Civil Disobedience in the Digital Era

Civil disobedience, as defined by Wikipedia, "argues that people should not permit government to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice".  One of the greatest examples of the benefits of civil disobedience is Gandhi’s campaign for independence from the British Empire.  Like the civil protests that we all have a right to, hacking can be seen as civil disobedience when it shows discontent and opposition, and it ultimately shows a way of doing things better. What are the benefits of hacking?  One benefit of our disobedience is that it gives us more options.  When the iPhone first came out, the options to customize it or doing other productive things, like reading PDF files, or just changing the background, was limited or inexistent.  The hacking community created applications and modified the OS so that we could change those settings and add functionality to the phone, functionality that was already available on other phones.  What did Apple do? They came up with their own implementation of the features introduced by the hacking community, i.e. we now have multi-tasking, we can change wallpapers, will be able to change sms ringtones soon, etc. As someone puts it "we need to keep on hacking so long as we're angry, frustrated, and dissatisfied with the status quo.  We can sit around and complain, or we can do better." It should be a pretty easy choice and as long as someone is willing to "disobey" we all will enjoy the benefits that come with it.

"...in us and our seed all generations after us should be blessed"

President Woodruff said: “The eyes of God and all the holy prophets are watching us. This is the great dispensation that has been spoken of ever since the world began.” We live in the dispensation of the fullness of times, indeed, and all the blessings that our ancestors had are available to us.  It is our turn to be grateful for this blessing and to be faithful on helping fulfill the prophecy and bless all generations; the technology available to us helps us speed the process. I remember when my dad used to look at microfilms to extract information to do the work for our ancestors. Years later he started using FamilySearch and his work became much easier.  He found out that he had duplicated the work for a few people, something that with FamilySearch would hardly happen.  And now with the New Family Search the work is a lot easier. I just had to log in and link to my dad to be able to see all my ancestors for whom he has done the work for. He recently found out that there was a man, thousands of miles away from our home, that is also doing the work for his family. He didn't know the man, and he doesn't know if they're related, but they're both working on their families.  What a wonderful blessing it is to have the technology we have and be able to contribute to the Lord's work.  What a blessing it is to live in this last dispensation.

"...in us and our seed all generations after us should be blessed".

Cyber Attacks and the Cyber Space

Most of us have probably visited a web site that has been down due to a DoS (denial-of-service) attack, but were not aware of the cause for the site being down.  These kinds of attacks are an attempt to make an internet site or service not function as designed. The average internet user has little idea of what's happening behind the screen in being able to communicate with someone on the other side of the world. The knowledge of the average user decreases when we address the threats and security implications of having a network as open as the internet.

One or two decades ago, even an advanced user was little aware of all the holes that are open for people to take over a system. We have come a long way as the Pentagon's Cyber Command was scheduled to be up and running this month. Even though it missed the deadline to be fully operational, we can see that the government is aware of the need for an agency such as this one.  Interestingly enough, the Pentagon's Cyber Command missed the deadline because it was struggling to fill out the rest of the organization which needs more than 1,000 employees.

Even with this new Cyber Command, the rest of the U.S. government is lagging behind, debating the responsibilities of different agencies.  We have heard this before; It might be understandable as many people don't see or understand the tangible consequences of a cyber attack until they experience it firsthand. It would be interesting to know how much authority the Pentagon has to help fend off cyber attacks within the U.S.

An article recently reported that more than 100 countries are currently trying to break into U.S. networks. China and Russia are home of the greatest concentration of attacks. Attacks between different countries have been increasing recently as they are attempting to take down each other’s websites with DoS attacks. Many of the victims are government websites, but many victims also belong to the private sector.  How will the government respond to a call of aid due to an attack on the private sector? Does the Cyber Command have the authority to respond to it?

Government agencies have to catch up with the threats that Cyber Space presents, and they have to come up with a proper response model adaptable to the civilian and private sector. Meanwhile the other countries or organizations, like the U.N., could also have the initiative to help limit and punish cyber attacks. Cyber space and cyber attacks are real.

