ThinkingSkull.com

Here’s a scene I’ve always wanted to see in a Bond movie.

007 is running for his life because too many bad guys are after him. As he makes his way through a crowd, he “borrows” a cell phone from a man who only just took it out of his pocket. At a critical moment, James presses a button on the phone, but the reply on the screen is “PHONE LOCKED.” He’s toast, right? Wrong! Thinking quickly as 00’s often do, he presses a key sequence too fast to remember, prompting the phone to query “Q-CODE?” He enters a secret number, prompting the phone instantly and automatically dial MI-6 directly where Q is already standing by with instructions while James continues to look dashing and smug.

The implication is that all cell phones might secretly contain a special code for emergency services (or secret services) that go around even your own security codes, just like 911 always works. What’s not amusing is, for many such devices, this isn’t fiction; it’s real. Your portable phone DOES contain secrets that you won’t find in your multi-lingual booklet, but the guy who sold it to you (you know, the one who can’t seem to answer any of your technical questions before you buy it) can access and transfer your entire custom phone book before you have time to ask, “How did you unlock my phone without my code?”

What’s above ISN’T the conspiracy. The real question is, why don’t WE have access to these codes or aren’t told about them in the store? Shouldn’t we know everything that pressing random buttons on our phones can do after spending who-knows-how-much for a new model every six months? Isn’t unnerving to think that anyone who has worked for a cell company will always know more about what the device (that you paid for) can do than you are ALLOWED to know?

It doesn’t stop there, folks. Your car, too, can tell a mechanic what’s wrong with it, and if you know the secret, you can learn if your car’s sensors are malfunctioning (which is too often the cause of that “Check Engine” light) or if there is a major breakdown in progress. There’s a little computer port under your dash or on your internal fuse box they plug into; go ahead and look. In fact, there are consumer websites online that not only suggest that over half of a modern vehicle’s malfunctions are probably fixable by replacing an electronic component yourself but that legislation is being assembled to force care manufacturers to reveal the secret car codes so that do-it-yourselfers can actually service their own vehicles.

Computer owners often find ways to customize and ‘overclock’ their machines to get better or specific performance from them, and once more electrical and non-gasoline vehicles start showing up, anyone with a muti-meter and a chip puller could be able to change the very way their car operates and performs. And along with that, vehicle regulation and navigation controls are becoming so complicated now that Microsoft has reportedly already begun work on an operating system for future models.

Now ask yourself this: when your car of the not-too-distant future stops in the middle of nowhere and the instrument panel goes dark except to say, “WINDOWS ERROR 41,” don’t you think you should have the right to know how to reboot your vehicle and drive away instead of waiting to pay for a wrecker with a laptop?