[extropy-chat] silent night

[Harvey Newstrom]

On Dec 23, 2004, at 4:38 AM, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> The neurosecurity stuff is interesting.   If my brain is relatively 
> open to would-be neuro-hackers isn't their brain and intention, much 
> less action possibly obvious and capable of raising alarm?   This gets 
> into issues of privacy inside our very heads which is another can of 
> worms.   I sure as hell would not want some corporate CIO wonk 
> deciding what patches to put in my brain just because I am doing some 
> work for their corporation!    I especially would not want them or 
> anyone else trying to draw rough analogies to guide actions on my head 
> and capabilities from a much simpler and far less complex and delicate 
> set of current security scenarios.  The suggested "solutions" here 
> aren't even terribly workable at rather coarse granularities of 
> software components.   VPN for the brain is one of the more 
> shudderingly hideous ideas I've contemplated in a while.

This is why I am focussing my career on IT security.  I believe that 
this is a prerequisite to all future technologies such as AI, robotics, 
nanotech, VR, space travel, biotech, neurotech, mega-scale engineering, 
etc.  Besides just making technology a possibility, we also need to 
make sure it has effectiveness, efficiency, reliability, compliance, 
confidentiality, integrity and availability.  This is as vital as 
reproducing scientific experiments, testing medicines or checking 
mathematical calculations.  Without these assurances, the technology is 
still in the unverified experimental stage.

My entire career is spent finding flaws in technology that designers 
and implementors don't know are there.  They build systems to do what 
they want, and usually have no idea how they can fail or be hacked in 
radically unexpected ways.  The failure rates of technology is 
increasing as complexity is increasing.  Until we learn to control 
technology better, the future technologies will become overwhelmed by 
complexity issues at a scale not seen today.  Future tech requires 
speed, reliability and flexibility that is just not available in 
previous technologies.  Even today, the biggest threats to our 
computers are crashes, vulnerabilities, and deliberate attacks.  The 
alleged capability of the technology is the least of our concerns.

I am a professional paranoid and skeptic.  I get paid to tell people 
how things can go wrong or be made to go wrong.  This is not quite the 
same thing as being a pessimist.  I actually have to prove my claims, 
and then develop countermeasures to prevent such problems.

--
Harvey Newstrom <HarveyNewstrom.com>
CISSP, ISSAP, ISSMP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC