The struggling state of cyberspace in the United States
by: Ted Tambone
Cyberspace privacy and security are becoming an increasing issue as the internet is growing at extreme speeds and more and more of our private information is being moved into cyberspace. However, as its growing and growing, almost nothing is being done in regards to rules and regulation in order to properly manage cyberspace. On top of this hackers are becoming more and more relevant and better at what they do, yet people still struggle with making sure they are accessing the web safely and securely.
The United States government has been struggling with a legal basis regarding cyber privacy as much of the current laws were made in 1947 with the National Security act. That was over half a century ago when computers didn’t even exist and the thought of portable phones wasn’t even in people’s minds. Making the laws created back then struggle to relate to todays internet crazy and driven times. Its tough to pinpoint exactly where the government stands and does regarding internet privacy as everything is done behind closed doors. However, a lot of information was leaked by Edward Snowden about the NSA (National Security Agency) back in 2014. Including creations of backdoors in security technologies, hacking into people’s private accounts and even producing their own viruses and malware to be put on private computers. The creation of backdoors isn’t a one-time thing either. It was recently in the news again in the last few months as the FBI wanted Apple to create a backdoor in all iPhone in order for the FBI to enter the phone of the San Bernardino shooters. This would however allow them access to basically every iPhone that they got their hands on and also would lower the security in all of the millions of iPhone in circulation. It ended up going to court but before any decision was made the FBI said “never mind” as they found their own way into the iPhone. So this creation of a backdoor for their own use is a trend that they tend to have and needs to be stopped.
Now one of the biggest issues with the current state of cyberspace privacy with the United States government is that there is absolutely no transparency. What the NSA and FBI are doing is completely done behind closed doors. This means that the general public and everyone not directly involved in the surveillance, is mostly making educated guesses with nothing more accurate. It makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly where the government stands with this issue and exactly what they are doing. There are arguments on both side about how effective transparency would be and if it would effect the United States national security in a negative way. I would argue that transparency wouldn’t mean that the exact specifics of what they do is released and publically known information. But rather we know on a broader level what they are doing. This would allow the general public to more easily gauge if they believe what the government is doing is right or not without threatening to lower the effectiveness of our national security. As there is no question that the NSA and FBI are doing their job as for example, all suspects in the Brussels attack recently were already on the United States no fly list. Showing that the current state is at least doing its job when it comes to national security
Now there is no doubt that the current program that is in place by the NSA and the FBI works in terms of national security. For example there is an article by International Business Times, that is titled “The four times NSA surveillance programs stopped an attack.” Each of the four given examples stopped the potential of some large bombing plots throughout major cities in the United States, including New York City. These being four of the fifty that are claimed to be thwarted by the director of the National Security Agency. So there is no doubt at all that at least they are doing their job at least when it comes to national security. But are they doing it the most effective and best way?
My argument is simple, transparency. That is the only thing that is missing with how the NSA is being run at this moment. It is ridiculous to think that in order for the public to be aware of what the NSA is doing, someone has to be a “whistleblower” and go into hiding in order for information to become available. The government would be able to hide information that if it became transparent would compromise their effectiveness with fighting national security and make sure just to relay information that would allow the public to have a better understanding of what they are doing and what they have access too.
On top of the issue of internet privacy, security is also becoming more and more prevalent as the internet continues to grow. There are “more than 1.6 billion social network users worldwide with more than 64% of internet users accessing social media services online.” More and more people are beginning to not only use the internet but post private information and pictures, increasing the need for security in order to hopefully deter hackers. It was reported by Heimdal Security that 99% of computers are vulnerable to hackers being able to take full control of the user’s computer. That means that the issue isn’t just with new users of the internet but even experienced internet users are most likely not taking the proper precautions in order to make sure that their computers and private information that it contains are safe from potential hackers and other security threats. Without changes being made on a large scale then the issue will just continue to rise.
