18 August 2008

Technology will always fail, says Angell of doom

Eleanor Dallaway

‘Technology is part of the problem, not part of the solution’. These were the words of Ian Angell, professor of information systems at the London school of economics, and also the keynote speaker at the Black Hat conference 2008.

Dubbed ‘Angel of doom’ by UK press, Angell lived up to his reputation by opening the press briefings at Black Hat in Las Vegas with a gloomy oversight of technology.
Honest, evocative and cynical, Angell had his audience laughing throughout his one-hour presentation.

“Look at the observable consequential risks when computers become part of life”, he instructed his audience. “Computers deal with objective, well structured problems, but not with the ambiguous. We don’t understand the cost of using technology - even seemingly benign technology can cause problems. Systems misbehave” he said.

Angell argued that computers are a system of what they become, not what they are intended to be. “Systems and humans combined result in perverse reactions. When computers are relied on, complexity increases”.

The dot com boom caused delusions of grandeur about the greatness of technology, “when really, even replicable computers were far from perfect”, he observed.

Angell argued that Web 2.0, in particular social networks, “can lead to lunacy”. He cited a recent divorce case where a court order banned a man from having any contact with his ex-wife. On joining Facebook, automatic friend requests were sent to all of his contacts in his hotmail account, including his ex-wife. She contacted the police, the man was arrested and got ten days in jail.

“Job application chances are being shattered by social networks and what can be found with a little internet research. Never put anything on a computer that you wouldn’t want the whole world to see – because they will see it”, Angell said.

Information technology is the latest technology that man thinks they can control, argued Angell. “It’s madness – our world can not be controlled by technology. Computerised bureaucracy can be chaos – causing confusion, errors and complexity”.

An example, Angell quoted, is the case of a guard dog and a teddy-bear exhibition in Somerset. When computerised risk assessment concluded that a guard dog would be the best night-time protection for the hundreds of rare teddies, all on loan to Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset, it hadn’t taken into account that Doberman guard dogs are trained with soft toys. The result? A massacre of 100 bears, amongst them a Steiff teddy bear once owned by Elvis Presley, and reportedly worth $80 000.

Risk assessment, Angell argued, is impossible. “There’s no point in measuring something if it changes the moment it is measured – often as a direct result of being measured.

“Numbers lie – they’re like people – torture them enough and they’ll tell you anything”.

“All computer systems are flawed. Being smug in computer knowledge won’t help you one bit. A blind belief in perfecting computer systems is folly”.

Biometric technology, Angell argued, is a prime example of technology being vulnerable to abuse. “Low-paid hospital staff can be compromised – criminals will scatter around random DNA – the system of DNA profiling could be compromised. Control freaks can capture everyone’s identity in one computerised database”.

Angell’s next target was the UK government. “UK government is full of idiotic politicians proposing ID cards. Of course, the politicians won’t be able to have their pictures on their cards, as they’d have to choose which face to use”.

Perhaps part of his anger towards government stems from the run-in he had with Tony Blair, then UK Prime Minister, who announced Angell ‘inept’ when Angell had spoken out against the proposed identity card scheme.

“The UK government are incompetent – they can’t look after their systems. Only neurotics think they can use technology to make certainty” Angell said.

“There are three roads to ruin in this life; women, gambling, and technology” Angell theorised, “and the latter is the most certain”.

“The only thing systems have in common is that they all fail”. But on a more positive note, he noted that whilst technology continues to be prevalent in all walks of life, “we cynics in the infosecurity industry will be laughing all the way to the bank”.

ID cards for foreign nationals within a year, says UK

<< News index