"A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE........!

The shockwaves that were the result of the phone hacking scandal at the "News of the World" newspaper in England have reverberated round the entire globe.

When people first heard about this manner of infiltration into the private lives of people it did little more than raise a few eyebrows.  When - wasn't earlier this year or late last year? - it was learned that members of the Royal Family in England had their phones hacked together with other celebrities, people began to sit up and take notice.  Those hackings certainly were not good, but last month when it was revealed that the phone of a young girl who was eventually found dead had not only been hacked, but that her text messages had been deleted in order to keep the phone active so her family would think she was still alive - things looked bad and from bad they went to worse.

Phones of families whose sons and daughters had been killed while on active duty with the army in Afghanistan had also been hacked.  Now it has been revealed that it is likely the phones of families whose relatives died in the 2001 September 11th attacks in America may also have been targets.    One cannot help but ask is there no end to the lengths people will go to try to make money?  Have all moral principals been thrown out the window in the name of selling papers or whatever other media is involved?  It seems that is the case in this day and age.

However, having said all the of above, there are further questions one has to ask in light of all these revelations.

My grandmother - who was a much respected lady in all areas - often used to say "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing".  It was a favourite quote of hers and I have no idea from where it comes or even if it is quoted correctly.  Nevertheless it is very true.  Grandmother was not fond of what she would call "these new fangled inventions" She said people never looked into how dangerous they could or might be.  She refused to fly not because she was  scared, but because she said it was unnatural.  If God had intended her to fly he would have given her wings and she would be given those soon enough.  It wasn't until she was aged ninety that she agreed to get on a plane and fly from Dublin to London - and only then did she reverse her stance on the matter, because she said, at age ninety she could be dead by the time she got to London by boat and train. She drove a big heavy 1947 Rolls Royce Phantom, with a stick shift gearbox (5 forward gears) and two enormous head lights that stood up like army searchlights.    As the years went by grandmother refuted suggestions that she get rid of that big heavy car and get a modern car with automatic transmission which would be easier to drive.  She said the car did not have a brain, so how could it always know when to change gear.  She would prefer to be in charge of the matter herself.  She continued to drive that big Rolls - and she was a good driver - until she was ninety-eight and only stopped then because she died peacefully in her sleep.  Time to get her own wings!!

If grandmother was alive today I believe she would still be quoting "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." even more than she did before.  The cell phone is an amazing invention and exactly how it works I don't bother to find out - I just use it.  It can be a serious lifeline for many people.  However, with all these happenings at The News of the World and other places grandmother's quotation comes very much to mind.  Did people who invented it ever think further than the actual production and working of the phones?  Did they ever try to deepen their knowledge and see how it could be misused by those who misuse things for their own profit and benefit?  There are so many questions.

One can go further and look at the nuclear disasters in Japan, Chernobyl, India and other places which I have mentioned in previous posts and wonder did - at the time those facilities were constructed - the powers that be really look into all the possibilities of what would happen if anything could or did go wrong. They just confined their knowledge to the point where it would make money for them without thought of future happenings. 

With news of Committees of Enquiries being set up by the British Government, the FBI and whomever else to look into the phone hacking fiasco, I thought sense was at last prevailing, and people who knew would see that things like this should not and could not happen again.  In some quarters, that doesn't seem to be the case.

The United States is a country that has its security at the forefront of most of its actions.  Yet I was more than surprised to read this week that a new system of communication between the army/service personnel "in the field" and their home base and the Pentagon is now going into use whereby each can communicate with the other in a minimum amount of time by using some touch screen technology.   With my low level of intelligence where these matters are concerned and with the things that are going on today, I am of the simple opinion that there would be very little security in that.  That people would have no problem within a short time of hacking into such a programme seems a given.  The  fact that security is then blown to the wind seems not to have concerned the powers that be who sanction and instal such a system.

Grandmother's quotation is right.  Complete knowledge about these new communication methods, about things like nuclear technology, indeed about every new item, has to be studied and followed through to the absolute end and not just stopped along the way because some person or group of people feel they can make a fast million dollars with the product.