HACKING THE HUMAN BODY

A radio program this past week was both an eye opener for me, and confirmation that a novel-in-manuscript of mine is not far-fetched at all.

On a show called “The Current” from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation a guest named Mark Goodman spoke about the frightening prospect of computer hackers gaining access to high-tech medical devices implanted into human bodies. This wasn’t science fiction. He’s a futurist who’s worked with the FBI. Such hacking is possible right now, because so many of such devices use WiFi or Bluetooth signals and may be connected to the internet. Pacemakers are WiFi-enabled to allow a doctor to remotely trigger a strong jolt of current and save your life if you have a cardiac episode. A great idea, unless a hacker gains access to your pacemaker. Then your life is in their hands, whether for ransom or some kind of sick sport. The insulin pumps of diabetics could be triggered to deliver a fatal dose. Or imagine the horror of feeling your bionic arm or leg controlled by someone else. Hearing obscene or threatening messages in your cochlear implant.

All of these things are possible now, or soon will be.

Cochlear implants are directly connected to the brain. Experimental eye replacements will be, too, and some prosthetic limbs will have direct neural control. My manuscript (working title: Augment Nation) postulates a time coming soon when brain computer interfaces will take over from smartphones as the must-have accessory. If such devices are left vulnerable by inadequate software, the implications are horrific (worthy of a science fiction novel!) We’ve seen far too many examples of how our laws and law enforcement methods have not kept up with cybercrime, and the cost is huge. We don’t dare let security measures for high-tech medical devices fall behind in the same way.

Potential victims are numerous: powerful politicians, bank managers, corporate CEO’s, aircraft pilots (military and civilian), missile silo operators, security staff for bio-tech labs…it takes no effort to imagine dozens of scenarios in which hackers could use deadly leverage to achieve almost any goal. Terrorism? Let’s not even go there. And that’s not mentioning the threat from people who are simply twisted, or psychopathic.

Feel the urge to unplug your house and curl up under a blanket?

Our society already has many regulatory structures in place to ensure that new medical treatments do no harm. For instance, drugs have to go through numerous levels of testing before being approved for the general population. Harmful side effects or interactions with other medications prevent approval. It’s not a perfect system, but it certainly helps. Why not require security safeguards for medical technologies: refuse to approve their use unless they meet a certain standard of cyber-security? There may be no such thing as an “un-hackable” device, but encryption and well-scrutinized code can go a long way.

For once, let’s not wait to play “catch-up” with the criminals. Let’s get ahead of them and make sure that the benefits of brilliant new technology aren’t undermined by vulnerabilities.

It’s the right prescription.

SPACE SUBMARINE OR QUIXOTIC COLONY?

The space news that catches your interest this week will probably depend on whether you think space exploration requires direct human involvement or not. If you feel that it just isn’t the real deal unless humans in space suits are landing a rocket ship on another planet, then you’ll probably be most interested in the latest from the Dutch non-profit organization known as Mars One.

In case you’ve forgotten, Mars One is the groups that plans to start sending astronauts to colonize the planet Mars, four at a time, beginning in 2024. The catch is, it’s a one-way trip; the would-be colonists will never be coming back to Earth. If things go according to plan, they’ll get new companions (and supplies) every two years, but no return flight. The selection process for the astronaut colonists has involved applications from around the world—more than 200,000 of them to begin with, which was whittled down to 1,000, then 660. And now the final 100 have been chosen. So here’s where the real circus—I mean, science—begins, as the finalists try to survive in a mock Mars habitat while the cameras roll to produce a reality-TV show (one of the methods of financing the project, don’t you know). You can watch a promo here. Oh, did I mention that one of the finalists is a 38-year-old from Poland who calls himself “M1-K0” and claims to already be a Martian?

A very different space story involves NASA’s release of a video featuring a concept submarine proposed for the exploration of the hydrocarbon oceans of Saturn’s giant moon Titan. Titan is a strange place, with a largely nitrogen atmosphere, a landscape of dunes, frozen methane snow (and a little water ice) plus large lakes or small oceans of a hydrocarbon mixture. Even so, many scientists feel Titan may be a good candidate to find forms of life, probably in those oceans. So it would be most helpful to have a space probe that could explore beneath the surface. Hence this submarine proposal. But before you go picturing a space-suited Captain Nemo piloting the sub through undersea canyons and past bizarre creatures, the truth is the probe will be robotically controlled. It’ll surface from time to time to send data back to Earth, but no astronaut submariners will be involved. And the mission is still a good number of years away, with some pretty big hoops to jump through first.

I’ve said before that I think the Mars One project is doomed to fail, hopefully before any volunteers commit elaborate suicide by rocketing off toward the red planet. If I were a betting man, my money would be on the Titan submarine mission as the one more likely to succeed. BUT, speaking as a fiction writer, there’s only so much drama I can create around a robot probe in a sea of frozen BBQ fuel, whereas dozens of novels could be written about the Mars One venture.

So let’s keep our fingers crossed for the success of the cautious, well-reasoned-and-researched approaches to the exploration of space, and leave the dramatic failures to the world of fiction.

WHO SHOULD MAKE THE RULES FOR OUTER SPACE?

Remember old cartoons and movies that featured an astronaut proudly planting a flag to claim a new planet for his native land? Have you ever dreamed of staking a claim on your very own asteroid for a family mining operation and homestead, gliding along under the Milky Way?

Reuters news agency announced this morning that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is going to extend its current licensing authority over commercial space launches in the United States to the licensing of companies for projects on the Moon. Bigelow Aerospace plans to spend billions of dollars to put inflatable space habitats on the Moon, and the FAA is saying the company can expect to have exclusive rights to the territory they choose and related areas.

Holy Swiss cheese! The FAA is offering them the Moon?

Well, technically the FAA is just saying that if they license Bigelow to plant its habitats, they won’t license anybody else to drop in and exploit the same patch of moonscape. They don’t really dare to say more than that because the FAA doesn’t have the authority to award property rights, mineral rights, or any other rights on the Moon or any other planet.

The old cigar-with-fins spaceship landing on the Moon and an astronaut jumping out to plant the Stars and Stripes became out-of-date in 1967 when the United Nations Outer Space Treaty went into effect (a couple of years before an astronaut actually did jump out of a spacecraft and plant the Stars and Stripes on the Moon. Hmmmm.) Anyway, the treaty says that nobody can claim ownership of anything in outer space because it’s for all humankind to share.

That’s an issue for companies like Bigelow that want to land on the moon, and it’s likely to become a more pressing issue as companies and organizations attempt to win the Google Lunar X-Prize of $20 million (plus subsidiary prizes), because any of them that do succeed in reaching the Moon will surely want to be able to make it worth their while afterward, too. There are also a number of companies proceeding with serious plans to mine asteroids.

So who should decide property and other rights in outer space? The United Nations or a special subsidiary of it? Some new international body (a United Federation of Planets anyone?)

I think the key question is whether we want to repeat what’s been done on Earth. Do we want the wealthiest nations to have their way on whatever territory they can reach because they have the means to get there? Do we want rich people to have the ability to buy up all the available land they can afford and then sell pieces of it to the rest of us for the highest price they can get? Do we want big corporations to have favoured status when it comes to exploiting mineral or other resources, leaving the “little guy” scrabbling for the dregs? That’s the way it is here and now, on Earth, and has been for a long time. Or do we want the exploration of space to be a break from the past—a chance to do things differently?

If so, the UN Outer Space Treaty isn’t going to be adequate for the challenges (legal and otherwise) of the coming century. It needs an upgrade, and we average folk need to make our desires known. Before big American companies get settled in on the Moon. By then it might be too late.