Here we have it again, people being surprised at what hackers can accomplish. Much of this is our fault. Many of the devices which they are finding out can be hacked, could be secure if not for the fact they are either hooked up to the internet or a phone line. I was just reading how surprised some people were that a hospital medicine pump can be hacked. We have all seen these pumps, they are the ones on the poles which give out a beep when the medicine bag is empty or the battery is low. The connection to the internet makes it more convenient for the hospital staff since they can see the condition of the pump on a monitor at the nurse’s station. First of all you can hear these things when something goes wrong, they certainly make enough noise. It is not as if the hospital staff comes running in right away when the pump is empty. A study should be conducted to see if being connected to the internet really has any bearing on better treatment. It has been said that about 35% of problems in hospitals has to do with administering medicine.

No computer which has connectivity, this includes machines which contain computer chips and connect to the internet, is safe from a hacker. I am beginning to think it never will be and if we truly want to make things safer just don’t connect vital parts of machines to the internet. To illustrate what I am talking about, let’s look at cars. Many of the new cars have controls which can be accessed through the internet which allow the steering, brakes and other critical parts of our cars to be hacked. It is a far bigger problem than a medical pump since there are more people driving at any given time than people in the hospital on a pump. This is not to say the pump being hacked is not important. Sure it is nice to be able to adjust the force of the steering or the mode the engine is going in, but we have to balance the risks against the benefits. Is it worth driving a car which lets you change the transmission or engine modes and taking the chance of some nut doing something to the car which will get you into an accident?

One of the problems is no one cares enough to do proper protection in the first place. The recent federal employees’ database which was hacked, is said to contain 14,000,000 million records of employees and past employees even though the government claims 4,000,000. A news report stated the records weren’t even encrypted. I am so tired of hearing this. It may not have stopped the hack, but at least the government had a duty to protect the database as best as it could, not dangle it out there like bait on a hook. Add to that the fact the hack went on for about a year without the government noticing. I think this shows what idiots are running things. We are told not to worry by the IRS, there will be better protection next year at tax time. The IRS was also hacked and lost records. What good does this do us now after our records are already in the hands of criminals and spies? The truth is no one in a position of power and this includes the government, gives a damn about our records. This was proven time and time again by other agencies which were hacked and lost laptops. The banks and stores didn’t protect the data properly they had on us.

People are walking around with pacemakers which send out signals which can be picked up and altered. How horrible would it be if someone was able to get the frequency of a certain company’s pacemaker and turn them all off at once? I am sure if we brought this question up we would be told the usual answer of impossible. How many times have I seen people like bank executives being interviewed who stated how safe our data was and how impossible it was to hack it? Yet look at the banks which have lost our data to hackers. No one is ever punished and no standard has been established as minimum protection, because those in power don’t want to punish their fellow elites and they don’t care about us.

There is something happening to our way of life and it seems to be destroying it. First of all more devices are coming out every day which can be hacked into and even if countries hadn’t mounted cyber warfare units, there would always be people who see hacking as a challenge and would do it. We are also in a very painful phase of world development where many third world countries are entering into manufacturing and their cheap labor is hurting jobs here and in the west. We are constantly at war, because we always need an enemy to grease the gears of the military industrial complex and allow them to make huge profits. The common person is being insulted by banks which pay nothing or a percentage of a point in interest on their accounts while using their money to make a fortune and the banks have consolidated so we now have a couple of giant banking companies in place of far more which used to exist. So much for competition.

What is going to happen when the power grid is hacked and we are sent back to the Stone Age or banks have their accounts wiped out and people have to prove what they had to the satisfaction of the banks, to get their money back if it is even possible? It seems there is enough doom and gloom to go around. The saddest part of this is it is continuing without anything being done. We elect people to congress and even the president and yet things just keep getting worse. It certainly seems it makes no difference who is elected, because the people who are pulling the strings have a firm hold of the government and won’t allow any meaningful change. They are always trying to get more. Take the TTIP for example. This is the legislation on trade President Obama is trying to push through (as of the writing of this article). There are some really bad provisions in it and because of this some of our congressmen are proposing the facts be kept secret for four years.

I thought this was the United States and when things are passed they shouldn’t be secret, but this thing had secrets all along. Not only will it mean a huge loss in jobs, but some companies like the drug companies will be able to take advantage of some of its provisions to increase profits, according to some reports. I also read it will mean we would be subject to agreements which would override some of our laws and take precedent. The average person seems to be on a downhill slide and with what is going on, it will continue. What we need is for the citizens to come first, but this is just a pipe dream.