The government does little to help with cyber security, another rising issue regarding cyberspace that needs to garner more attention. Some statistics that show how prevalent of an issue is is becoming, specifically with businesses in the United States are from the Bureau of Labor who gathers their own data. The stats that I am using is in regards to an Information Security Analysts which is an occupation that “plan and carry out security measures to protect an organization’s computer networks and systems. Their responsibilities are continually expanding as the number of cyber attacks increases.” According to their data the occupation is growing at a rate of 18% which is significantly faster than the average occupation according to them. The quick rate that the occupation is growing shows the rise in demand as cyber attacks become more common and costly. Another statistic that backs this up is the median pay which is $88,890 per year. The average median pay of all occupations is $35,540 which shows how willingly companies are to pay these workers and how important they are to the companies that hire them. On top of this a new executive decision is becoming more and more prominent with large companies called a CISO which stands for chief information security officer. This position is relatively new and their main goal is to make sure their information and technology is adequately protected and safe. The stakes are getting high enough when it comes to keeping companies’ information safe that it requires an executive in charge of just that.
Each year there are becoming new ways for hackers to gain information and more attacks that need to be stopped. These include “Headless worms, machine-to-machine attacks, jailbreaking, ghostware and two-faced malware,” That CNBC article estimated that there is going to be 6.8 billion connected devices being used in the 2016 year which is a 30 percent increase from 2015. They believe that it will continue to grow at astonishing rates and hit 20 billion by 2020. These devices are also becoming more and more a part of our daily life’s as they contain our photos, and other personal details including credit card and banking information. The article also brings up the somewhat new technology of “the cloud” which is providing even more risk to the people that utilize it. Stating that it’s a relatively easy way for hackers to take advantage of and gain access to both public and private networks, and along with it all of the information stashed inside. With these new technologies new ways of preventing cyber attacks need to be formed. Hackers are going to be constantly inventing new ways to enter private networks and the cloud and there needs to be a more uniform way in order to stop them.
Technology is evolving at an astonishing rate and with it is comes an increase in cyber attacks. On top of that the situation of cyber privacy in the United States is hidden behind closed doors even though the problem is getting larger and larger. If the issues aren’t addressed by the government then they are going to continue to spiral out of control. The solutions aren’t even that difficult or complicated. All it requires is some transparency with the government and a uniform policy in order to make our cyberspace safer and secure. The ball just needs to get rolling.
Reflection:
1) The title is supposed to give the reader an idea of what the article is about while also sparking their attention. The lede is supposed to convince them that there is a big problem that needs to be addressed and convince the reader to continue reading in order to gain more information on the article.
2) In the beginning of my article my main goal was to give brief background on the situation which naturally included how large the current issue is. On top of that I mentioned how nothing is being down as it begins to spiral out of control, making immediate action a necessity.
3) I tried and bring in evidence that isn’t the statistics typically brought up in the situation, yet is still able to back up my point. I made sure to analysis these stats to help it back up my argument.
4) I organized my article in a relatively simple fashion, only having 4 sections including an introduction and conclusion. I think this helped make it more clear and concise even though it is still a relatively long article.
5) I combatted this by having consistent arguments and point throughout that were backed up with statistics and evidence as much as possible. In order to hopefully make it more difficult to refute at all.
6) I showed how important the issue is as well as how little is being done. I also gave a few solutions and argued toward their pros and cons to the best of my ability while providing evidence to help support.
7) I had a plethora of secondary sources as well as a primary source which was the department of labor who had collected their own statistics that I used to help back up my point. I also included a photo at the beginning representing cyber security to help further draw in the audience.
8) The quotes that I used were smoothly placed into my article, if there were no quotations on them it would be tough or even possible to tell that they weren’t my own writing. Which was my main goal when implementing them.
9) I used quotes from reputable sources as well as statistics in order to help back up my points sand arguments and to further strengthen them.
10) My goal in the visual was to help draw in the audience. It was something that I noticed was very common with articles I saw online and I tried my best to replicate it in my own article.
11) My draft and final are very different articles. For example, after the peer evaluations I changed the order of almost all of my paragraphs to make it more clear and concise. I think it helped my article overall in a huge way.
12) Hyperlinks are used in order to visit the page of websites that I mentioned in my article.
13) I proofread my article multiple times including a few times out loud in order to help make it flow and sounds as fluent as possible.