Before we get to the present, we’re going to take a little trip back in time. Imagine the person who invented the first lock proudly presenting it to his king. “Your crown jewels and gold will be safe, my lord, with this device to lock the heavy door to your treasure.” I’ll bet the king bestowed a nice award for inventing the lock.

Fast forward to a couple of years later, and the crooks have discovered how to defeat the lock. It’s been this way always and will always be this way. By the way, the first locksmith was beheaded after his lock was picked, and the crown jewels and gold were stolen. It was discovered he had let out the secret to making the lock which allowed crooks to study it and learn how to pick it. You just can’t depend on people to keep a secret.

The key lock and its brother, the combination lock, were made better and more effective over the years. However, there has always been someone who figured out a way to pick them. Along came the electronic locks, a relatively modern invention probably inspired by the combination lock. At last! No key. No combination. No entrance. Well, I hate to say this, but these locks can be picked as well. And if they don’t want to take the time to pick the lock, explosives provide an easy solution as they have many times in the past.

Now we are here in the wondrous present with our computers and phones accessing the internet which cannot be blown up with explosives to reveal its treasures. What a time to be alive! There is just one catch. We must have antivirus, firewalls, strong passwords we can’t remember so we let our machines remember them praying they don’t get compromised, and a host of other inventions designed to protect us from hackers and the government, both of which seem to have an unquenchable thirst for our information. I’ve heard Bill Gates was responsible for this mess. If he was, perhaps he should suffer the consequences of the first locksmith.

What has information got to do with treasures we want to keep locked up? Plenty. As it turns out, your information is a valuable commodity that is bought and sold all over the internet. It is worth so much that entities will give you the finger in the eye they figure you want for free in exchange for all the information they can get on you. This is done surreptitiously, without a contract other than the 50-page fine print user’s agreement you agree to when you sign up to use their services.

More changes are coming. Take a $20 out and feel it. Feels real doesn’t it? Soon, you won’t be able to feel it at all. The banks are in the process of turning that paper bill into a bunch of electrons you will never see nor touch. They say this will make money safer, especially after everyone must have a special ID to access the internet. I have something to say about that. Horse patootie!

First, you can lose control of your money if your ID is turned off for some reason. Maybe you’ve been a bad person and a camera in your town recorded you jaywalking. Perhaps you dropped a wrapper from that candy bar you were eating or maybe you just disagreed with something an official said. Social credit is on its way when control of money is centralized, and cash is gone.

Second, remember what I said at the beginning of this piece when I was talking about how locks were meant to be picked? Well, the government and the central bank will keep everything safe. Horse patootie! They can make it difficult to hack into their systems, but hackers will not be deterred. I enter into evidence the fact that a couple of years ago, the government system was hacked, and all government employee’s information was exposed to the dark web.

Just a few days ago, the biggest hack ever was performed and everyone who has a social security number had all their information stolen: names, birthdate, residences, social security numbers, driver’s licenses and more. Along with that, more than two billion people in the rest of the world had their information stolen as well. I close my case, your honor. Locks were made to be picked, and programs and data bases were made to be hacked.