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Volume 4 Number 19 August
4, 2006 |
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To know or not to know Should people be kept ignorant of things that could
cause panic? Before I begin, let me shout out a big "I told you so" to all those people who wrote in to tell me I was "paranoid," when I wrote about the vulnerability of the Internet and how the average person was unaware their data, emails, and online transactions were at serious risk. My state of mind notwithstanding, my concern seems to have been confirmed at a meeting of online security experts who echo the same thoughts. The DefCon 14
conference last week heard
from security experts who warned that we are all at risk,
and things are getting worse. Some snippets from the conference: "We are getting our butts kicked, there is no doubt about it," said Dan Hubbard, vice president of security research at Websense.. . . [snip] . . . Online onslaughts were a relentless reality for ordinary computer users, said Gadi Evron, who managed Internet security for the Israeli government before going to work for the firms SecuriTeam and Beyond Security.. . [snip] . . More than two billion dollars will be stolen this year by online "phishing," using fake website and bogus e-mails to trick people into revealing personal information then used for identity theft, according to Evron.. . [snip] . . . There is such a glut of stolen credit card data that it can be bought online for three dollars each, said special agent Andrew Fried of the US Internal Revenue Service. But before my laudable effort to clear my good name turns into outright gloating, let's turn to another question that was raised by a reader in response to the column on the lack of Internet security, which included the sad fact that most users are kept woefully in the dark about their exposure. The reader asks: "How do you
assess the relative ethics of failing to properly inform people of risk
against providing information you suspect will cause massive panic that will
harm more people than would result from their living their lives in happy
ignorance. Call it the "Men in Black" question, where K tells J that the only way people get through the
day is by not knowing that on a regular basis, alien species are trying to
blow up the Earth." My first quibble is with the "Men in Black" reference. We should never forget that the "Men in Black" had that wonderful flash device that made people forget what they saw with their own eyes, making the deception so much easier. We have no such device. All we have is the corporate media, most notably the cable "news" chatter channels to make inconvenient facts disappear or at least to cover them up with a media fog. And, while they're good, they're not that good. Some truth does get out. My second quibble -- again with the "Men in Black" reference -- is that the aliens weren't trying to blow up the earth. They kind of liked it here. What was being kept from people was that the aliens were here at all -- and that they looked just like you and me. My third quibble is with trying to apply the "Men in Black" situation to the situation where Internet users are being kept in the dark about the vulnerabilities. In "Men in Black", there really wasn't anything people could do about the existence of the aliens. Had people known, they would have had to adjust their world view and simply adapt. With the Internet situation, we can do something about it -- and ordinary people can make more informed decisions if they know their online transactions are at risk. Thus, the reader's question conflates the two situations and conflates two valid questions. The first, and what I will assume the reader was getting at, is how we behave when we know of an approaching or existing event. and we suspect that widespread knowledge of the threat will cause a panic. And that panic, we assume, will cause far more harm than the actual event. This raises the ethical question of whether we should tell people or avoid the panic and let the event occur unexpected. A good example here would be a tsunami bearing down on New York City with an estimated arrival time of one hour. If we tell people, many people will try to escape and the ensuing panicked attempt at evacuation -- plus the inevitable tsunami -- could actually kill more people than the tsunami alone. Or so the argument goes. The second question, which is really what "Men in Black" is about, is how we deal with a specialized knowledge, possessed by only a few people, that calls into question the world view and foundational beliefs of millions of people. Do we get up and announce to entire populations that much of what they know is wrong? Or do we allow them to persist in their errant beliefs? For an example, let's imagine a team of Vatican archaeologists in search of some biblical artifacts. Upon exploring a cave, they come across a sarcophagus bearing the inscription "Jesus of Nazareth." Inside they find a preserved body of a man who has clearly been crucified, and along with it they find scrolls identifying the body as the earthly remains of the same Jesus who led his 12 apostles and was crucified by the Romans. Seeing as how hundreds of millions of Christians fervently believe that Jesus rose bodily from the dead and then ascended bodily into heaven, this would be quite a revelation. How would the Vatican and other sectarian leaders respond to such a discovery? I will leave the answer to your imagination. However, for a clue all you have to do is look at the furor around "The DaVinci Code." Nothing has united disparate Christian sects more solidly than the suggestion, even in a fictional account, that there may be more to the story than people have been told. The book has generated a mega-industry dedicated to convincing people that a fictional book is, well, fictional. You can extrapolate from that. Complicating the situation is the fact that most people cling to their world view, no matter how fragile, with a fierceness that exceeds that of a mother lion protecting her cubs. You challenge that world view at your own peril. For a real-life example we
