Re: $10 laptops from HRD Ministry, India

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Gene Spafford <spaf () cerias purdue edu>
Date: May 6, 2007 11:26:20 AM EDT
To: ip () v2 listbox com
Cc: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] $10 laptops from HRD Ministry, India

There is a more fundamental problem with distributing all these cheap  
laptops in various places around the world.

Where is the investment to educate the new users about proper use of  
the technology?  About security?  About avoiding dangerous activities?

Does anyone seriously believe that these machines -- whether $100  
from Negroponte's group or $10 from India, or anywhere else -- won't  
quickly be assimilated into bot networks?   Or serve as virus/worm  
reservoirs, if not breeding grounds?  How many of the recipients are  
going to be victims of identity theft, or regional pedophiles, or  
phishing attacks taking their meager resources because they don't  
have either protection mechanisms or education about how to safeguard  
themselves?

Over the last couple of decades, when law enforcement would make one  
of its (infrequent) arrests for hacking by a young person, the  
parents would always say "We had no idea!  He was working with the  
computer and we thought he was learning something -- we don't know  
computers!"  (The suspects were almost always male here in the  
US.)    When parents don't understand the dangers or the technology,  
they sometimes don't supervise closely enough.  Will that problem  
translate to other cultures when children are recipients of all these  
cheap laptops?

And are the machines being distributed into countries that have the  
resources for good law enforcement for IT-related crime?


We can't defend against the threats we are facing now. If these mass  
computer giveaways succeed, shortly we will have another billion  
users online who are being raised in environments of poverty, with  
little or no education about proper IT use, and often in countries  
where there is little history of tolerance (and considerable history  
of religious, ethnic and tribal strife).  Access to eBay and YouTube  
isn't going to give them clean water and freedom from disease.  But  
it may help breed resentment and discontent where it hasn't been before.

Gee, I can barely wait.

The metaphor that comes to mind is that if we were in the ramp-up to  
the Black Plague in the middle ages, these groups would be trying to  
find ways to subsidize the purchase of pet rats.

(If that didn't register with you, the Black Plague was a series of  
bubonic plague pandemics over several hundred years in Europe and  
Asia.  Over 100 million people are believed to have died from the  
disease, caused by the bacterium yersinia pestis, and transmitted by  
fleas...carried largely by rodents.)

--spaf


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