Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Fears of spying
With less than a week to go now before the Conclave officially begins meeting at the Vatican, there are wide-ranging fears of security breaches in the form of electronic spying. CBS News has an in-depth review of the problems, some of which are listed here:
Computer hackers, electronic bugs and supersensitive microphones threaten to pierce the Vatican's thick walls next week when cardinals gather in the Sistine Chapel to name a papal successor. Spying has gotten a lot more sophisticated since John Paul was elected in 1978, but the Vatican seems confident it can protect the centuries-old tradition of secrecy that surrounds the gathering.
And in this high-tech world in which we live, this world so vastly different in so very many ways from the world of 1978, the internet will also be certain to play its part. News of the election of a new Pope will spread rapidly from one end of the earth to the other via the new technologies. When I was a young girl anxiously awaiting the white smoke for the second time in a year, we had television and radio. My own young daughter could very well find out who the new Pope is by checking her e-mail at school.
Along with spying, Italian security forces are, of course, very concerned with the possibility of violence. New technology has also bred new ways to spread terror, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one who held their breath throughout the Pope's funeral, praying that nobody decided to drop an airplane on St. Peter's Square. Al Qaeda was already foiled once during Pope John Paul II's record-smashing visit to the Philippines where he drew a crowd of over 4,000,000 people at once. We can only hope that terrorists do not see the Conclave as an opportunity.
Computer hackers, electronic bugs and supersensitive microphones threaten to pierce the Vatican's thick walls next week when cardinals gather in the Sistine Chapel to name a papal successor. Spying has gotten a lot more sophisticated since John Paul was elected in 1978, but the Vatican seems confident it can protect the centuries-old tradition of secrecy that surrounds the gathering.
And in this high-tech world in which we live, this world so vastly different in so very many ways from the world of 1978, the internet will also be certain to play its part. News of the election of a new Pope will spread rapidly from one end of the earth to the other via the new technologies. When I was a young girl anxiously awaiting the white smoke for the second time in a year, we had television and radio. My own young daughter could very well find out who the new Pope is by checking her e-mail at school.
Along with spying, Italian security forces are, of course, very concerned with the possibility of violence. New technology has also bred new ways to spread terror, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one who held their breath throughout the Pope's funeral, praying that nobody decided to drop an airplane on St. Peter's Square. Al Qaeda was already foiled once during Pope John Paul II's record-smashing visit to the Philippines where he drew a crowd of over 4,000,000 people at once. We can only hope that terrorists do not see the Conclave as an opportunity.
