Computer Crime

Programmers and others with access to computer data could potentially commit all sorts of crime. Most of these people are honest. Outsourcing of programming and other operation is dangerous however especially if the source code is not available to the people really responsible, or if it cannot be verified that the source code actually matches the executables used. This even applies to operating systems and compilers!

Some examples

· Election results. Formerly , as a County Data Processing Director and sworn in as a Deputy County Clerk, I think I could have modified election results. The results were, as far as I could tell, ordinary ascii text files. It would have been difficult to do this consistently – make all subtotals etc. add up properly, but I doubt if this was checked anyway . Also I did not have access to the source code to verify the programs worked correctly, although we did test runs with our own data. After I left, I think even the operation of the machines was outsourced.

· Juries. The jury selection lists also come from computers. Who writes these programs, and how do we know they work correctly? Although Data Processing did this, I never looked at the programs or ran them.

· Criminal records. I was involved with converting RPG programs from a System 3 to a 4331, about the time I started, but I think the converted programs were never used.

· Financial. I haven’t had much to do with financial programming except for payroll at the county, and some involvement with property taxes, county budget and claims. These were checked by the County Assessor, County Auditor, and County Treasurer.

· Medical. Who checks that medical programs work correctly?

· Insurance. Same here! When I got my prescription history from Walgreens, the doctor’s zip codes were wrong. They said it was the billing office zip code, but this did not seem to be true. I tried to report this but got nowhere. It would probably not be doctors doing this, they don’t handle this sort of thing. Knowing some database theory, I thought the databases might not be properly normalized, giving an opportunity for undetected duplicate billing, because only the mail with correct zip codes would be delivered. It might even be people who had illegally gained access, such as drug dealers, doing this!

· PC’s and the Internet make security much more difficult. These came after my time at the county. I do not know how I would deal with them. E.g. when you get a message you should only run something if you trust so and so, how do you know it is really so and so?