From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Mon Jul 15 2002 - 16:28:20 MDT
I am getting tired of all these accounting scandals. Every day some new
company announced that it has to restate earnings because it
misrepresented them before. (Coke now appears to have paid employees
with stock and never counted it as an expense....)
Then I realized that it's not just big business. There is a crisis in
scientific research where more and more "breakthroughs" are being
discovered to be fake. People exaggerate results to get funding,
maintain their jobs, and help their companies make money. Similarly,
published papers are suffering more and more from plagerism. Publishers
are finding more and more lawsuits that contend that there new research
is copied word per word from someone else's prior work.
Then the evening news reminded me that we are facing a similar crisis in
with DNA evidence exonerating felons and even death-row inmates. More
and more we are seeing cases where the prosecution deliberately
exaggerated evidence to gain a conviction or suppressed exculpatory
information. It seems that it is more important to get a conviction
than to get it fairly.
The news also said that scams by smaller business, such as
air-conditioner repair, auto mechanics, used car salesmen, and the like,
are ever increasing. Despite public awareness programs and law
enforcement crackdowns, these business seem to make as much money lying
about repairs than actually performing them.
Politics is no stranger to lying either. Watch an episode of Crossfire
(when Max isn't on!) and you will see both sides lying to such extremes
that they just plain seem to come from different worlds. They can't let
their opponent have an inch or show a sign of weakness, so each have to
take extremist views and revisionist histories such that their side has
never been wrong or never had a negative incident in the history of the
world.
So what does this all mean? Besides the obvious fact that it's easier
to lie than actually produce anything of value, how do we proceed from
here? People don't seem to be trustworthy. As the rate of technology
increases exponentially, the rate at which these frauds and failures
assail us might likewise increase at an exponential rate. It seems that
our skepticism need to apply to everyday matters and not just to science
and religion. News needs to be questioned. Claims need to be
challenged. Breakthroughs need to be verified. Research needs to be
checked. We can't afford to believe things just because they fit into
our world view, or just because we want them to be true.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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