Women and Science

About a year ago I took a Sociology class at Brigham Young University. The main topic in that class was inequality and for a week we discussed gender inequality. Someone brought up the point that there are majors at school where the majority of the students are females and there are other majors where there are almost no females. The professor gave a few ideas, while the discussion leaned towards The Family: A Proclamation to the World. He asked the ladies in the class to give their opinion. Most of them, if not all, were Mormons. Most of them agreed that the reason they chose to study Nursing, Family Science or similar majors was because those majors would help them to better prepare to be mothers. Another reason is that they would be able to work while their children would be at school. They gave other reasons, but their answers focused on the fact that their priority was motherhood. This might be a good reason why many women don't go into Mathematics and Science majors. While this may be a credible reason for LDS girls, it may not necessarily apply non-LDS girls, so what of them? It might be true that our society discourages women to go into science and Math. It might even be true that even if women pursue science or math, they can be pushed into traditional female roles. Is this a bad thing? It can be if it is the solely reason why women don't go into these majors; if they conform to the sexist views of society that scientists and computer nerds are only males.

Technology and the Church

 Last week I talked with some people that work at the Church's Information and Communication Systems (ICS) Department. One of them mentioned that he used to think that the Church was full of older, gray-haired people that still programmed in assembly code or other really primitive languages. He then explained that the church is actually using cutting edge technology. He said that the Church doesn't just stay up to date with technology, but that it is always evaluating and implementing the newest technologies to see if they can be used. It is exciting to know that the Church does everything to stay up to date and to facilitate the use of Church systems to make church work easier for members and leaders. We, as members, need to be familiar with these technologies and how they work. There are many websites and systems available to us. I will just give one example. The Employment Resource Services department has a website that is little known (ldsjobs.com). Through this site, the Church uses available resources to help people that have lost a job, gain additional skills to improve their employment situation or hire-ability, which helps return many people to the workforce and helps ward leaders know how to help the less-fortunate members in their wards. The work of the Lord keeps moving forward at a faster pace with the implementation of these technologies and because of it, the work is now easier for Church leaders, members and even missionaries. It is up to us now to learn and utilize these resources to further spread the Gospel and share our testimonies around the world.

Cyber Attacks and National Security

Last week a cyber attack was reported on a nuclear-power plant in Iran. The cyber attack on Bushehr is dangerous because the worm is capable of reprogramming the systems controlling the power plant. Cyber attacks among states have been increasing in the last years.  It seems as if these cyber attacks have become the new form of permanent low-level warfare. One thing to worry about, that is different than other kind of attacks, is that these attacks can do a lot of damage and are very difficult to reverse, or sometimes to even detect. It is not enough to merely block Internet traffic, many systems are thought to be so important that they are never turned off to even install security patches. Most people are unaware of such security treats in the cyber world, when in reality, they are as dangerous as any other threat. It was good to see that the news of the power plant in Iran made it into the headlines of some of the major national newspapers. It will help people become more aware of the technological challenges the government faces and it will help government stay up to the task to defend the country.

Apple's ever changing policies

When Apple’s AppStore was created there were a lot of people that were disappointed because of the idea of not being able to write and install applications independently from Apple.  Some people created sites and repositories that worked with Cydia and other applications letting the users with jailbroken phones install whatever they wanted, even cracked applications.  Of course this was a double-sided weapon for developers.  In one side, they could develop and distribute applications without Apple’s approval.  This was more attractive after jailbreaking your iPhone became legal. On the other side, people could crack any application and distribute it for free (piracy!). Some people created these sites and applications with the idea of letting users try out the application before buying it, but of course many people just kept using the apps without ever paying for it.

 Just this week Apple relaxed the restrictions on the development tools used to create apps, reverting some of their restrictions set at the beginning of the year.  Now many developers that were distributing applications on Cydia and other repositories are going to submit their apps to Apple again and many will be approved.  While this might be a good thing, I believe that Apple should let us add other repositories on the AppStore and let us, the end-users, use our phones as we will.  Apple will not lose anything: a lot of people will stop jailbreaking their phones and developers will keep submitting their apps to Apple as they will want their apps in the main repository (the AppStore). Piracy might not end there, but it might decrease if Apple were to allow trials on their store.