The Heartbleed flaw is shaping up to be one of the most catastrophic security breaches in Internet history. What is even more remarkable is that the NSA knew about the flaw for at least two years and exploited it to retrieve sensitive information. Considering how crucial the Internet has become to just about every facet of modern civilization, this kind of behavior is beyond irresponsible, though that sort of goes without saying.
But of course the NSA knows about many other different kinds of flaws. It even creates some itself to make its data sluicing job easier. It deliberately weakens cyber security and exposes populations around the world to virtual subterfuge in the name of protecting those very populations.
Such absurdities are par for the course in terms of many US defense - or should we say offense - agencies. But then there are plenty of other sectors administering the US empire that engage in what one could call rogue behavior. What used to be rogue is starting to become regular.
All of this bluster obscures a much more important point however, something that is easy to miss because it is something whose logic literally surrounds us on a daily basis. The point has to do with a conception of security that has been with us a very long time, a conception that is basically baked into the American character, and which isn't peculiar to the American character either.
The Heartbleed fiasco serves as a valuable window into a much deeper problem: namely the fact that a breach in information security sends us into a flurry of gasps in the first place. Underneath the veil of a powerful, efficient global system writhes a multitude of pathological agents - both domestic and foreign - probing every nook and cranny in the system's operations for a chance to steal information and identities, or to harm the system itself. Who are all these would-be thieves and saboteurs? Where do they come from? Why does there seem to be so many and why is all of our information so sensitive in the first place? Why so many enemies and why the constant desperation to steal information and use it to gain the wealth of others?
Who are all these people that would rather hack into information systems and steal other people's things, as opposed to making their own living? It seems to me that most people want to make a life for themselves and be loved by their communities. It is built into us. You treat people good and you usually get good in return. Treat people bad, and you get the bad. I'm not so sure anyone is born an ontological thief or ruffian. They have to first be treated badly. Why are all these people being treated badly I wonder? Who is the real victim in this case?
It is all of course much more complicated. There are dangerous people out there that were forged through historical processes far beyond our control. The process of imperial expansion and the sympathetic contraction are producing all sorts of marred characters whose nature outlasts the origin of its genesis. For those whose trust in general humanity is broken, it is very difficult to be restored. Though contrary to a lot of our popular fiction, I'm not so sure a human being can necessarily be lost beyond redemption.
Yeah, the fiction. It always goes back to the fiction. We are fed endlessly with scary characters and intense situations, caricature after caricature of purely distilled good and purely distilled evil fighting it out in role after repeated role. There is evil in the world and you have to destroy it! Scary things must be defeated! And so on. Doubtless, many of these rehearsed myths were generated out of life experiences, though these life experiences themselves always have to be processed through our binary logic systems.
Well anyways, it is a lot of wasted time and energy. Tanks attract bigger and ever more gnarly munitions to punch through their armor; their armor is strengthened and improved, and then bigger and even more gnarly munitions are invented to punch through the tougher armor. Castles inspire ever-more effective battering rams as their walls grow thicker and taller. Cyber security systems grow ever more complex and convoluted to evade ever-more crafty hackers. It is the old arms race.
I remember going into a Walgreens in a poor section of San Francisco and the place literally looked like a fortress. It looked ridiculous. Thick walls and fences on top of the walls and barbed wire on top of the fences and jagged bars over the windows, and thick steel shutters that cover the entrance at night.
Where power must be concentrated, there must be a corresponding deficit in power, where the powerless that exist in relation to the powerful simply have to survive and challenge that power to take some back. And then endless amounts of energy are used in a race that essentially cancels itself out, especially when you start getting to nuclear weapons.
I say it is all silly, but it certainly isn't silly to those with the fear. There is a lot of fear behind Western civilization. All that power and grandiosity and the accompanying terror of losing it all.
However, in a time of powerful nations owning nuclear weapons, it has become apparent that we need a new conception of security, one that is actually very old. Instead of reinforcing and augmenting what is already excessive, so that one is safe, why not give and reinforce the surrounding environment where the deficit is in the first place? Enrich the deserts that sap from the oasis. Give each man and woman the means for existing with dignity. Let life be and it tends to take care of itself, allowing for more life to flourish from it.
Granted, we don't have to open ourselves to everything. There is a reason why we dispose of feces, and thank goodness for penicillin and things of that nature. We do take up space with everything else, and there do exist lifeforms whose methodologies to living may contradict our own.
But we treat some human beings like feces and disease - namely the powerless - and they certainly aren't these things. We are all human beings. We all have similar needs and interests and granted that there aren't too many of us taking up space and jockeying for too little resources, we should be more than able to coexist. There is no reason to make life more difficult than it needs to be by declaring war on each other.
Besides there being too many of us today, we do have the technology to provide for the basic needs of each and every person. Scarcity is literally manufactured. War is senseless and insane. And this is because of the existence of surplus in some quarters, as opposed to scarcity. One can't always fill the hole where one lacks, but one can give what one has too much of.
I do intend to elaborate on this alternate conception of security some other time. It is not entirely clear how to carry out this conception on a mass scale though. It is in the end an act of ideology. It takes believing in and acting on.
