Academic

Remote Murder?

David Schumann, a Wisconsin lawyer and proprietor of the GPS Evidence Issues blog, recently sent me an email suggesting a new and pretty devious way to commit computer murder.

He pointed out that in an era of remote surgery, ?simply reprogramming the depth of a cut to be made could look like a bad accident, when it was really murder.? I found that a very intriguing suggestion so, knowing absolutely nothing about remote surgery, I checked it out.

Here?s what Wikipedia says about remote surgery:

Remote surgery . . . is the ability for a doctor to perform surgery on a patient even though they are not physically in the same location. It is a form of telepresence. Remote surgery combines elements of robotics, . . . communication technology such as high-speed data connections and elements of management information systems. . . . Remote surgery is essentially advanced telecommuting for surgeons, where the physical distance between the surgeon and the patient is immaterial. It promises to allow the expertise of specialized surgeons to be available to patients worldwide, without the need for patients to travel beyond their local hospital.

The Wikipedia entry also points out another type of surgery ? unassisted robotic surgery ? that might, at least theoretically, be exploited to commit murder:

As the techniques of expert surgeons are studied and stored in special computer systems, robots might one day be able to perform surgeries with . . . no human input. Carlo Pappone, an Italian surgeon, has developed a software program that uses data collected from several surgeons and thousands of operations to perform the surgery without human intervention.

Interesting scenarios. Thanks, David.

Full post as published by CYB3RCRIM3 on February 09, 2009 (boomark / email).