- How should we approach the development of cyber-policy and -infrastructure given the “short arm” of predictive knowledge?
- How does cyber technology impact interactions between offenders and victims?
Policy and Infrastructure
Cyber-policy and -infrastructure should be approached with an eye toward the future. We need to make decisions now that protect people in our time, but also lay the practical and ethical groundwork for future generations to ensure their own policy and infrastructure suits their best interests.
We get to decide what our future looks like. As an example, I own four devices with in-built biometric identification devices. One device, as it is currently set up, is only accessible with my fingerprint – there is no password. I realize this is a huge single point of failure – what if the fingerprint scanner breaks? What if I lose this finger? – but to me this is an acceptable tradeoff to ensure that only I have access to the devices.
This is an example of how decisions made in the past are shaping our present. The manufacturers of these devices decided they would enhance the security of the devices by including biometric authentication. We face the choice now about how we wish to continue with these policies and infrastructure. Do we want private businesses to have information to biometric data? Is it possible for malicious actors to steal this data and use it in a harmful way? Are there other applications of this technology, for example in automobiles? If so, have we considered the ramifications of applying this technology to automobiles?
Offenders and victims
I would argue that cyber technology heavily favors offenders over victims. The anonymous nature of the internet means that one person could anonymously harass one or more persons from the comfort of their own home, without the victim ever knowing the identity of the offender. An offender could pretend to be multiple people, targeting a specific victim through multiple channels.
A hacker may gain unauthorized access to someone’s private banking information and clear all their accounts, and the victim would never know who robbed them, nor the police where the money went or to whom.