Tag Archive for: insist

Planes dropping out of the sky. Your mobile rendered useless, just like your car. As a Netflix film portrays a nightmare that security experts insist is a very real prospect… How will YOU survive on the day an enemy state switches off the internet?

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An oil tanker ploughs into a tourist beach. Planes fall from the sky. Driverless cars run amok. The internet fails and the mobile network dies. Feral instincts take over as people fight for food, water and medicine amid the ruins of civilisation.

That is the nightmare vision depicted in Leave The World Behind, Netflix‘s recent hit film starring Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke as a couple battling societal breakdown when the technology that underpins civilisation collapses.

It’s fictional, but it touches on deep-seated, real-life fears.

The film is produced by Michelle and Barack Obama‘s company, Higher Ground. The ex-president was closely involved in shaping the plot, which dramatises many of the cyber-security issues on which he was briefed during his eight years in the White House.

For our 21st-century lives are almost entirely dependent on complex technologies that many do not understand — and that can so easily be exploited by our enemies.

Maintaining a car, for example, was previously a job for any competent motorist and their local mechanic. Now our vehicles are computers on wheels, their inner workings a mystery.

A scene from Leave The World Behind. The film is produced by Michelle and Barack Obama’s company, Higher Ground
A nightmare vision of the future is depicted in Leave The World Behind, Netflix’s recent hit film starring Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke as a couple battling societal breakdown when the technology that underpins civilisation collapses

We used to navigate with paper maps and landmarks. But with his car’s satnav out of action, Ethan Hawke’s character Clay Sandford is unable even to find his way to the nearby town.

Our telephone system used to run on sturdy copper wires, with handsets you could fix with a screwdriver. Now it is a branch of cyberspace.

So, too, is finance. Remember when a credit card’s embossed number left an imprint on a paper slip? Not any more. Our payment system depends wholly on electronic encryption.

What use is cash in the modern world? In the film, with the internet gone, it becomes a prized asset.

If the technologies we rely on break down, many of us will be as helpless as Hawke’s Clay Sandford. ‘I am a useless man,’…

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Gordon Weil: People insist on believing untruths

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An old tale, written by Hans Christian Andersen, tells the story of a foolish emperor who is swindled into believing that he wears the finest garment, visible only to the wise. But he really strides naked on parade. Nobody risks telling him they see nothing until an innocent child blurts out, “The Emperor has no clothes.”

That declaration has come to describe a clear fact that many people insistently get wrong. It means, “What you think is obviously incorrect. Here is the naked truth.”

Here are some of today’s naked truths.

Vaccination against Covid-19 works. Maine provides the best possible proof of that truth.

The counties with the lowest new case rates have the highest percentage of vaccinated people. Most people in counties that are now nearly the worst in the country have chosen not to get shots. They risk their own health and may spread the virus to others.

The term “herd immunity” was meant to convey the idea that, when only a few people remain unvaxed, the virus won’t easily spread. In the counties with high case rates, we can see the reverse – herd vulnerability.

Many possible explanations exist for abstaining including partisan politics and misinformation, intentional or not. It may be a matter of mindset. Health expert Dr. Dora Anne Mills has said, “We very strongly need people from conservative circles – religious, faith and business – to really stand up and promote vaccination.”

Here’s another truth that causes harm if ignored. Voting matters. And serious voting matters seriously.

On this truth, Maine takes comfort because it comes close to leading the country in voter participation. The U.S. in 2020 had a high rate of two-thirds of eligible voters; Maine had 76 percent participation. So what’s the problem?

Nationally, one-third of eligible voters did not vote. Joe Biden received 51.3 percent of the vote. That means the president was elected by one-third of the possible number of voters. While the high turnout may feel good, it’s important to look at those who did not vote. In effect, they “voted” for Biden by not voting for anybody else.

Voting in the 2020 elections influenced decisions on matters such as whose vote will count…

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Local water authorities insist we’re secure from system hackers | News

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NORTH PORT — You wouldn’t think twice about sipping cool water from the kitchen tap.

That’s after local and federal authorities reported an attempt to contaminate Oldsmar’s water supply, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said. A hacker accessed the city’s water treatment system and remotely increased the level of sodium hydroxide — lye — by a factor of more than 100. The chemical controls acidity. But it’s deadly when used in heavier concentrations, as in drain cleaners.

Fortunately a water plant supervisor saw the changing levels on his home computer and intervened. Officials in Oldsmar, just north of St. Petersburg, insisted that safeguards are in place and have disabled the remote-access system used in the attack. Federal and local authorities are investigating.

Southwest Florida water authorities Tuesday said such an attack on our drinking water is not likely here. That’s because remote access at treatment sites is either nonexistent or limited to select administrators, and not to outside vendors, as was suggested in the Oldsmar data breach, locals officials say.

The Peace River Manasota Regional Water Supply Authority treats and distributes more water than anyone in the area. Built next to its water source, the Peace River, the facility straddles Kings Highway in southern DeSoto County, a few miles north of Interstate 75. It sends out 30 million gallons of fresh water each day to most of Charlotte County, and is integrated with North Port and other neighboring utilities.

Its plant is essentially a fortress of guards, cameras, sensors and gates, but very little remote software, said Patrick Lehman, the authority’s executive director. While software and computers run the system, the devices are managed internally, not patched into outside platforms that can be easier to infiltrate, he said.

Like bank security? he was asked Tuesday.

“Like a prison,” he countered in offering a limited peek, as the authority’s security measures are private. “Totally manned 24/7.”

The authority has other safeguards in the event that elite hackers — or hurricanes — shut off power to treatment facilities, which in both instances are the…

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