I've always believed that people who are in charge of security must be named Maya. I'll tell you why. A week back, I had big notions of making a grand purchase of an expensive consumer electronic item I had been craving since I made the grand purchase of an older version of the very same electronic item some months back. This, incidentally, seems to be the day in the life of a gadget freak in the internet era, but that's not the subject of my discussion here.
In order to make the aforementioned grand purchase, I needed to swipe a debit card and in order that the swipe be un-embarrassing, I first had to check if my bank account possessed sufficient funds. There's a certain small modern-day joy in seeing that “Approved” message flash on the point-of-sale instrument, but then again, that is not my subject of interest here.
When I attempted to log in to the bank's web site, a scary-looking warning page popped up instead of the usual colourful page with the small number of digits that usually represents my bank balance. It screamed “Warning! Due to unusual activity on your account, we would like to verify you through our new-fangled security procedure” or something to that approximate effect.
My mind provided an intense, Tamil-soap-serial style melodramatic synth background score as I read the warning message. It then reassured me that the process was quite simple and told me that I would receive a text message with a one-time password on a phone number I had stopped using several months ago.
As my mind shifted to “Now where did I put that old SIM card of mine” mode, the bank's website tapped me on the shoulder and suggested that I shift to full-on panic mode because the one-time password would EXPIRE IN 60 MINUTES!
As I proceeded to increase my blood pressure and distribute my increased heart rate to my parents who were now tasked with locating the crucial SIM card before my bank deactivated my online access, I realised that there was something cognitively dissonant about how we deal with security in our times. A while back, Facebook detected similar “unusual activity” on my account (presumably because of my habit of living in airports while occasionally dropping in at home) and made me identify random photos of “Facebook friends” in order to verify that I was, in fact, myself.
Strangely enough, we used to live in an intrusive society that rarely valued privacy. Everybody knew everyone else and the chances that someone in a small apartment complex could plan, over several months, an elaborate terrorist attack involving suitcase bombs were quite slim. The last couple of decades has seen a generational shift towards a more Western-style, nuclear-family based mind-ones-own-business kind of living that, all of a sudden, seems to be under question. Now, security experts tell us on TV that we must snoop on our neighbours and report suspicious activity.
All in all, we seem to be moving towards a situation where people who need to understand new kinds of security don't understand the security technologies that security professionals throw at us, therefore making us all generally more insecure, unsafe and vulnerable. Less security by more security procedures. As I said, it must be Maya.
