Today we had one of our clients come in and give a talk about some promising new compounds that we have worked on for them. For confidential reasons I can't say who it is, what the drugs are or what the disease is, but it is a major disease that affects hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Up until now all of the available treatments have been ineffectual because they have been targeting the wrong thing. Previous treatments sought to contain the disease; this new approach promises to eradicate it once and for all.
So I got to thinking: what if someone hacked into my company the way McKinnon hacked into NASA? Say someone who was convinced that the pharmaceutical companies are hiding secrets, that they are just sitting on a cure for cancer or other diseases. And yes, I hear that a lot. That Big Pharma is more concerned about profits than cures and they actually have a cure for cancer but they just don't want to release it. It is amazing how many otherwise reasonable people strongly believe this. I can see someone actually being obsessive about this in the way McKinnon is about UFO's.
So they hack into my company, find the formula for this compound and then proceed to broadcast it all over the Web. What would happen? The first thing is, that chances are the company that came up with the compound would go out of business. Contrary to popular belief, many of the most promising new drugs do not come out of "Big Pharma" but come out of small companies, maybe one or two people working from a garage or basement. I could give some examples but again that would break confidentiality. The point is this may be their only compound, their only shot, and it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions, to bring it to market--and that is if it is found to be safe and effective. It's a lot like playing the lottery.
So these people go out of business, they lose their shirt and also their investors lose their shirt. The next thing that would happen--probably at the same time or even before--is that MY company would also go down. In my field reputation is everything and the pharmaceutical world is a small one. Once it got out that we had a major breach of confidentiality, our remaining clients would quickly jump ship. So now you have several hundred people out of work. More houses foreclosed on.
Now--suppose that the person who did this was someone like McKinnon, autistic enough that he/she can't really function in society but not autistic enough to have the smarts to hack into a secure system and get through all the barriers. Now imagine being one of these employees who has lost their job and home and being told that you ought to have compassion for this person, that this person ought not to be prosecuted because he/she could not possibly survive in a prison environment, that he/she may even be suicidal. That this person doesn't have the capacity to understand the harm they have done. Imagine being told that your company should have been more proactive because people are going to break into computer systems and they should have expected it. (Of course none of these critics realize, because they do not work in an industry that has been targeted by extremists who wish to put it out of business, the amount of security that is ALREADY in place and what is required to maintain it.) What if you were told that even though this person has an uncontrollable obsession with the subject of hidden cures this person ought to be released back into society with only a slap on the hand at best, with nothing in place to prevent them from doing this again?
How would you react? What would you say? Would you be happy to just watch from the sidelines as celebrities fawn over this person and how horrible it is that they should have to face any consequences for their deed? Would you say, oh, that's all right, they didn't know any better?
"But people say, 'Oh, it was only ignorance, I didn't mean any harm,' and they think that that makes everything all right."--Anna Sewell, "Black Beauty."
So I got to thinking: what if someone hacked into my company the way McKinnon hacked into NASA? Say someone who was convinced that the pharmaceutical companies are hiding secrets, that they are just sitting on a cure for cancer or other diseases. And yes, I hear that a lot. That Big Pharma is more concerned about profits than cures and they actually have a cure for cancer but they just don't want to release it. It is amazing how many otherwise reasonable people strongly believe this. I can see someone actually being obsessive about this in the way McKinnon is about UFO's.
So they hack into my company, find the formula for this compound and then proceed to broadcast it all over the Web. What would happen? The first thing is, that chances are the company that came up with the compound would go out of business. Contrary to popular belief, many of the most promising new drugs do not come out of "Big Pharma" but come out of small companies, maybe one or two people working from a garage or basement. I could give some examples but again that would break confidentiality. The point is this may be their only compound, their only shot, and it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions, to bring it to market--and that is if it is found to be safe and effective. It's a lot like playing the lottery.
So these people go out of business, they lose their shirt and also their investors lose their shirt. The next thing that would happen--probably at the same time or even before--is that MY company would also go down. In my field reputation is everything and the pharmaceutical world is a small one. Once it got out that we had a major breach of confidentiality, our remaining clients would quickly jump ship. So now you have several hundred people out of work. More houses foreclosed on.
Now--suppose that the person who did this was someone like McKinnon, autistic enough that he/she can't really function in society but not autistic enough to have the smarts to hack into a secure system and get through all the barriers. Now imagine being one of these employees who has lost their job and home and being told that you ought to have compassion for this person, that this person ought not to be prosecuted because he/she could not possibly survive in a prison environment, that he/she may even be suicidal. That this person doesn't have the capacity to understand the harm they have done. Imagine being told that your company should have been more proactive because people are going to break into computer systems and they should have expected it. (Of course none of these critics realize, because they do not work in an industry that has been targeted by extremists who wish to put it out of business, the amount of security that is ALREADY in place and what is required to maintain it.) What if you were told that even though this person has an uncontrollable obsession with the subject of hidden cures this person ought to be released back into society with only a slap on the hand at best, with nothing in place to prevent them from doing this again?
How would you react? What would you say? Would you be happy to just watch from the sidelines as celebrities fawn over this person and how horrible it is that they should have to face any consequences for their deed? Would you say, oh, that's all right, they didn't know any better?
"But people say, 'Oh, it was only ignorance, I didn't mean any harm,' and they think that that makes everything all right."--Anna Sewell, "Black Beauty."
