Future Crimes summary

We take our smartphones everywhere: to the toilet, to the gym and even to bed. You could say that our smartphones know us pretty well. They have plenty of data on our habits and our relationships, but how well is that data protected? As it turns out, you aren’t the only one with access to your personal information.

In fact, your mobile phone acts a lot like a spy who knows exactly what you’re doing, where you’re doing it, who you’re doing it with, not to mention for how long and how often.

So how is it that Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn can all offer their services for free?  Most people assume it’s because of the money they make from advertisements. But that’s only part of it. In actuality, you aren’t really their customer at all. Rather, you’re their product and primary source of income.

Today, everything is connected via iCloud or Google products. But that convenience comes at a cost: our privacy.

Hacking has come a long way since 1971, when Apple founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs hacked into phone networks and sold hacking devices called  “blue boxes” to their fellow students at UC Berkeley.

Nowadays, hackers understand that whoever possesses information has the upper hand in “the game.”

We know the stereotype of a hacker: a 16-year-old computer whiz in a dimly lit room, hacking victims for the thrill of it. But according to a study by the Rand Corporation, 80 percent of hackers actually work for a company or government, and are closer to the age of 30. Indeed, cybercrime is much more organized, meaning we have to be extremely careful about what we post online.

When you post about your upcoming vacation or weekend beach getaway on Facebook and Twitter, for example, you’re actually warmly inviting organized burglars to come and rob your home in your absence.

Imagine a world where your alarm clock could connect with traffic cameras to adjust your alarm based on congestion estimates. Or where you didn’t need to ask your children whether they’d brushed their teeth because their toothbrushes would send a message to your phone once they had done it.

While this may sound like a futuristic Hollywood movie, the technology is already here. In fact, Cisco has predicted that there will be 50 billion devices connected to the internet by 2020, compared to the 13 billion in 2013. The trend has been to connect any and all devices in the hope that it will make our lives easier.

While the internet has helped us to “modernize” our infrastructure, it has also put us at greater risk. Our railways, gas pipelines, 911-dispatch systems, air traffic controls, stock markets, drinking water, streetlights, hospitals, sanitation systems and electrical grids all depend on the internet to function properly. We have to ask ourselves: Is that a good idea?

Hacking any of these critical infrastructural systems could have catastrophic consequences. Targeting a city’s electricity grid, for example, would leave that city in complete chaos. There would be no lights, no elevators, no ATMs. Garage doors wouldn’t open, traffic lights wouldn't work, air traffic control would be unable to contact the airplanes in the sky. There would be no cellphones and no internet.

There’s no denying that newly emerging technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, genetics, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and 3D printers will have an unimaginable impact on our lives. Whether these technologies will have a positive or negative effect on society depends much on who controls them.

Ultimately, we decide what the consequences of this technology will be. Physicist Stephen Hawking and entrepreneur Elon Musk, for instance, have both argued that the rapid development of technology in areas such as artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and synthetic biology will forever alter humanity’s path. There will simply be no turning back.