Exploring the law of unintended consequences

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Reply-To: <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 09:15:13 -0800
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Exploring the law of unintended consequences

[Note:  A very good read!  I recommend that you click through to the
site and read the article with all of its embedded links.  DLH]

Original URL: 
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/21/unintended_consequences/>

Exploring the law of unintended consequences
By Scott Granneman, SecurityFocus (scott at granneman.com)
Published Friday 21st January 2005 12:32 GMT

Column The law of unintended consequences shows us how many innocent
innovations like email, anti-virus and DRM can become something far
worse than the inventors had ever imagined.

Back in the 1970s, long before the revolution that would eventually
topple him from power, the Shah of Iran
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi_of_Iran) was one of
America's best friends (he was a dictator
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_revolution) who brutally
repressed his people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK), but he was
anti-communist, and that made him OK in our book). Wanting to help out
a good friend, the United States government agreed to sell Iran the
very same intaglio presses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intaglio) used
to print American currency so that the Shah could print his own high
quality money for his country. Soon enough, the Shah was the proud
owner of some of the best money printing machines in the world, and
beautiful Iranian Rials (http://www.kcshop.com/imagegallery/Iran.htm)
proceeded to flow off the presses.


All things must come to an end, and the Shah was forced to flee Iran in
1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini's
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayatollah_Khomeini) rebellion brought
theocratic rule to Iran. Everyone reading this undoubtedly knows the
terrible events that followed: students took American embassy workers
hostage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis) for over a
year as Iran declared America to be the "Great Satan," while evidence
of US complicity in the Shah's oppression
(http://www.irvl.net/USMI.htm) of his people became obvious, leading to
a break in relations between the two countries that continues to worsen
to this day.

During the early 90s, counterfeit $100 bills began to flood the
Mideast, eventually spreading around the world. Known as "superbills"
or "superdollars" by the US Treasury due to the astounding quality of
the forgeries, these $100 bills became a tremendous headache not only
for the US and its economy, but also for people all over the world that
depend on the surety of American money. Several culprits have been
suggested as responsible for the superbills, including North Korea and
Syria, but many observers think the real culprit is the most obvious
suspect: an Iranian government deeply hostile to the United States...
and even worse, an Iranian government possessing the very same printing
presses used to create American money.

If you've ever wondered just why American currency was redesigned in
the 1990s, now you know. In the 1970s, the US rewarded an ally with a
special machine; in the 1990s, the US had to change its money because
that ally was no longer an ally, and that special machine was now a
weapon used to attack the US's money supply, where it really hurts. As
an example of the law of unintended consequences, it's powerful, and it
illustrates one of the main results of that law: that those unintended
consequences can really bite back when you least expect them.

Unprepared and unready

Sometimes unintended consequences occur from the best of intentions.
For instance, Denny's is known for being open 24 hours a day, every
day, always. The story goes that in 1998, for the first time in 35
years, Denny's decided to close its doors on Christmas, but there was a
big problem: since Denny's was always open, many stores didn't have
locks on the doors, so they couldn't close.

Likewise, email was invented in 1971
(http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/#1970s) and was
immediately embraced as a great way to communicate with folks all over
the world. Since virtually everyone on the Net pretty much knew each
other at the time, email was developed without a lot of safeguards.
Spoofing the sender? Not a real issue. False headers? Why in the world
would anyone want to do that? Purposely misspelled words in the subject
to get past filters? First of all, what the heck are filters, and why
would someone want to spell something weird to get past one?

It was a more innocent age, but that innocence was lost long ago,
thanks to a trickle ... no, a stream ... no, a flood, an absolutely
Biblical flood of garbage, scams, lies, ads, swindles, and just plain
crap. In fact, it's gotten so bad that MX Logic, an antispam vendor,
now estimates that 75 per cent of all email is spam
(http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/12/26/
HNcanspamnoteffective_1.html), while in same article Postini Inc. jacks
that number up to 88 per cent of all email. Think about that: only
about 1 in 10 emails is legitimate. That's truly pathetic, almost
enraging, and it's finally leading (slowly, oh so slowly) to necessary
changes - not in the legal system, since the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_Spam_Act_of_2003) seems to have done
virtually nothing  
(http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/12/26/
HNcanspamnoteffective_1.html) to stem the tide - but in email
infrastructure, to things like Microsoft's proposed Sender ID
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_ID), Yahoo's Domain Keys
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_keys), and Sender Policy Framework
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework). Of course, at
this time there's no consensus on the solution, and with patents and
other contentious issues of so-called intellectual property
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Intellectual_property#Arguments_against_the_term_.22intellectual_propert
y.22) acting as flies in the ointment, we may never reach a unified
approach to the problem of spam. Naturally, that just helps the
spammers. But they don't mind - they're busy helping each other.

Fast forward from 1971 to 2005. Would the inventors recognize the
monstrosity they innocently unleashed upon the world?

[snip]

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