“Blowtorches, dynamite, getaway cars – forget it. This is where the real vault is. Binary code. Virtual money. All ones and zeros.”
When banking security specialist Jack Stanfield (HARRISON FORD) heads home after a day’s work at the Pacific Landrock Bank, he generally breathes a sigh of relief. It’s not that he isn’t fully committed to the job, it’s just that he’s glad to be away from the ever-present cameras and identity checks, the constant maintenance and upgrading of elaborate electronic firewall defense measures that have become standard business practice in this age of online communication and commerce – and online crime. As he parks his car and unlocks the door to his upscale suburban home, Jack would never suspect that here, too, his every move is being surreptitiously observed.
He exchanges greetings with his wife Beth (VIRGINIA MADSEN) and they discuss the details of their day while their children argue over the television remote control, unaware that their every word is being recorded via state-of-the-art sensors tuned to every room in the house. When Jack uses the phone, his conversations are overheard. When he opens his E-mail, pays bills, logs onto the Internet, every keystroke is captured.
It seems that someone is exceptionally interested in Jack’s habits and schedules, his relationships and concerns….his potential weaknesses.
“The idea that someone evil could attach himself to you and worm his way into your life like that both fascinated me and creeped me out,” says Firewall screenwriter Joe Forte, who poses some disturbing questions about our expectations of privacy and security. “This is a movie about vulnerability,” he adds, noting that most people never encounter this kind of extreme intrusion, so don’t even consider it a possibility. But the reality is, as uncommon as such a scenario might be, “it could potentially happen to anyone.”
“People’s belief that their computers are secure is far from the truth,” says Harrison Ford. “It only depends upon someone having a clear ambition, plus the expertise and energy to break into your system, as well as a compelling reason to do it.” Add to that the number of ways in which surveillance can infringe upon the intimate details of everyday life with equipment readily available on the Internet, and the illusion of privacy wears thin. “I think most people are safe only because they simply don’t have things the bad guys want.”
In this case, it’s not the Stanfields the bad guys are after. It’s the bank.
The bulk of a bank’s assets today are more likely to exist not in concrete-reinforced vaults but in cyberspace, attests computer security expert Lawrence T. Levine, a founder of SecurePipe, who provides information security services to businesses worldwide and was a technical consultant on the film. “The industry has experienced a huge transition,” he says. “The amount of cash in a bank is often insignificant compared to what’s in the computers, generally no more than one percent. So if 99 percent is in the computers, and you’re talking about banks with holdings measured in billions of dollars, then those computers are a very meaningful target for hackers.”
Movie Database
In Theaters
