#codetocruel

At Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, doctors, nurses, and administrators scrambled to save lives. Saving lives seems normal, but this time it was different. Hackers shut down the hospital. The hospital staff rushed to ensure their patients could be treated.

 All of their systems were inoperable: CT scans, pharmacy functions, and even communications were frozen. The staff had to communicate through pencil and paper. The silver lining: no one died. The bad news: the hospital system was infected with a ramsonware virus. 

They could not gain control of their systems until they deposited 40 Bitcoin –  the equivalent of $17,000 –  into an account. After a week of deliberation and consultation with the FBI, the hospital paid the ransom.

This isn't the first time ramsomware rattled software users. Back in 2013, multiple computers were attacked by the cryptolocker virus. Users paid 1 to 2 bitcoins –  $300 –  to return their computers to an operable state. Approximately, 250,000 computers were infected. The ransom collective set up a customer service center to field responses and help people manage their payments.

I am accustomed to indiscriminate attacks on individual users, but what makes someone ransom a hospital?

My belief: the physical and psychic distance digital environments simulate. When people live in a dis-attached environment – like they do on the internet – people are distanced from the messy intricacies and realities of human life.

The connection between dehumanizing and violence toward others is known. The Nazi called Jews rats. The slave masters called the Africans: slaves, niggers, mongrels, bucks and wenches. Even mafia hitmen describe their mental gymnastics to lessen the humanity of their target in order to kill them.

In Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, author, David Livingstone Smith, comments on this process: “Dehumanization is a response to conflicting motives. It occurs in situations where we want to harm a group of people, but are restrained by inhibitions against harming them. Dehumanization is a way of subverting them.” (264)

This process applies to our discussion today. To add clarity, lets look at the hospital’s online and offline image

Online, the hospital is an orchestra of access points and symbols; black screens and white text; yes/ no commands and rows of data.  Offline, the hospital presents a different picture. 

Cancer ridden children reliant on breathing machines. Families circled around a loved one as they struggle to speak their last words, coughing up spit and blood. Health professionals feverishly darting back and forth trying to attend to the needs of a premature baby.

 All of this occurs within a cacophony of crying, sobbing, machine beeps and intercom messages. Which picture promotes a healthy link to the rest of society?

If a hospital is just 1s,0s scurrying though a system of tubes and devices, then a hacker is more likely to attack it. When they see a hospital, they see open access points and weak firewalls, not a 3-year-old fighting for their life.  

 I am not here to demonize hackers. Code is great. It gives us the power to re-imagine our lives and construct reality. I do not think hackers seek opportunities to dehumanize others.

I do believe the longer anyone lives in these environments their sense of self and humanity changes – for the worst.  If we are not careful, we will exchange our humanity for a false bliss, and lose ourselves to the cycle of dehumanization and exploitation.