State Rep. Haraz N. Ghanbari, R-Perrysburg, represents the 75th House District, which includes nearly all of Wood County.
In 1959, Volvo Cars launched the 122S and introduced the three-point seat belt.
In 1959, less than 10% of cars had seat belts. Thanks to Volvo’s innovation, seat belts were required by law in all cars sold in the US in 1968. The three-point seat belt made driving alone safer for everyone.
What do seat belts have to do with text messages? Like driving, texting is part of Americans’ daily lives.
The ‘seatbeltless cars of the messaging world’
According to CTIA, a trade association for the U.S. wireless communications industry, we send more than 2 trillion text messages every year.
We text more than we call. Just like driving a car, writing is vulnerable to various safety hazards. And like driving, safety solutions, at least in 1959, are widely available.
Most text messages today are sent via a standard called SMS shorthand for Short Message Service, a technology that has barely evolved since its introduction in 1992. These are the beltless cars of the messaging world.
Text messages cannot be encrypted. If intercepted, their contents are readable.
In other words, they’re about as secure as a postcard in the mail.
SMS shortcomings can lead to real danger to life
The limitations of SMS cause blurry images and broken group chats. They cannot tell you when a text message has been received and read. In a dangerous situation where someone is in distress and cannot speak, we must trust that texts can paint a picture of the scene.
SMS falls short.
It may sound strange to view the shortcomings of the texts as a public safety problem, but if there were two trillion cars on the road without seat belts, would we consider them a public safety risk? Yes.
We face the same situation today with text messages. Most people have experienced a texting error at some point.
Judgement: Can Alexa call 911? Smart devices from Alexa and Google work in an emergency
When an iPhone and a phone that uses the Android operating system exchange texts, they use SMS. Apple’s iPhone has about 60% of the US market, Android about 40%. The chance that you will exchange text messages via these platforms, 1 on 1 or in a group, is quite high.
New standard must be supported for text
The technology to improve text messaging has been around for years.
Google has long supported a newer SMS standard, RCS, the country’s three major telecommunications companies are now using it on Android phones, and Apple has announced they will too by the end of the year.
Legislation that could facilitate this transition should also be considered.
It’s tempting not to rock the boat.
SMS has stood the test of time because it can get the job done for virtually all users, regardless of the phone they have or where they live. But we can do better, and the infrastructure to do that is coming together now.
The Ohio legislature must continue to have policy debates on the latest questions in tech security.
The industry is in the midst of an AI revolution: how do we ensure these systems remain safe and help humanity thrive? These are big, abstract policy questions that we as a society are only now starting to think about. That’s why I’m proud to lead efforts to make texting safer in Ohio.
Think about it this way: if we could make texting more secure, we would be addressing the biggest security problem in modern technology. We made a serious and costly mistake by sweeping this problem under the rug for decades. It’s time to make the 2 trillion text messages we send every day more secure for everyone.
State Rep. Haraz N. Ghanbari, R-Perrysburg, represents the 75th House District, which includes nearly all of Wood County.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Texting is the biggest security risk in modern technology
