Recent Articles on the Internet and DOD military reports in 2005 and 2008 point to Conficker Botnet attacks on our communications infrastructure as being underway and having been planned as a military strategy by China, known in their language as Chi, meaning, (the continuation of things). There is reference to a 24 point plan, created by Deng, that included being sneaky about the plans to undermine the enemies critical infrastructure, including public sentiment for their agenda. Does this sound like a friendly nation to you? The Sec Dev Group who first reported their findings about the Conficker botnet, which now is using millions of distributed computers like a giant supercomputer to attack individual targets and Government systems alike, infiltrated the Chinese dashboard they were using and traced the sources back to China. Three out of four sources were from China and the third was from Southern California.
At the same time, there are numerous articles about integration of brains with computers, with robots and with the Internet. Right now, you can buy neural headsets and have a more immersive experience. Sounds interesting, does it not? But what about unwanted brain hacking? Already, there is a term on Wikipedia called Neuromarketing.
The Congressional hearings concerning the behavior of AT&T selling their access to data obtained during the Spy Program to paying customers for profiling purposes is an example of subcontractors profiting at the expense of their customers private data. There was even a comment by one At&T paying customer about having one on one time with scientists who would otherwise be in a dark corner somewhere. How long before this becomes one on one time with your child? Or your spouse? How will you redress grievances if a telemarketer becomes a brainmarketer, directly to the hearing center of your brain, something that has been possible and practiced in studies like the Human Brain Project for over 50 years.
No-one wants to talk about it for what it really is and the usual spin treatments and posturing on either side of the political spectrum, will do nothing at all to solve the problem. The technology involved and the need for quick action might mean that we need a leader who can take action now to secure the hardware and software of the Internet before you too, become a victim of identity theft. It may not just be your bank identity that you have to worry about, it may be who you are as a person, falsified by persons who committed crimes against you in the virtual environments. It could take blaming the victims to an extreme and an undetectable one at that.
What our world will be like in a brain interfaced environment may not be up to us, it may be up to the people who control the Internet as it progresses into HDTV full bandwidth abilities. That war, the one for the freedom of our very thoughts, will be one that cannot be won with arms in the traditional manner. How can it possibly be monitored for threats like computer viruses without an automated system? Would this, too, be outsourced?
New abilities and dangers require new laws and actions to counter them. Should the President be given the power to deal with this threat in an emergency, which we may already be in? A technology problem needs a technology solution, not another long partisan debate and vying for big subcontractor dollars. Who will protect an individual who is targeted? Will the police wave their arms in the air around someone to disrupt the wireless signals, or cart people off to the big business loony bin? That of course, is where you will find the poor forgotten scientists, stolen from and sitting in a dark corner somewhere, their dreams, their lives and their voices silenced forever except the radio that seeks knowledge from their minds, arming a Chinese military with the knowledge they desire to achieve their stated objective, to win the war.
How can we maintain our freedom in this inevitable evolvement of communications networks? If it becomes a war, will we win it?