need look no further than event of Even knowing that, anyone who dares to suggest that certain pieces of data don't fit the official story is immediately and viciously branded as a "conspiracy theorist" and a "kook," and is subjected to ridicule that eventually ends with the words "grassy knoll." The latter term, of course, is in turn used to ridicule anyone who suggests there is more to the JFK assassination than the official story will admit. And to show just how tenaciously people cling to beliefs, despite evidence to the contrary, we have the recent poll, which found that more than 50 percent of Americans surveyed still believe there were WMDs in Iraq prior to the invasion and occupation -- despite that claim having been repeatedly debunked over the last three-plus years. Better still, for a more personal example, just look at the people who belittled me for raising questions about the integrity of the Internet. When their foundational beliefs about Internet security were questioned, they attacked the messenger. So, the answer to the reader's question, as asked, is: you can challenge people's foundational beliefs if you want, but you do so at your own risk, and you really need to decide what you hope to accomplish -- other than being right. People will not give up those beliefs willingly. Now, let's turn to the tsunami example, which is a different question altogether. Here, there is a possible response -- in fact many possible responses -- that people can make. At first blush, the idea of not creating panic and just allowing the tsunami to do its thing seems like a good Utilitarian reaction to the situation. You weigh the good and harm in not telling against the good and harm in telling, and you may come up with the answer that not telling will be less harmful than telling This isn't such a far-fetched belief, and we see it in many areas of human endeavor. Many years ago in a different career, I was involved in counseling people with terminal and life-threatening illnesses. At the time I came along in that field, there was a sea-change underway -- much of it tied to the work of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Prior to Kubler-Ross' groundbreaking work, it was standard practice -- and it's still all-too-prevalent today -- to keep terminally ill patients ignorant of the seriousness of their condition. The rationale was that not knowing made the patient stronger and that knowing would cause a depression and panic that would make their condition worse. So, many people, doctors included, went to great lengths to "give hope" to dying patients by keeping them ignorant. The fly in the ointment -- well, one of many flies in that particular ointment -- was that patients weren't as obtuse as people thought they were. They would, however, play the game, because they wanted to protect their loved ones from the awful truth. The upshot was that the dying and the families, doing a dance of mutual denial, were never able to go through an important stage of the grieving process together -- the patient grieving his impending death and the family grieving its coming loss. That situation isn't as far away from the tsunami example as you might think. What it comes down to in the end is whether people have a right to know what is about to happen to them, even if there's nothing they can do about it. At the end of the day, it's a control issue. Those who would manipulate people's reaction and response by limiting the amount of information they dole out are clearly playing a control game based on their own fantasies about the situation. It's not clear that most people would panic, and it's not clear that the response, even one including some panic, would be worse than not telling people. Even if people can do nothing about the tsunami bearing down on New York, there are things they can do other than clogging the highways in a futile evacuation. They could try to seek higher ground. They could simply say whatever prayers were important to them in a time like this. They could make phone calls to say goodbye to family and friends. They could send emails giving final instructions. They could kiss their spouse, hug their kids, or patch up petty differences. In short, they could set their affairs in order. I can't think of an ethical principle under which you would deny people that opportunity. Would some people panic? Quite possibly. Would that make things worse? Who knows? But the operative principle is that people have a right to panic. It's a quite natural response. Who am I to stop them? During the height of the Cold War I lived a few miles from a major Strategic Air Command base. Located near the East Coast, it was a prime target for a Soviet missile. At that time I decided that when the sirens blew, as we were assured they inevitably would some day, I wouldn't do the "duck-and-cover" routine we had been carefully taught in school. I didn't want to be found dead, assuming anything would be left of me, with my head under the coffee table and my butt in the air. My plan was to mix a pitcher of martinis, set up a lawn chair in the front yard, face the air base, and watch the show. I would have been madder than hell at anyone who, trying to control my "panic," denied me my last act of defiance toward something over which I had no control. No one had that right. |
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© Copyright 2006 Carlton Vogt |