After my encounter with an excessive plethora of unexpected internet viruses, and the comments from readers, my wife the professor made the observation, “The law hasn’t kept up with the internet.”  We both laughed, because it is so obvious as to be totally laughable.  It’s also laughable in a sadder way because it’s become apparent that the law will never be able to keep up with the internet… and quite possibly with other aspects of advanced technology.

For years now, a number of high-tech companies have been trying to protect themselves with not only patents, but with secret and secretive production processes, sometimes, I’ve been told, forgoing patent protection because they believe that a patent is a roadmap for a competitor.  At the same time, we have so-called genetics companies trying to patent genes obtained or derived from people and other organisms, which suggests some fairly frightening future scenarios.

Then there’s the growing reliance on high-speed information technology and information transfer.  As I’ve mentioned earlier, nanoseconds matter in the world of securities trading, and the fact that they do requires almost total reliance on high-speed computers and sophisticated algorithms.  The federal government is pushing for standardized electronic medical records, and pretty much every state government, every major corporation, and every federal department and agency is becoming increasingly reliant on such technologies.

And yet, this increasingly complex and interdependent web of information makes both our economy, as well as its underlying infrastructure, and thus not only our economy, but every industry and service, ever more vulnerable to technological disruptions, the causes of which could range from massive solar flares to inspired hackers, dedicated and sophisticated cyber terrorists, foreign computer operatives, and unexpected algorithm failures or applications.

We don’t have a legal structure that is designed to deal adequately with either massive electronic misfeasance or malfeasance, and even if we did, we don’t have the means to track down even a fraction of the perpetrators, let alone a way to legally and physically punish them.  And it’s highly unlikely that we ever will. This is not a problem unknown in human history.  In fact, in a sense, we deal with it every day, because no government anywhere can monitor all its people all the time and deal with all the possible violence they could commit. Historically, social codes have been far more important than laws… but social codes only work well with populations that share common values, which raises the overwhelming question, so to speak – what happens when neither laws nor social codes are able to restrict wide-scale information hacking, cyber-sabotage, intellectual property piracy, and out-and-out information systems terrorism? 

It’s clear that some organizations can muster the technology and skills to thwart or counter such; it’s also clear that most of us can’t, not on a continuing ongoing basis. Nor, at present, do most nations have adequate back-ups and alternative infrastructure and communications systems ready to take over in the event of information system failures on a national scale.  Yet the push for greater information technology integration continues, again fueled by promises of lower costs and greater efficiencies… or at least greater efficiencies until everything collapses.

Why isn’t anyone looking at this problem seriously?  Because, of course, it’s too expensive to resolve… and I fear that when people suddenly realize that something needs to be done, it will be far too late.