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Exploring the law of unintended consequences
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:50:14 -0500
------ Forwarded Message From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com> Reply-To: <dewayne () warpspeed com> Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 09:15:13 -0800 To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Exploring the law of unintended consequences [Note: A very good read! I recommend that you click through to the site and read the article with all of its embedded links. DLH] Original URL: <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/21/unintended_consequences/> Exploring the law of unintended consequences By Scott Granneman, SecurityFocus (scott at granneman.com) Published Friday 21st January 2005 12:32 GMT Column The law of unintended consequences shows us how many innocent innovations like email, anti-virus and DRM can become something far worse than the inventors had ever imagined. Back in the 1970s, long before the revolution that would eventually topple him from power, the Shah of Iran (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi_of_Iran) was one of America's best friends (he was a dictator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_revolution) who brutally repressed his people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK), but he was anti-communist, and that made him OK in our book). Wanting to help out a good friend, the United States government agreed to sell Iran the very same intaglio presses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intaglio) used to print American currency so that the Shah could print his own high quality money for his country. Soon enough, the Shah was the proud owner of some of the best money printing machines in the world, and beautiful Iranian Rials (http://www.kcshop.com/imagegallery/Iran.htm) proceeded to flow off the presses. All things must come to an end, and the Shah was forced to flee Iran in 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayatollah_Khomeini) rebellion brought theocratic rule to Iran. Everyone reading this undoubtedly knows the terrible events that followed: students took American embassy workers hostage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis) for over a year as Iran declared America to be the "Great Satan," while evidence of US complicity in the Shah's oppression (http://www.irvl.net/USMI.htm) of his people became obvious, leading to a break in relations between the two countries that continues to worsen to this day. During the early 90s, counterfeit $100 bills began to flood the Mideast, eventually spreading around the world. Known as "superbills" or "superdollars" by the US Treasury due to the astounding quality of the forgeries, these $100 bills became a tremendous headache not only for the US and its economy, but also for people all over the world that depend on the surety of American money. Several culprits have been suggested as responsible for the superbills, including North Korea and Syria, but many observers think the real culprit is the most obvious suspect: an Iranian government deeply hostile to the United States... and even worse, an Iranian government possessing the very same printing presses used to create American money. If you've ever wondered just why American currency was redesigned in the 1990s, now you know. In the 1970s, the US rewarded an ally with a special machine; in the 1990s, the US had to change its money because that ally was no longer an ally, and that special machine was now a weapon used to attack the US's money supply, where it really hurts. As an example of the law of unintended consequences, it's powerful, and it illustrates one of the main results of that law: that those unintended consequences can really bite back when you least expect them. Unprepared and unready Sometimes unintended consequences occur from the best of intentions. For instance, Denny's is known for being open 24 hours a day, every day, always. The story goes that in 1998, for the first time in 35 years, Denny's decided to close its doors on Christmas, but there was a big problem: since Denny's was always open, many stores didn't have locks on the doors, so they couldn't close. Likewise, email was invented in 1971 (http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/#1970s) and was immediately embraced as a great way to communicate with folks all over the world. Since virtually everyone on the Net pretty much knew each other at the time, email was developed without a lot of safeguards. Spoofing the sender? Not a real issue. False headers? Why in the world would anyone want to do that? Purposely misspelled words in the subject to get past filters? First of all, what the heck are filters, and why would someone want to spell something weird to get past one? It was a more innocent age, but that innocence was lost long ago, thanks to a trickle ... no, a stream ... no, a flood, an absolutely Biblical flood of garbage, scams, lies, ads, swindles, and just plain crap. In fact, it's gotten so bad that MX Logic, an antispam vendor, now estimates that 75 per cent of all email is spam (http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/12/26/ HNcanspamnoteffective_1.html), while in same article Postini Inc. jacks that number up to 88 per cent of all email. Think about that: only about 1 in 10 emails is legitimate. That's truly pathetic, almost enraging, and it's finally leading (slowly, oh so slowly) to necessary changes - not in the legal system, since the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_Spam_Act_of_2003) seems to have done virtually nothing (http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/12/26/ HNcanspamnoteffective_1.html) to stem the tide - but in email infrastructure, to things like Microsoft's proposed Sender ID (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_ID), Yahoo's Domain Keys (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_keys), and Sender Policy Framework (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework). Of course, at this time there's no consensus on the solution, and with patents and other contentious issues of so-called intellectual property (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Intellectual_property#Arguments_against_the_term_.22intellectual_propert y.22) acting as flies in the ointment, we may never reach a unified approach to the problem of spam. Naturally, that just helps the spammers. But they don't mind - they're busy helping each other. Fast forward from 1971 to 2005. Would the inventors recognize the monstrosity they innocently unleashed upon the world? [snip] ------ End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- Exploring the law of unintended consequences David Farber (Jan 21)