The image I have here, which I will discuss later, is the Door of Durin in Fellowship of the Ring, by Tolkein.
We all have concerns for personal
security.
In this election year, we can see
the two political parties having quite different approaches to the nature of
external threats as well as how we respond to them. Whenever a terrorist strike
hits, we ponder what we would do in the situation. Could we survive, where
others did not?
Crime is still a major concern for
us. Just this week (August 16, 2016), I was on the road near the police
department. All of a sudden, behind me an officer had his lights going. He was
on a mission. I was glad his mission was not me. He moved around me and started
toward the east side of town. In the next few minutes, two other officers
headed the same direction.
Some political movements use
violence in order to agitate the political system in such a way as to get their
way. Regardless of what they want, the means of violence and property
destruction is never the means to get there. When they target the very people
that provide needed security for the families and businesses and of the
neighborhood, I suspect a sinister motive.
In the
financial situation America faces, we ponder the security of our retirement or
other investments. People used to hide their money under the mattress. When the
mattress became the first burglars looked, they looked for new places – an old
sock, watertight bottle in the tank of the toilet, an envelope taped to the
bottom of the litter box, or even in a DVD case. Of course, ways of protecting
money were hardly perfect. Suppose your spouse gave away your copy of The Color
Money, with Paul Newman and Tom Cruise, the one in which you hid your envelope
of money.
Today, most
people put their money in a bank in which they can access the account online
with passwords. They come up with a simple string of characters -- somewhere
between six and 16 -- and figure that their money will remain safe.
Well, maybe it is. Maybe it is not.
It may be no safer than if it were sitting in a plastic bottle in a toilet
tank. According to Wired magazine (November 15, 2012), a password is no longer
an adequate means of securing precious data. No matter how complex or unique,
our passwords can no longer protect us.
What is the worst computer password
you could possibly choose? The web page, “The Top 500 Worst Passwords of All
Time” devotes itself to answering this question. Number one, it should come as no surprise, is
the numerical sequence "123456," closely followed by the word
"password." It also lists the sequence "abc123" as bad, as
are the names of various sports -- "football," "baseball,"
"soccer." The names of popular automobiles and motorcycles also
appear in this high-tech hall of shame -- Mustang, Harley, Corvette -- as do
superheroes like Batman and Superman. The most familiar obscene words are also
pretty high up on the list: so warn your rebellious teenage son that if he
chooses one of those, he is not just challenging the conventions of a repressed
society, he is also being stupid.
It is astonishing how many first
names occupy high positions on the list: Michael, Jennifer, Andrew, Jordan,
Jessica. Those are no-brainers for identity thieves seeking to hack into your
life.
This disturbing statement prefaces
the list of the 500 worst passwords:
"Approximately one out of every
nine people uses at least one password on the list .... And one out of every 50
people uses one of the top 20 worst passwords."
Sadly, for us, hackers are now breaking
into computer systems and releasing lists of names and passwords on a regular
basis. We are putting so much personal information in the internet
"cloud" that it is becoming easy for criminals to trick customer
service agents into resetting our passwords.
This is all very depressing. We can
only hope that Internet security experts are working hard to stay one step
ahead of the bad guys. At some point, we are going to have to move past the
password. On the other hand, we could go back to taping an envelope to the
bottom of the cat's litter box.
For years, we have trusted
government to provide us with political security, law enforcement to provide us
with community security, our medical system to provide us with health security,
and our financial system -- including online banking -- to provide us with
economic security. Nevertheless, we are learning every day that there can be
breakdowns in these systems, especially our high-tech, web-based financial
network.
This world is an insecure place. We
have legitimate reason to have some anxiousness and even fear over the security
of such parts of our world to which I have referred.
Yet, beneath the insecure world in
which we live, it would seem wise to place our trust in something stronger than
our insecure world.
To continue with the image of this
little article, it may well be that the “password” to true security is simpler
than we imagine.
There is a scene in Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring when the party
of adventurers known by that name is desperate to take refuge from their
enemies in an ancient fortress. Dwarves built the fortress, known as the Mines
of Moria, centuries earlier, with the assistance of elves. The way forward is
through an intricately crafted door in the side of a mountain, known as The
Door of Durin.
The door is kept sealed by a magical spell of
Elvish origin. An inscription on it reads: "Speak friend and enter."
The wizard Gandalf deploys all his magical arts
to try to discern the password and open the door, so he and his friends may be
saved. All his efforts are futile. Just when their cause seems lost, the
hobbit, Merry Brandybuck, walks up to the door and speaks the Elvish word
mellon, which means "friend."
The door swings open, and the Fellowship is
saved.
Gandalf was overthinking it. Sometimes the
true password is the simplest one.
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