The minister's digital illiteracy

Admitting ignorance can be a good thing. We appreciate it when someone tells us in time that they are ignorant, because that timely honesty lets us make a decision.

For example, if the person appointed as our children’s history teacher admits his ignorance of the subject, we would thank him, as long as the admission came before he took the job. But if we find out afterward, when a year of our children’s education has been lost, that honesty is of no use and earns no gratitude; on the contrary, it makes us deeply indignant. (This situation is not as hypothetical as it sounds; it happens all the time in our country’s schools.)

Ignorance among the authorities is worrying, and I’m not talking about a lack of specific technical knowledge; for that they have advisers and a support team. What we all expect is that our authorities meet certain minimum standards of competence. We expect them not to be functionally illiterate, and to have some minimum preparation, fit for working in the contemporary world.

That is why the statements of the government’s chief spokesman, the Minister Secretary General of Government, are worrying:

“I don’t understand anything about computing, I barely know there’s something called a hacker. I am a technological illiterate.”

Because he says it with complete honesty, at ease, and without any shame, almost as if it were charming, something that set him apart. The minister should be ashamed.

But it worries me that he says it, because what happened is very serious.

A leak of the personal data of millions of Chileans is very grave, all the more so because all that data comes from government institutions.

It’s true that our legislation and the state of personal data protection in Chile are lamentable. There is even more data than what was mentioned, circulating for a long time now, and nobody has done anything. There are databases with sensitive information that can be bought without any trouble, because deficient laws allow it!

The reason the authorities don’t worry about the problems of protecting identity data was confessed today, with complete honesty.

Our authorities don’t understand that this is a serious problem. They admit they are incapable of reading and understanding the implications of the personal data of millions of Chileans leaking over the internet.

If the minister barely knows what a hacker is, forget about identity theft.

Being illiterate means being unable to read and to understand, and that is serious in a government authority. What do you think should be done with an authority like that?

In Germany, not long ago, a group of hackers cloned the interior minister’s fingerprint.

Well, in Chile it is possible to clone the digital identity of our Minister Secretary General, and the truth is it wouldn’t take much.

Will we have to wait for a “proof of concept” to show up before the minister realizes the cost of his digital illiteracy?

That’s why they later sign controversial agreements; it’s pure digital illiteracy.

Update: proving that El Mercurio not only lies but is also stupid, I just learned that the “dean of the press” (ha!) published a photo showing the links where the information can be downloaded, and the worst part is that the information is still available for download.