Fear cyberterrorism? Try e-banking
The world is having a panic party over the cyberattack on Yahoo! Inc., E*Trade Group Inc., eBay Inc. and other websites.
Mark these events in your calendar as the official beginning of the new world-order/paradigm/economy that stockbrokers keep touting to lure little old ladies into Internet stocks.
What I don’t get is why everyone is so stunned by the effectiveness of this recent cyberterrorism — a word the media abuses as it portrays the perpetrators as juvenile delinquents resembling Matthew Broderick in “War Games.” Doesn’t anyone remember “Sleeper,” the Woody Allen parody of the future where nothing worked (except, of course, for the orgasmatron)?
Besides, it’s not hard to find a technological snafu that can strike fear into your heart. Just go to the bank. A few years ago I set up an account at Citibank so I could pay bills via my automated teller machine. This was before my computer had a modem. One day I got a letter from the bank to confirm the payees I had listed in the account. The problem was that the letter listed someone else’s payees, and included the account number of one of the poor soul’s credit cards.
I called the bank and was told “We have a database problem.”
This from a representative of the soundest financial system in the world. It doesn’t take even a high school geek to outwit the world’s great computer systems. My dad does it all the time. He walks into his bank’s lobby and hands over a withdrawal slip to a human being and gets his money in a matter of seconds. And then he walks out and laughs at the citizens of the new world-order/paradigm/economy who are waiting in line in front of one ATM because the other 10 are broken.
No panic in cyberspace
Finally, wasn’t it basically a computer that in 1998 failed to calculate the human panic the collapse of the Russian ruble would bring, causing Long-Term Capital Management LP and its Nobel economists to put their hands out to the Federal Reserve like spoiled children so they didn’t get blamed for a world economic crisis?
OK, I know I sound like a Luddite or the chairman of Friends of Ted Kaczynski for President. I don’t mean to. I just suffer from cyberfatigue.
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