[DIYbio] Fwd: PBS: Downloadable Gun Parts, Personalized Bioterror: the Downside of Innovation

Date: Thu, May 3, 2012 at 7:40 PM
Subject: [tt] PBS: Downloadable Gun Parts, Personalized Bioterror: the Downside of Innovation
To: Transhuman Tech <tt@postbiota.org>


Downloadable Gun Parts, Personalized Bioterror: the Downside of Innovation
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june12/makingsense_04-26.html
[Thanks to Sarah for this.]

REPORT    AIR DATE: April 26, 2012

SUMMARY

Through innovation and technology, California think tank Singularity
University aims to push the frontiers of progress. But what happens when
high-tech advances end up in the wrong hands? Economics correspondent Paul
Solman raises some disturbing questions as part of his ongoing reporting
series, Making Sen$e of financial news.


JEFFREY BROWN: And now part two in our series on using technology to
make the world a better place.

NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman recently attended a
conference there and reported on some of the mind-bending research
being explored.

Tonight, Paul looks at the downside of the high-tech revolution.
It's part of ongoing reporting Making Sense of financial news.

PAUL SOLMAN: At a recent conference filled with the wonders of new
technology, one presenter's vision of the future was downright
frightening.

MARC GOODMAN, Singularity University: There are two million unique
computer viruses that are generated every month.
"Today, we say 'there's an app for that.' Now imagine if these were
viruses each made for an individual cancer, and they were available
for free or 99 cents. That's where we're going."
- Andrew Hessel, Singularity University

PAUL SOLMAN: Marc Goodman is a former cop who ran the Los Angeles
Police Department's Internet Crimes Unit.

MARC GOODMAN: Never before in the history of humankind has it been
possible for one person to rob 100 million people.

PAUL SOLMAN: Nor has it been possible, says Goodman, for anyone to
hack into personal medical devices, like pacemakers or insulin pumps
connected to the Internet.

MARC GOODMAN: The thing that scares me the most after cyber-crime is
bio-crime. We're putting all these little computers in our bodies.
And what that means is, our bodies themselves are going to become
vulnerable to cyber-attack.

PAUL SOLMAN: A high-level consultant to the U.S. government and
Interpol, Goodman is the faculty skeptic at Singularity University,
the futuristic California think tank, who rains on his colleagues'
utopian parade of innovation. To him, high-octane high tech is a
double-edged sword.

MARC GOODMAN: I think all of this technology will develop in really
cool and interesting ways. But I can tell you, at the same time,
there are bad actors from both the crime and the terrorism
perspective that are using these technologies for ill.

PAUL SOLMAN: Now, there's already plenty of bad stuff, says Goodman,
like all those computer viruses. But today's hackers are becoming
increasingly daring.

MARC GOODMAN: The bad guys live inside your machine. They watch
everything you do. Any time you type in your bank account or credit
card information on to the machine, they're capturing it. They're
capturing your passwords.

PAUL SOLMAN: Moreover, computers are becoming increasingly embedded
in the hardware around us. The typical new car, says Goodman, has
250 computer chips. And in this Google prototype now legally riding
the roads of Nevada, even the driving is fully computerized.

MARC GOODMAN: So, you could put in bad GPS directions and have a car
drive off a bridge. Every day, we're plugging more and more of our
lives into the Internet, including bridges, tunnels, financial
systems, hospitals, police emergency dispatch 911 systems, military
systems, robotics systems. And there's a history of all of these
being hacked.

PAUL SOLMAN: The Stuxnet computer worm that disabled Iran's nuclear
program made headlines, but smaller targets are also vulnerable.

MARC GOODMAN: Diabetic pumps, cochlear implants, brain computer
interface. There are 60,000 pacemakers in the United States that
connect to the Internet, which means that the Internet connects to
your pacemaker. It's great when you're suffering from an arrhythmia
and your doctor can remotely shock you, but what happens if the kid
next door does that because it's fun and does it for the lulz.

PAUL SOLMAN: You mean LOL, laughing out loud?

MARC GOODMAN: Yeah. It sounds crazy, but we have had people hack
into, for example, the Epilepsy Foundation and change the computer
code on the screen, so it would blink really rapidly, so that they
would generate seizures on the part of epileptics, that type of
stuff.

PAUL SOLMAN: Somebody actually did that?

MARC GOODMAN: Somebody actually did that for what they call the
lulz, for the fun of it, for the laughs to see if they could do it.

PAUL SOLMAN: For almost every upside, a downside. Consider 3-D
printing, a new way of manufacturing, layer by layer, everything
from art to artificial organs. This is a 3-D printed model for a
prosthetic leg.

MARC GOODMAN: This is the lower receiver of an AR-15 semiautomatic
rifle. It's the only part of the gun that is controlled by ATF. All
the other parts, you can just buy. This is available for free
download on something called Thingiverse.

PAUL SOLMAN: And there's simply no way for the federal authorities
to trace it.

Again, the sword of technology cuts both ways. Marc Goodman's
colleagues at the conference, like Andrew Hessel, extolled biology's
coming ability to concoct cures for everything from the common cold
to cancer, cures downloadable as easily as the latest iPhone version
of "Angry Birds."

