E-Waste: Pollution, Security Risks, Epic Greed, Epic FAIL

E-Waste

Through the years working in the information security game I often saw the upgrades that happened rather frequently. Such upgrades seemed to happen almost bi-monthly in some cases, but overall it was always about the speed of systems.

We need the speed to work faster faster faster!

Well, where did all that old equipment go that actually still worked? For that matter what about the stuff that actually broke? I had been living in the dream world that said:

Don’t worry, we will re-cycle your pc and pass it on to bridge the digital divide! Soon, second and third world countries will also have the beginnings of digital infrastructures using our old systems and the economy will grow.

Wrong…  It rarely really happened. Whats worse, the systems in question would go out of the country to Ghana, China, Pakistan, etc including hard drives that had not been wiped or cleaned of data. Is it any wonder why then Ghana is a capitol of cyber crime?

Gee, I wonder if Nigeria and Ghana work together, ya know, rival gangs trading in our data from e-waste that unscrupulous dumpers have just sent over for a quick buck. Of course that is only one part of the problem, but I will be getting to that in a bit. For now though, I would like to look at the PII and Digital dumping ground angle where our data is concerned.

Exactly what are companies thinking just getting rid of hard drives full of data by selling them wholesale to just anyone? Working hard drives filled with corporate, personal, and other data that perhaps could be the next transwarp drive plans from Rocketdyne? WTF? Are we just stupid? Are we collectively brain damaged? We do this, then we get robbed digitally and we moan and wail about it all the while not comprehending that we did it to ourselves?

Do we just inherently lack the capabilities to comprehend that we save shit to hard drives that can be easily plugged into another machine and just pulled up on a screen? Are we just too busy playing with our digital navels to care? It would seem so.

I guess we deserve to be p0wn3d….

Now on to the pollution:

I just don’t get it rationally… I can only really understand this: We are greedy, fat, and stupid as a country. We don’t care about other countries peoples, we don’t care about the environment as a whole, and really, what it comes down to is this:

Not in my back yard… But meh, its fine for the Chinese or the Ghanians to poison the water and air in “their” country.. I mean hell, its not “MY” back yard…

Well fucktard, it is YOUR back yard. You see, we live on a globe suspended in space. What poisons the Chinese will eventually make it here by wind or water… Trust me.

I am just flabbergasted by it all… I really have no idea what to do either. I tend to keep my equipment and recycle things that are still running. There have been more than a few donations I have made to individuals who had no systems to use that now can get on the internet with some older machines.

But this.. the proportions of it.. What can one person do? Hell MIT tried to help people with one laptop per child and M$ and others pretty much killed that one… M$, yeah… fuckers… Talk about greed. Of course Bill now is trying to use his money to patent “alleged” technology to stop hurricanes..

Think on that a minute.. He is PATENTING the anti hurricane technique! It’s like saying I am patenting the cure for cancer! How about doing something for humanity Bill?

Ugh… My heads exploding.

See the videos:

Frontline report: http://preview.tinyurl.com/nyl9w4

60 minutes: http://preview.tinyurl.com/6a7rt4

Manufactured Landscapes: http://preview.tinyurl.com/mpdanu