If you read this and then stop to think about employees in your
company that might have a superior attitude or a gripe, then this
site should scare the hell out of records managers,
> Immune to Critics, Secret-Spilling Wikileaks Plans to Save ...
> Wired News - USA
> More controversially, the site has begun posting confidential
> documents
> from the secretive and litigious Church of Scientology, and from
> the Church
> of Jesus ...
> <http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2008/07/wikileaks>
As I peruse the various RAIN postings about Information Management I
notice disturbing trends.
In the post above, this seems to be merely an anarchists site where
anything disturbing or harmful
to another person or entity can and will be published. For example
they posted a tax bill of Wesley Snipes with his social security
number displayed. No reason to do it, it was just an open site so
they did it with no real ramifications.
What value is that to the world but it creates an enormous expense
for Mr. Snipes. What if tomorrow someone at your bank feels the need
to publish all of the clients account numbers and social security
numbers. Anyone with a disgruntled approach can harm thousands of
employees or company clients. The Wikileak site speaks of the need
to keep all employees happy to avoid this. This is unbelievable.
Every organization is now hostage to their lowest quality of employee.
Really anyone with a desire for a raise can hold companies hostage.
This is really just a black mail site. The potential for harm now
outweighs the good and it really seems to appeal to the lunatic
fringe. Yet the Internet rewards the lunatic fringe with what they
desire: An audience.
My even being able to post here has real negative ramifications,
besides the boredom of deleting my posts or reading it which is
probably even worse.
The Internet has shown the capability to spread nuclear weapon design
ideas, how to build a bomb and so on and this concept seems to be the
next manifestation.
Will the formula for Coca Cola, the source code for Apple products
and other proprietary information appear next.
> WTF! US Court Declares You Have No Privacy On YouTube
> Search Engine Land - Redding,CT,USA
> I've got an email out to Google asking when they'll comply or more
> importantly, if they'll find a way to refuse. The company stood up
> to the
> US Department ...
> <http://searchengineland.com/080703-081813.php>
>
Now take on the next post. Thank goodness I don't know much about
UTUBE or I might have an incriminating record. But who has such a
right to view all of the files on your Internet usage. Here we worry
about the government looking into our secrets and now we find that
some guy in Africa can post anything he wants and what he and his ilk
post doesn't have to be true because he relies on others to check his
work.
It is as if the Internet is its own religion and has no rules about
right or wrong. The same guys who write hacking codes and viruses
have now been given the ability to spread their damage over a wider
spectrum.
Maybe I am finally in the right business for the times. It seems that
everything needs to be vaulted now and no one is to be trusted. Any
secret exposed is a secret outed on the Internet.
It was considered morally wrong to out a Gay person who wanted their
inner most secrets to remain secret until they made the decision.
But certain gay magazines decided their cause was helped by forcing
celebrities to be outed. The Internet takes this one step further.
The Internet seems to view itself as having the right to destroy
anyone or anything if they simply have access to the information.
There is no God of the Internet that enforces right and wrong. And
for some reason the Courts are useless.
Google has become wealthier than the U.S Government so now we live in
a world that is controlled by them and each month they change the
rules. One example is Pay per Click. One year ago a company could
pay 5¢ or 10¢ to buy a click (search term) on the Internet. The
ability to have people visit your site for a nickel was attractive.
Well a year later 100,000 corporations bid up the cost of the terms
to $6.00 to $11.00 per click. Lawyers are the craziest here. They
will pay $25.00 and up on a term.
The end result is that this forum is useless now, as the cost of
people finding a business is well beyond the value gained, from being
visited. The majority of searches are just garbage anyway.
> YouTube: Trade secrets are safe but your information isn't
> guardian.co.uk - UK
> A judge has ordered YouTube to hand over information about every video
> watched including logins and user IP addresses to Viacom, which is
> suing
> the video ...
> <
> http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/07/03/
> youtube_trade_secrets_are=
> _safe_but_your_information_isnt.html
The end result of all this will be to make repressive regimes even
stronger as they are not affected the same way that an open society
is. Public outrage does not affect them. If you are outraged in
China you get locked up. Since everyone in the world seems to view
the United States as evil, much of the disclosure is headed our way
because we do react. This also means that Corporations that are
always viewed as evil will also be a high value target.
