Welcome to the 38th edition of Safe For Work. Some recent safety news and then a story inspired by quantum computing. And we end with the latest release from Safe For Work Films, ¨Almost Safe,¨adapted from the story of space mining in issue 23.

In Safety News

• Strikes are underway at US ports. One of the catalysts is reducing or preventing automation like you see above. This type of ´remote work´ probably makes docks safer. Reminds us of last week´s story featuring haptic feedback.

• A leak in the International Space Station is igniting a debate about how safety in outerspace.

• New research shows that companies with independent boards have safer workplaces.

Data Security

Matt Cantor

Here is what is easy, and here is what is hard:

It is easy for Robert to imagine the thing he is trying to kill-- and it is hard, of course. It is a machine of incredible complexity. It is tubes and tubes and tubes and valves and tubes and tanks and pressure-seals and a few wires, certainly. It is copper and PVC and coolant. That’s the way to build these things, when you build these things-- small ones, now, or the larger ones that are coming later-- and the one that’s going to do it-- the one that has to die, when it arrives. Five years? Fifty years? But it doesn’t matter, all that complexity, because it is as easy to imagine as it is hard. What it is is atoms, down in the gut of it. Atoms, all vibrating together in the cold-- at the same time precise and impossible to measure. Simple.

Here is what is easy, and here is what is hard:

It is easy for Robert to imagine the poison.

How does a person kill atoms? It depends. How does a person kill cold atoms? Make them hot, but that’s no good for anyone, there are plenty of other atoms, and all the tubes and wires and everything can just cool them down again. How does a person kill cold atoms in vibration? It is easy for Robert to imagine the poison, but it’s hard for him to explain it.

It was hard for him to explain it to the board of directors when they took his meeting about security. It was hard for him to even explain the problem he was trying to solve-- “They have all our information already,” he told them. He said it more matter-of-factly than he should have.

“So we’ve had a security breach? They’ve stolen our data?”

“I thought our servers were supposed to have a firewall.”

“Did somebody give away their password?”

“Do we have a spy?”

“What’s the point of paying you,” asked one board-member, “if you can’t even keep our data secure?”

It took a long time after that to get things back on track. To explain the basics of encryption-- RSA, Public Keys, Private Keys, on and on, and there wasn’t much point to it, anyways-- these were not the sort of people Robert was used to talking with about these sorts of things, and he couldn’t make them understand any of it, and they couldn’t even make him understand exactly what it was about all this that they weren’t understanding-- but eventually, finally, finally, he got through in the way that he needed to get through.

“Everyone has our data. We have everyone’s data. Every company, every government, every person’s data is just sitting out there, naked-- it flies through the air, naked, towers to satellites to antennae to anything-- anything that isn’t going by cable or wire?-- we have it. And so does everyone else. We have every message that our rival KipTech has sent for the last fifteen years sitting on a server in the basement-- just sitting there-- and they know we have it, just like we know they have the last fifteen years of every message we’ve sent, sitting on a server in their basement. All their secrets, all our secrets, everyone’s secrets are just sitting around. But nobody can read them, because…”

Robert trailed off. He searched the faces in front of him. He searched the younger faces on the board, trying to find someone who is “hip” enough with all of this to get it-- but nothing. Of course, nothing. Growing up with technology isn’t the same thing as understanding it. Can a person name all their own neurotransmitters? Does a person know the current pH of their own lymphatic fluids?

He searched the older faces next-- why not?-- anyone?-- anyone?

At the very end of the table was a man, sitting, who seemed to be older than everyone else put together. Ninety years? More? Someone ceremonial, Robert imagined-- someone who sat here on this board because where else were they going to sit? What else were they going to do with their time anymore?

Suddenly, a thought-- “Enigma,” says Robert, to that man, staring straight into his eyes. “Enigma. It’s Enimga. World War 2-- it was easy to intercept German messages, but--”

“Ah!”-- that had been the right face to find-- and the right thing to say to it. A quick back and forth between the two of them, filling out the idea, and now, suddenly, the man-- his name was “Andrew”-- seemed to be leading the meeting. “We have not cracked their code yet-- and they have not cracked ours. But whoever is the first to do it will win the war!”

“Exactly!” said Robert-- finally, getting somewhere. “And soon, five years-- or maybe fifty, it’s impossible to know-- someone is going to build a machine that cracks every code.”

At last, he started to talk about the real deal-- Quantum Computing-- and as soon as he did, the faces began to glaze over again--

“We’ve had this meeting already.”

“I remember, now-- didn’t we switch over our encryption protocols a few months ago?”

“That was what you told us that we needed to do, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, and it’s good that we did,” said Robert. “But all of our messages, our data, it’s still on their servers-- and in a thousand other places we don’t even know about. We can’t re-encrypt data that’s already been captured.”

“And five years, fifty years from now, what will any of it matter? The pace of the world is getting faster. If in five years, KipTech hasn’t managed to leapfrog our innovations from last decade, they’ll have already gone out of business all on their own, anyways.”

“True,” said Robert. “But what about the rest of it? Everything sent from a company email address.”

Suddenly, the whole room stiffened.

“Everything sent to everyone. Every email any of you have ever sent.”

From there, it was easy to get them to buy in.

“So what do we do?”

“Poison pill.”

It’s easy to kill cold atoms all vibrating together. It’s easy when you’ve got a multi-billion dollar research apparatus to work with, at least. It’s easy when you’ve got a whole team of the world’s best quantum physicists. It’s easy when you’ve got at least five years to figure it out-- maybe fifty.

But it only takes three. In April of 2028, the Rowland Conglomerate begins sending messages using RSA encryption again. At first, the engineers at KipTech think it must be some sort of mistake-- and it must be, mustn’t it? Some sort of mistake. But they gather it up anyways, just like all the old stuff-- what else to do?

In May, a password is accidentally leaked, and they get a peek at a few emails, unencrypted. And it all makes sense. “They’ve already cracked the new Quantum-Proof encryption protocols,” reports an engineer in a board-meeting. “They assume we’ve done the same. That’s why they’ve switched back to RSA.”

He quotes the email.

“At least this way, they’ll have to wait a while before they figure out the other discovery.”

Seventeen years later is when it happens. A supercooled Quantum Supercomputer. It was inevitable, and September, 2045, is when it has decided to finally come around. And what’s the first thing KipTech does with it?

What’s the first thing you would do with it?

In the basement of their headquarters, they set their supercooled atoms vibrating, and they dig into that Rowland data-- what could it possibly be? What had they discovered all those years ago? Nothing they’ve come out with since then seems to meet that level of expectation.

And for that matter, how had they cracked the Quantum-Proof encryptions? KipTech still hasn’t figured that out, either. No one has. Everyone’s switched back to RSA. Better safe than sorry.

September, 2045. A poison pill. Data carefully stitched together seventeen years ago tells a series of thousands of supercooled atoms in the basement of KipTech-- and a few other basements, too-- exactly how to vibrate.

It tells them to vibrate into each other. And they do. It tells these atoms to spontaneously fuse. And they do.

And then…

And then…

Nobody tries that again.

SFW Films presents Almost Safe

In the treacherous environment of asteroid mining, a veteran safety officer and a cocky coworker clash over the importance of strict safety protocols, revealing the thin line between life and death in the vacuum of space.

See you next week as we draw inspiration from a new study showing how workers bring science fiction ideas to life at work.

Stay safe.