Information is flowing faster over more media with increasing ease like no time in history. The good news for industry is all those pixeled 1s and 0s are gravitating to wireless pipes, big and small, licensed and unlicensed. We are walking data banks.
Information is the hallmark of a knowledge-based economy that has surpassed long-gone eras of labor-intensive industrial and agricultural production. Service is king. The job of building widgets is left to developing countries where labor and raw materials are cheap. The consequences of this trend are varied, unpredictable and unrelenting. The benefits of information retrieval and exchange are real and undeniable. Businesses are made smarter by productivity gains. Health care, education, environmental protection, energy management, law enforcement and national security, entertainment and other sectors have been buoyed by digital information processed by powerful microchips and manipulated through the food chain from manufacturer to service provider.
At the same time, the information revolution is running us breathless. It most certainly cannot be mastered.
Last week, the Bush Justice Department announced a major crackdown on allegedly illegal Internet file sharing of copyrighted music, video and software. But that’s just scratching the surface of ever-evolving flash points of illicit activity (child pornography, gambling, stock manipulation, worms and viruses, terrorism, etc.) carried by radio signals, wires, cable and fiber.
The ability of law enforcement and intelligence officials to monitor, collect and analyze the endless rush of information-with accuracy and whose value changes by the minute-is one of the greatest challenges of our time.
Consider, for example, efforts to restore stability to Iraq. The well-intentioned construction of mobile-phone networks for a war-torn nation with little public wireless communication infrastructure even before bombing began undoubtedly helps political and economic rehabilitation, not to mention security. But the Iraqi airwaves are not the sole province of those seeking to get the country back on its feet. Mobile phones also aid insurgents, just as they help terrorists orchestrate deadly deeds.
For that reason, the Pentagon last month quietly awarded a $31 million contract to a tech firm in nearby Calverton, Md., to build a listening post in Baghdad capable of tracking more than 300 mobile-phone calls at one time. The operation is supposedly nicknamed “Legal Intercept.” Moqtada al-Sadr, we can hear you now.
Meantime, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Co. are working on another brainstorm called “Einstein” that would monitor data transfers and communications to guard against cyber attacks.
Closer to home, I was forced to send our IT shop on a critical mission to liberate my computer from swarms of identically regenerated e-mails delivered to my computer by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s press office while I away on vacation. Okay, so innocent computer glitches can happen. On the other hand, perhaps I should be mindful of how much ink I give CPUC Commissioner Carl Wood in the future.
