On ICT law, politics and other digital stuff
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After the Fay’s-related online ad goof, Repubblica.it did it again with the picture of a dead immigrant child published together with a Benetton ad.Of course this is not intentional, but nevertheless it reinforces the general perception that nobody actually cares about the merit of the news. |
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A widespread mantra in the digital-related world sounds like “You ain’t no cool if you don’t use the latest digital gimmick”. So it is frequent to hear public outcries because the public administration X doesn’t run a proper website or the telco Y still asks for fax to change your billing plan.
But technology is about effectiveness, and “coolness” more often is just a costly inertia generator. So, mimicking the old saying “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”, we might say that “if something works, don’t change it”.
Even if that means don’t buying an Ipad or an Apple Watch.
According to Webcookies.org, Google.it only collects 2 persistent cookies, while Repubblica.it, the most read online newspaper, collects 31 third parties cookies, 83 persistent cookies and 8 session cookies.
After the Hacking Team scandal, everybody and his cousin is calling for a “death sentence” against Adobe Flash, accused of being the “vessel” that allowed Hacking Team’s malware to land on users’ PC and smartphones.
A logical consequence of this ? vulnerability and its exploiting by several malwares, including those made by Hacking Team, would be a class-action against Adobe that, as a matter of fact, released a “bugged-by-design” application.
But this is not going to happens against Adobe, as against the other (big or small) fishes of the software pond. We are much too “programmed” to accept a software fault as an act of God instead of either a mistake or a deliberate marketing choice.
Will things change after the Hacking Team scandal? I don’t think so, thus get ready for the next viral infection, information theft or denial of service: is just business as usual.
In 1999 Mark Minasi wrote The Software Conspiracy: Why Companies Put Out Faulty Software, How They Can Hurt You and What You Can Do a book about.
In 2004 Alan Cooper wrote (and I translated the Italian version for Apogeo) The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity.
There have been, and still are, countless warning about the careless attitude toward security of the software houses’ marketing strategies (take a beta, call it final and release it.)
So, why the “concerned” journalists and activists only blame Hacking Team and Hacking Team-like companies, instead of involving in their outcry those who sold the world a bunch of crappy and vulnerable software?Secure programming and security by design are not “options”: by refusing to incorporate security into the roots of a software project would be like designing a car without worrying about the functionality of the brakes.And now we are facing the consequences.