Why We See the Internet as a Time Bomb

Thomas Fischermann and Götz Hamann

This is what success stories look like! The digital economy emerged only 15 years ago, then collapsed in a tremendous stock market crash at the turn of the millennium, and today?

Today a company called “Facebook” is one of the most well-known corporations in the world; more than 600 million users exchange news, photos, short films, images and everyday experiences through this medium. Every year Microsoft sells well over 200 million licences for its office software, the newest version of which functions so well because it maintains virtually unbroken contact with the Net. The Apple computer group sells some 85 million tablet computers, cell phones, music players and laptops annually and has launched a cascade of innovative Internet services associated with these articles. According to the calculations of the Washington-based Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), the digital economy contributed ten trillion dollars to the quantifiable global wealth in 2010 – and thus more than medicine sales, investments in renewable energy and public expenditures for research combined.

You can find all kinds of similar hard figures: numbers of users, sales records, turnover figures. They all tell more or less the same story: the great success story of the Net, which, ultimately, no one in the wealthy Western world can escape. It is a true story: Information technology massively influences our lives whether we want it to or not, whether we participate or not. Society and the economy could no longer function without it. Even if you still use an old dial telephone at home, by the time your calls reach the next street corner they will be fed into the huge, invisible data stream. When you visit your neighbourhood bank branch you are likely to have the opportunity to watch as some young person collects such data, nods and feeds it into a computer. And if you try to save energy by having your electrical supply company hang a “smart meter” in your basement, your consumption data may well be disclosed via the global computer network from then on.

But there is a huge problem. Computers, the Net and information technology as a whole are currently malfunctioning on a massive scale. The Internet was never intended to transmit and manage such masses of highly private, economically indispensable and existentially vital data. It does not succeed in doing so reliably or safely. And Internet users have not yet learned how to control the risks – neither businesses nor private persons nor nations; after all, people are not born as computer geniuses.

Glitches are occurring with increasing frequency. Data are disappearing or falling into the wrong hands. US defence experts had to admit that construction plans for the American military’s newest fighter jet had been stolen through data channels. Using a computer worm, hackers destroyed thousands of centrifuges in the Iranian nuclear programme. The technology stock exchange Nasdaq, operating in New York City, was the target of a cyber attack. In several European countries, hackers stole greenhouse gas emission certificates and sold them for almost 50 million euros. Hardly a week goes by in which some major company or public authority does not have to make the woeful admission: data have been lost, we have been hacked, our online services have been interrupted, for safety reasons our customers should acquire new credit cards. Waves of attacks on online banking and credit cards as well as so-called “identity thefts” have got hundreds of thousands of people worried.

“Are we experiencing some kind of hacker epidemic?” asked Bruce Schneier recently. The renowned security expert from Washington D.C. immediately answered his own question in the negative, however. There was no hacker epidemic, he said, it was just that people were finally becoming aware of the vulnerabilities of the most important infrastructure of our time.

A much more basic question, however, is this: Why have these troublemakers been so successful? Now, in the fall of 2011, it has become clear: The computer and software sector has sadly neglected data security issues. At the moment, for instance, it is not clear whether the Net of the future will belong to the many innovative services – or to high-tech criminal gangs.

Now is the time to change things. We have to regain control.

Tip:
Thomas Fischermann/Götz Hamann: ZEITBOMBE Internet. Warum unsere vernetzte Welt immer störanfälliger und gefährlicher wird, Munich: Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2011, ISBN 978-3-579-06682-0


Thomas Fischermann and Götz Hamann are the assistant heads of the economics desk of ZEIT magazine. Fischermann writes about topics such as macroeconomy, economic research, world trade and the globalisation debate; Hamann reports on technology topics, the culture industry and structural changes in the German economy.
www.zeitbombeinternet.de