ANDREW HESSEL, Singularity University: Today, we say there's an app
for that. Now imagine if these were viruses each made for an
individual cancer, and they were available for free or 99 cents.
That's where we're going.

PAUL SOLMAN: The first step in that process may well be Synthia, the
first synthetic life-form created two years ago by Craig Venter.

CRAIG VENTER, CEO, Synthetic Genomics: This is a picture of the very
first synthetic cell, based entirely on synthetic DNA.

PAUL SOLMAN: For Venter, cracker of the human genome code,
exponential growth in computing is speeding up progress
exponentially.

CRAIG VENTER: Biology has always been controlled in science by who
had the DNA, who had the cells, who had the species. Now it's all
digital. Most labs, instead of getting the DNA from another lab,
download it digitally, and synthetically make the genes.

PAUL SOLMAN: And prices have plunged.

By the way, what is that moving there?

MAN: Oh, these are some harmless bacteria that somebody's growing
for a project.

PAUL SOLMAN: Lab equipment is cheaper, too. This CO2 incubator for
maintaining tissue cultures costs $15,000 brand-new.

Oh, little petri dishes.

MAN: Little petri dishes, yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: But bought used on eBay?

MAN: It was definitely well under $1,000.

PAUL SOLMAN: Put simply, basic genetic engineering is now within
reach of do-it-yourself amateurs.

ELLEN JORGENSEN, co-Founder, Genspace: The experiments that were
Nobel Prize-winning in the 1970s are now done in high schools.

PAUL SOLMAN: Ph.D. biologists Ellen Jorgensen and Oliver Medvedik
helped found Genspace, a DIY lab in downtown Brooklyn which draws
would-be genetic engineers from all walks of life, like lawyer Dan
Orr, who says he found his previous line of work unfulfilling.

MAN: I was working mainly helping large banks fix their foreclosure
programs.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, unfulfilling doesn't quite do justice to your
discomfort.

MAN: Probably not. I felt it would be better to work in something
that was better both for myself and for society.

PAUL SOLMAN: So Orr is now genetically altering bacteria to detect
mold. They will glow when they sense it. It makes his teacher, Ellen
Jorgensen, proud.

ELLEN JORGENSEN: You just can't really predict what where the
imagination of somebody creative will lead them, in terms of solving
a problem that's societal or scientific or environmental.

PAUL SOLMAN: Or maybe creating problems, says Marc Goodman, if the
bio-hacker is so inclined.

MARC GOODMAN: As it becomes democratized, I can go ahead and capture
your DNA and come up with a particular attack that's targeted
against you specifically.

PAUL SOLMAN: And all you have to do is shake my hand or something to
get some DNA.

MARC GOODMAN: And I would have to do is shake your hand, get the
coke can that you throw away, get the pen that you signed something
with.

PAUL SOLMAN: And then cook up the Paul Solman virus--one and done.

Indeed, Craig Venter told the conference he himself is worried about
off-the-shelf biotech.

CRAIG VENTER: While I think it's very cool at one hand we have all
this bio-hacking going on, I think it could also be the most
dangerous trend. You don't want your kids to be the first one on the
block to make Ebola virus.

PAUL SOLMAN: So how does Craig Venter respond to the charge that in
making life-forms from scratch, it is he who's created a monster?

CRAIG VENTER: What we've stressed from the beginning is having
biological control on these systems is an essential part of things.
We don't want new organisms to be added to the environment's
repertoire. We want it to be added to our industrial repertoire.

PAUL SOLMAN: But aren't you afraid some of this life could creep out
of the lab?

CRAIG VENTER: I'm not afraid, no. If things are done properly, that
won't happen.

PAUL SOLMAN: But a lot of things are done improperly.

CRAIG VENTER: Well, they're not actually. There's not been one
single accident from molecular biology in almost four decades.

PAUL SOLMAN: But Venter is not naive.

CRAIG VENTER: Every time there's a new technology, there's always
abusers. There's no question about it. And every new technology has
been a battle between making sure there's adequate countermeasures
for those that want to do harm to others.

PAUL SOLMAN: Genspace's Ellen Jorgensen agrees.

ELLEN JORGENSEN: I think what you have to place your faith in to a
certain degree is the people whose business it is to ensure that
we're safe.

So the bio-security experts, the people who work for Homeland
Security, the people that work for the FBI, I've worked with a lot
of these people and I have a great deal of respect for them. And I
think that that's probably our best defense against this sort of
stuff, because any technology is going to have dual use. You can
think of dual use for practically any technology that's ever been
invented.

PAUL SOLMAN: Dual use meaning bad and good?

ELLEN JORGENSEN: Yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, if it's a cat and mouse game, and the cat is the
law enforcement and the mice are the bad guys, who's going to win?

MARC GOODMAN: Who will win eventually is unclear. I can tell you the
mice are really far ahead right now. They're significantly ahead.
Criminal perpetrators are significantly outmaneuvering and
out-thinking law enforcement.

ELLEN JORGENSEN: Oh, I think that's nonsense. You're telling me that
there's a bad guy out there that has more resources than Craig
Venter? I highly doubt that.

PAUL SOLMAN: On the other hand, if some group is dead-set on doing
harm, they may not need more resources than Craig Venter, as
technology continues to progress at its breakneck, exponential pace.
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