Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

Chapter Two: What Can Go Wrong? 17include terrorism for political purposes, fire or water damage [or disruption bymagnetic or electric fields or by reprogramming]. Even a lengthy power cutmight have serious repercussions. Other critical situations might arise, forinstance, from an industrial dispute involving personnel working with the computer.33Because of this dependence on a single fragile computer, small groups ofsystems analysts and programmers, even disgruntled individuals, can nowconstitute a national threat—which is why Swedish computer experts are beingcompartmentalized to “redistribute dependence among [more] people.” 34The Sundvall computer’s product is information, including instructions totransact financial affairs. The product of energy systems, however, is deliveredelectricity or fuel, so the designers have tended to concentrate on ensuring thesupply of that product, rather than on ensuring proper control of the informationwhich controls its delivery. Most assessments of energy vulnerability, likewise, dealwith crude disruptions—oil embargoes, pipeline or transmission line sabotage—whenin fact the greatest vulnerability may well lie in misuse of control systems.This subject is explored further, with specific examples, in later chapters.The first practical demonstration that the worst vulnerabilities may arisewithin control systems is today coming not from energy systems but from telephones.Highly intelligent and dedicated “phone phreaks” (or, as they preferto be called, “communications hobbyists”) are causing serious loss of revenuesfor both public and private telecommunications companies in the U.S. Anestimated twenty percent of the traffic on ARPANET, a defense-related electronicnetwork, is unauthorized. Some supposedly secure military communicationslinks have been accidentally penetrated by experimenting students.Phone phreaks’ ingenuity generally keeps them several steps ahead of securityprecautions. Using microcomputers, they can break codes and discoverpasswords by automatic dialing. They can read, change, or delete supposedlysecure data and programs in computers a continent away. 35 Using pseudonyms,they collaborate via computer teleconferencing networks and newsletters.Some are specifically devoted to technical measures for fooling controlsystems into giving something for nothing (such as free phone calls, telex,water, electricity, gas, gasoline, photocopying, computer time, and cableTV). 36 Contacts via such computer networks are anonymous and essentiallyuntraceable. Phone-linked computers can also be used to implement automaticsequences of events, including destructive events, at great distances. 37Some newsletters of “anti-system technology” even focus entirely on waysto “crash” telephone and time-sharing computer systems—something thatoccasionally results from random intervention, but is much easier to accom-