Our own Senators and Congressmen view Exxon as evil for making a
profit. Senator Maxine Waters is already talking about nationalizing
them. ( She is an idiot, but still!) Yet Exxon is less than 2% of
the world's oil supply they are being portrayed as the number one
problem. So I expect rogue sites to target them as some huge dragon
to be slain.
[Note: My wife's Mother worked for them for years and owns stock and
gave our three kids stock. Her whole retirement plan was placed into
this. Now at 85 years old, some people want to destroy the company,
reduce its stock value or nationalize it. Who will really be hurt
here? All U.S. companies are owned by its citizens. In the end, the
big investors see the writing on the wall and invest elsewhere
leaving the small stockholders to go down just as happened at ENRON.]
So it seems that the Internet, that our government created, may now
be the means by which it is brought down. The role of the Internet
seems to evolve to take anything large as evil and view everything
new as good. Change is the new religion. Anything that is change is
therefore good. Anything that is status quo is evil. Note how Obama
and Hillary fought over who was the most for CHANGE. Now McCain is
for change. The Internet loves new and different. Anything secret
must now be made public domain. But that is not good for a company.
Client lists earned by years of research, advertising dollars and
sales efforts are available if someone in your company decides he or
she is unhappy with marketing today. New products being moved towards
patents will be disclosed. New miracle drugs will be available to
the Chines before our Pharmaceuticals can even earn their research
money back. [Note: Expect pharmaceutical research to dwindle and new
miracle drugs to suffer. If all that is left is copier who steal
technology, why would anybody do original research?]
That means that the role of the records manager will evolve into a
Chief Information Security Officer, as the trade secrets, or
anything that helps a plaintiff's legal action against your company
is fair game for an employee to sell.
Putting information back in the bottle is going to be hard to do but
those corporations that fail to do it risk collapse. Every email or
instant message is held by the courts as a record that is
discoverable. A few employees sending spurious messages can create a
record trail that while totally fiction can win the day for a
plaintiff. How long before a plaintiff realizes that paying a few
employees to place those emails into the system makes the defendant
guilty and a settlement will follow.
How does records management plan to fit in here? How can records
managers make things safe when employees can post discrediting
YouTube videos or send trade secrets to a wikisite that will post
them without regard. Youtube was typically funny but it is not
anymore. Wiki's were started to share information that was in the
public domain but needed classification; but is evolving into
something evil. The Internet is being taken over Anarchists and our
open society is not ready for a system that will take every bit of
information out of context to prove we are evil, that all
corporations are evil.
Dang those people at Coke, just give the formula to the Chinese or
any country with cheap or slave labor so we can get a Coke for half
the price. But what about the hundreds of thousands of citizens who
work at Coke? Who cares? If a million people can get a Coke for 25¢
instead of 50¢ then who cares about the billions of dollars in
salaries lost to the poor employees who previously worked there.
Records management might mean that you first need to determine which
information is private and must be secured in a fashion that limits
access to only the few. But how do you do this when hackers can come
for it, that lost tapes expose huge volumes of records and employee
loyalty is a lost term of art. Valuable information must now be
taken off line.
The problem with disk to disk to disk is that information is always
available for theft. Tapes could be locked away. Remember
encryption only works if none of your employees give away the key!
Can we trust that today? I think not!
The disclaimer I use below and many of you use are simply no longer
effective in this day and age.
We live in a whole new world and Peter's RAIN posting make me worry.
This should be a session at ARMA in Las Vegas. How do we protect our
corporations? What strategies really will work? It will take some
smart people to look at this problem and find a solution. But as
soon as they do some hacker will spend months to defeat it simply
because it is rude and outrageous to do it.
Look at me! I am so smart! I exposed Cokes formula. I forced Merck
and Phizer to drop research on new drugs. I was able to have
________ (fill in your employer's name) to lay off 10,000 workers by
exposing their new designs for a _________________(fill in your
latest product development here) to foreign powers who have slave labor.
Am I off topic? Am I wrong to worry?
Go back to sleep. IT has all the information blinking away. Sleep
now............
Or we can all wake up and figure out how we fix this in our field.
(Doesn't my Disclaimer below look silly after reading the above?)
Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
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(610) 756-4440 Fax (610) 756-4134
WWW.FIRELOCK.COM
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