the technology that way, some of them actually work pretty damn well
as big flying bombs. In the sense that we use the word "hacking" on all
kinds of technological devices, this represents a form of "hacking" --
that is, using one piece of technology to do something for which it was not
explicitly designed for, but for which it can effectively be used to do.

The problem is that on weapons, we can put safeties... guns routinely have
such devices. And airplanes do, too --  but only safeties in terms of their
intended usage, such as air masks in case of cabin decompression. As far as
I know, nobody's actually designed an un-hack-able passenger airplane, not
yet anyway. Nobody's made an airplane whose every imaginable function
prevents it from being used as a weapon. Now, one *could* design it to do
this. For example, there could be an autopilot function that can only be
turned off by a pilot with a passcode; a cockpit that is actually
physically inaccessible from the cabin; a plane that is smart enough to
dump its gas if it's about to crash into a building, but also smart enough
to steer away from a building when it thinks it is near one; there could
even be a robust and interactive guidance system on the ground with beacons
that signal airplanes on where to fly and not fly --  something that would
make even accidental collisions near-impossible.

But what about out sewer systems? Our water treatment plants? Gas mains?
Telephone networks? Couldn't you screw up a country's economy by making
millions of prank phone calls from many locations using mass-phoning
software like is used in phone-solicitation companies, if you limited the
confusing random phone calls to businesses only? Well, you would, until
they found a way to block that call consistently from whatever new number a
member of your organization registers for. That can't kill someone, of
course. But if you did it correctly you might manage to piss off a city --
or shut down all business for a few days. The fact is that most technology
can be used in very imaginative ways, ways in which they are not intended
to be used, and ways which, if they cannot hurt or kill lots of people, at
least can screw up economies, open doors to other technologies or
techniques of "warfare", or have other unforeseen results.

People keep talking about whether they think there will be a lot of social
repression, or a move farther to the right in North America, something I'm
not personally comfortable with but I also suspect may happen. However, the
technological version of what we might see happening, if events like the
recent ones in New York and Washington recur, might be very interesting to
look at as well. There may be a whole industry that could spring up
involving people "thinking outside the box", redesigning extant technology
in ways that prevent unintended usage. Safeties of a million kinds all
over, like those child-safety locks in the back seats of certain models of
car... which drive us nuts when we are not children.  They'd be redesigning
technology the way that greens would like us to do -- except instead of
making it environmentally friendlier, they'd be rendering it "hacker
unfriendlier". (Ahem, there's no reason not to push for both, though it
seems to me environmentally friendlier is bloody unlikely in the present
Administration in the US.)

The effects of such an industry could be manyfold.  It could:
(a) divert research and development from the little bit of real innovation
that goes on, or even slow down research and development while more funds
and energy go into "reengineering and prevention" departments
(b) result in a lot of new innovation as people actually learn new ways of
conceiving of and relating to technology
(c) breed different attitudes towards technologies, depending on how the
designs worked -- either a sense of protectedness if the safeties are
ubiquitous to be grown up with, or a sense of chafing under all that
"protection".

Any thoughts?

_______
Gord Sellar
gord-AT-alcor.concordia.ca




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