Given that our tiny country has always had extremely limited resources, one of the only things we’ve ever had going for us is our brains. That’s why it makes it so bitterly ironic that in the same week that the country applauded a group of Maltese students for developing a handy app that helps to track the live location of school transport in real time, another group of tech-savvy scholars were being arrested, strip-searched and had their computers seized by the police after exposing a security flaw in a popular, local student app.
From what has been reported, the computer science students in question discovered that the e-mail addresses, location data and Google calendars of those who had signed up for the student app were potentially vulnerable to malicious hackers and informed the company, who in turn reported the matter to the relevant authorities.
How arrests and strip searches were woven into this mess is beyond me. It would have been one thing if they had used the flaw they had discovered to add gynaecology appointments to everyone’s apparently easily accessible calendars and put clown emojis in all the apps’ sections, but the fact that arrests have taken place over this is pretty incredible given that all that took place here was a group of youngsters pointing out something that should never have existed, to begin with.
It’s ridiculous if you think about it, but the absurd and the unbelievable seem to be what we do best. Here, you have a group of students who barely look like they’re in their 20s being hounded by the police and being made to look like masterminds of an elite criminal cyber faction when outside in the real world, people are getting away with literal murder.
It has become customary to play shoot the messenger instead of focusing on the message itself- Anna Marie Galea
Many in this country sometimes wait decades for justice to be served, only to see the people being accused get off on a technicality; ministers thrive and remain uninvestigated after allegation upon allegation is levelled at them; whole buildings fall onto people, and no one is arrested, and apparently, the swift wings of justice only ever seem to manifest themselves when no one rich or powerful is involved.
It’s also a bitter pill to swallow that it has become customary for our people to play shoot the messenger instead of focusing on the message itself. Whether it’s murdering journalists, actions against writers who leak messages to show that they are, in fact, telling the truth, or these students, it’s a source of bafflement to me that people are willing to ignore the why of why people do things and focus on scapegoating the person who uncovers things instead.
In civilised countries, the truth is usually rewarded, yet in ours, you are asked to bury it so that others can look better than they deserve. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as no one finds out about it.
Indeed, why should you have to bear the responsibility for the things you’ve done when you can get the person who called you out roasted instead?
This national institutionalised immaturity seems to have flourished unchecked at every single level, and it continues to grow with every injustice.
There are truly none so blind as those who refuse to see.