Isn’t that what data security should be about?
It needn’t be Orwellian at all. If anything, in fact, Winston Smith had more of a data-security problem than Big Brother. Privacy, certainly, is an important data-security element, as is what the jargonists call integrity—accuracy and completeness of files. Think of Winston Smith and his appreciation of history and Big Brother’s propensity for tampering with the contents of back issues of the London Times! Even if “1984” has already become a year, the number, to true believers in data security, remains a warning.
This will be especially true as more and more machines swap secrets over the wires between home and office.
11
Wired to Work
John Fuller’s daughter is grown now, and he’s taken over her room, cluttering it with computer and boating magazines and his Heathkit micro. At first glance it looks like the computer room of any of thousands of hobbyists. You may, in fact, catch whiffs of smoke from Fuller’s soldering gun.
It’s an unlikely setting for a working office of the U.S. Navy.
And yet that’s exactly what it was when Lieutenant Commander Fuller responded to my notice on an electronic bulletin board asking if anyone at home was hooked up to his boss via computers.
“I’ve been getting away with it for six months,” Fuller drawled proudly.