Martin Rees Quotes
In our interconnected world, novel technology could empower just one fanatic, or some weirdo with a mindset of those who now design computer viruses, to trigger some kind of disaster. Indeed, catastrophe could arise simply from technical misadventure - error rather than terror.
Rees, Martin. Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty-first Century? William Heinemann, 2003.
Many computer experts and security operatives view this kind of advice and strategy as counter-productive as there are some computer security extremists who so harden computer systems and networks that they function poorly and cause really harmful operational problems. The classic case was the FBI agent in Minnesota who before 9-11 had information that Muslims foreigners were taking flying lessons. She wanted to get the information to the national security FBI people, but she was not allowed to send the information by e-mail. Instead she had to use a "secure" system that was much slower and could not be viewed by the people who might have been able to connect the dots and do something about it. The FBI has now a better balance between functionality and security, but it is a good example of how "security fanaticism" can make us less safe.
Ironically, it was the case that there was even more hacking that was motivated by people who just wanted to prove that they could ‘breach a system’ and the more an organization claims that its data is secure, the more motivation there is for these hackers to demonstrate their prowess.
Gulen went into exile in Pennsylvania. He has a very large following both within Turkey and outside. His organization has established hundreds of schools where he argues for a very tolerant, modern version of Islam. The particular incident that triggered this absurd exaggeration by the Turkish President was that one of Gulen’s followers had obtained a recording of Erdogan’s son telling his father how he will hide the cash that they had obtained via corruption. Erdogan claimed the recording was faked. Where Erdogan was trying to move Turkey away from the secular founding of its Republic by Ataturk, Gulen was not only more in consonance with secularism in Government and separation of church and state, but had a very modern reformist view of Islam and Turkey.
In addition to the hackers who break into websites for monetary gain, or spying for companies or governments, there are many why just love the challenge of hacking into computers and websites that authorities claim is secure. The reality is that there is no way to absolutely sure a computer or its contents as long as it is connected to the Internet. Those computers and sites that have nothing to hide and do not present a challenge to hackers of this type rarely have problems from them; their vulnerability is to the other hacker who can utilize their computer slo hack still others of paralyze their computer to extract a ransom for functionality. The analogy of the hackers to the barbarian hordes sacking Ancient Rome and the Mongolian hordes sacking Europe is one that many appreciated,
Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, OM, FRS, FREng, FMedSci, FRAS is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, appointed in 1995, and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 2004 to 2012 and President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010.
