This morning, an almost mundane reality of life in the digital age landed squarely in my inbox. I got an email from my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, confirming what I already suspected: one of its databases was hacked and the data was stolen.
The school paper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, noted: “the hacker claiming responsibility for the breach alleged that they stole data from 1.2 million students, alumni, and donors.”
The university reported the breach to the FBI, which is fine, I suppose. But given the current administration’s relationship with schools like Penn, I’m cynical. The chances it will be thoroughly investigated probably depend on how many of those 1.2 million people made large campaign donations to a certain alumnus who is now the president.
Speaking of alumni, did you read the prose of the hacker’s claim? It was full of Idiocracy-like triggering words, making me wonder if it’s the work of another famous Penn alum—you know, the CEO of that electric car company that begins with a T and ends with an A. Whoever it is, they’re certainly trying hard to hit all those “own the libs” buttons.
But here’s the thing: data breaches are incredibly common. When they happen now, our capacity to be shocked by such a massive heist just diminishes over time.
I mean, how many Equifax or Experian letters can you get in the mail offering free credit monitoring before it feels utterly pointless?
I’m not naive; digital scams do con people out of money. It happens to the elderly, to teens, and even to the so-called digital natives among us. Law enforcement—if properly resourced, like the FBI—can find theft rings and make arrests. But the people they nab are often just the worker bees. The big fish are rarely caught, primarily because they operate from other countries where the long arm of U.S. law isn’t quite long enough.
So, where does that leave us? Sometimes, it just feels like the technology has gotten so sophisticated, but we humans haven’t. We’re just using more precise, high-tech tools to do the same old things humans have always done.
Machiavelli had our number when he wrote: “We can say this of most people: that they are ungrateful and unreliable; they lie, they’re fake, they’re greedy for cash, and they melt away in the face of danger.”
Or take this golden nugget that feels like it was written for our time: “People are so gullible and so caught up with immediate concerns that a conman will always find someone ready to be conned.”
It’s sad to think that when you strip away all the advanced technology we use to appear smart, we are, as Freud famously noted, merely prosthetic gods. We’ve built the tools of the future, but we’re stuck with the same flawed human operating system.
