Criminals and Government Authorities Using Advanced Technology Advances in technology are taking place every day. Sometimes they are quite helpful but other times they are quite hurtful. Take a new invention for example which allows people to open and start any car as long as it operates on a key fob. All the new cars use key fobs which means every new car is susceptible to being stolen if this device is used. The device is not cheap, it costs $25,000 but that can be made up on one theft. The manufacturers are not in this country and say there is nothing illegal about what they are doing. I have to think there is not much use for an invention like this except stealing. Nobody is going to spend $25,000 if they get locked out of their car because it is far too much and a dealer can get you back in easily. This invention may not sell well even among the criminal set, because it is being said if you have the right equipment which course about $20 you can steal the signal from the key fob and then reuse it to steal the car. In this case the technology in our cars is not only allowing them to be stolen easier, but also allows someone with the right computer equipment to make the cars do anything they want, even when we are driving them. You have to admit this is a scary thought. Another type of technology which is used in the criminal world are programs which are written to help criminals commit computer crimes. These programs are for sale on the infamous dark web. Some of them are ransomware programs. These are programs which locked the contents of a computer so the user cannot get to it. The criminal then demands money to unlock the computer. A few people have the computers backed up and this doesn’t worry them because they can reinstall their software, but as hard as it is to believe this has had quite an impact on government and big business sites and these places have actually paid to avoid losing their data. You would think these types of sites would be completely backed up. When this type of crime first started the demands for money were astronomical. It turns out the rates were lowered because homeowners who had data on their computer that was important to them, didn’t have that type of cash so it was useless for the criminals to demand it. Now these people usually ask for a few hundred dollars and they restore the computer, because if they didn’t and word got out no one would pay. This doesn’t mean however that they didn’t copy the important files for themselves. Other types of criminal software being sold on the dark web allow hackers to bring down sites or to sneak onto sites and copy information. There is one thing about technology that we have to realize, it is a double-edged sword. In this case while it may help criminals at times, it also helps law enforcement. One only has to compare how law enforcement operated before DNA testing was available until now. More criminals are being caught because we as humans will leave a DNA trail wherever we go. It is extremely hard to mask the trail. DNA testing is so effective it can eliminate only two or three people in the whole world and the chances of those three people being in the exact same place are pretty remote. It doesn’t take much DNA to be able to test it. On the other hand, if old case DNA is still available it can also be used to prove the innocence of someone who was already convicted. This is only one of the uses of DNA because it can be used in other fields. It has become obvious that it is now possible to know people’s locations. How many movies have we seen where criminals throw their cell phones out of a moving car because they know it can be tracked? Not only can cell phones be tracked but people can be too. Traps can be set up with tiny locator chips which are so small they are mistaken for dirt or dust and can be sprinkled on the floor and just the act of someone stepping on it will mean some of these chips will attach to the bottom of their shoes. It is only necessary for one chip to keep sticking. These tiny chips can even be put into food or drinks and when they are consumed the person who did the consuming has no idea he is carrying a signal within his body. These are especially handy in the spy trade when different agencies want to track people without being seen. Again, these chips have other uses. Lately there has been talk about putting them into vaccines. I certainly am not for this idea, I don’t think people should be tracked wherever they go, but you know what will happen, government officials will say it is important to know what people are doing and where they are, which is just more baloney and less freedom for people. Anybody who uses social media is leaving the trail not only for government agencies, but also for businesses, hackers and all sorts of undesirables. Social media is the new way into one’s business. In the old days nosy people would put a glass up to the wall of their neighbor’s apartment to listen to what was going on. Today it is much easier to do because some people put their whole life right out there for people to see and sometimes it isn’t pretty. Human nature is such that for some people it is more important for them to get their anger out on others than to be careful about what they say. This has come back to haunt a lot of people when they go for jobs because they never realized the companies they are trying to work for hires people to search the Internet to find out what these people might be like who want to work for them. This is all part of the new technology and before social media you really couldn’t look into one’s character like you can today unless you caught them writing threatening letters or such. It’s hard to say advances in technology are all bad or all good, because none of that is true. Someone might invent a device which could save lives, and yet that device or parts of it might also function as a deadly weapon under certain other circumstances. There has been a rumor going around the Internet for years which claims the government has a device which can cure cancer, but it’s keeping it secret because it also could be used as a deadly weapon.
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