Are you as depressed as we are that we actually have to type that?

It’s one of those stories that make you lose your faith in humanity. Internet Identity (IID)’s CTO Rod Radmussen just came out and predicted internet connected devices will kill you. And he’s not talking about your wifi enabled mouse. He’s talking about modern hospital IV drips or pacemakers, which are connected to the internet and therefore can (conceivably) be shut off via the internet. Oh, and he also argues that since modern cars are connected to the internet, hackers are going to break into your car, cut the brake lines, and force a major accident.

Let that sink in for a second. Internet Identity, one of the oldest, most trusted security firms in the business, has bought into this. A firm that boasts about Microsoft coming to them for reports on internet fraud chucked logic and statistical probability out the window, replacing them with fearmongering straight from a McCarthy hearing.

Don’t get us wrong, there are cyber security holes that would allow the right person to, say, steal a car with nothing more than a cellphone and 3G service. But he would never be able to then shut off your car brakes because the car’s engineers didn’t design the car with a ‘shut brakes of remotely’ option. Because, you know, they weren’t psychopaths.

But couldn’t the right person build the code needed to hack your car or hack your pacemaker? Well, he could, but here’s why he’s not going to.

The type of person who is capable of doing this type of hack is very specific. He’s an experienced specialist who probably worked on part of the model pacemaker or IV drip you’re using. He then had months, years even, of spare time to figure out exactly what made the pacemaker tick and what would cause it to crash 100% of time, then became so disaffected/morally bankrupt that he could think of nothing better to do than kill someone with it.

As a general rule, programmers with that level of training will never become so disaffected. They are highly-skilled workers, so they can get high-paying work quickly. They interact with like-minded invidviduals every day, so not only are they socially active, but they are on a support network if they ever develop the neuroses needed to make a crime of this scale seem like the right choice.

If for some reason this particular programmer went rogue, he’d be far more likely to steal than to kill. After all, if he starts your car and steals it, he gets a new car. If he starts your car and crashes it into something while you are inside it, he’s now a murderer. A murderer with no new car.

And here is the rub of the matter: Cybercrimes of this level require a great deal of skill and maturity and terrorists (hereby defined as, ‘those who wish to cause death and terror’) are usually profoundly stupid. That’s why they favor explosives over silencers. That’s why the world was recently shocked to discover that some first world cells had progressed to consist of college dropouts. It’s also why they tend to accidentally incinerate themselves.  Sure, the public image might be this:

But the reality looks a lot more like this:

To conclude, crimes like this may be possible …for a sick and twisted mind with years of experience, the ability to plan precisely and with nothing to lose. But that sort of deadly psychological cocktail doesn’t happen often. Men and women with years of experience typically lead stable, well-compensated lives. That’s why, in part, they have years of technical experience in the first place. And that’s also why they won’t sacrifice their humanity and their careers to carry out something so awful.

Good going, Radmussen. And for your next trick, will you tell us that nothing could ever replace the newspaper?