Decades ago, while sharing beer with a man, our conversation wandered into the new pasture of computer hacking. IT (Information Technology) was relatively new and the unlawful practice of intruding on another person or organization’s computer — “hacking” — was growing in popularity. I expressed anger and contempt for people who would invade another’s privacy while my companion tried to make a case for the important work being done by hackers. His stance was that hackers helped companies to understand and address weaknesses in their computer networks. I still feel the same way, despite my fascination for the genius hackers on my “law and order” TV shows.
“CSI: Cyber,” starring Patricia Arquette, is about a group of former “black hat” (bad) hackers who are working to do good; “Scorpion” has a collection of geniuses — one of whom is a cyber-hacker — tearing around the world, saving people. And my current binge-favorite is a Netflix series called “Crossing Lines,” starring no one I’ve ever heard of, excepting Donald Sutherland. And of course, one of the members of that law enforcement group is an expert computer hacker.
When I worked in the advertising department for store in St. Louis, Mo., one of my jobs was to oversee some computer equipment. I was not required to have an intimate knowledge of “zeros and ones”; I looked at a screen and had instructions on how to deal with specific problems. When I encountered a problem outside of my narrow parameters, I called an expert in Boston, Massachusetts. She would review my standard error-checking protocols and give me a solution. One day, she asked me a strange question: “Did you power-cycle the (machine)?” Confused by the new term, I asked what it meant. “Turn it off and on,” was her dry response. IT people take pride in making simple terms more complex: “power down,” instead of turning off; “boot up,” instead of turning on. When my daughter Lisa calls an IT person at her company about problems with her computer, that person often answers the phone shouting, “REBOOT!” which is another techy-ism for “power cycle.” Her IT person also has an acronym to describe most computer problems: “PICNIC” stands for “Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.”
In a conversation with Lisa, I was mourning the loss of my MacBook Pro laptop. “I thought you said Mac don’t crack,” cracked my cruel and sarcastic eldest. Which brings us to the FBI’s attempt to bite into Apple and force it to crack the encryption of a terrorist’s iPhone. We citizens of Boston — and Indianapolis — think it’s a scandal the way our metadata is being slurped up by various law enforcement agencies. I’m reminded of Kiefer Sutherland’s “24” character on the deck of the Ship of State, crying, “Damn the liberties! Full speed ahead!” as the prow plunges into the Constitution. I am riding with Apple in this fight. (Despite the fact that Apple has not made a product named “Apple” since the 1980s, a friend insists on calling her iMac an “Apple.”) I don’t want the FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security and IMPD to have unfettered access to my sext… make that “text” messages. Besides, if art is even remotely reflective of life, then — according to the hacker horde on my TV shows — it is already possible to break into an encrypted phone. The FBI needs merely to access a TV script.
As for that long-ago conversation about the value of hackers, it would seem that my beer-besotted buddy may have been right: the Pentagon has launched a project called — you guessed it — “Hack the Pentagon,” inviting “vetted outside hackers” to test its security systems.
Sigh.