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.

Food safety is becoming a larger and larger issue every year as companies sacrifice safety for an increase in profits. The FDA and the government might seem like they are doing their job, but this is not the case as they are highly ineffective in making sure that the food that we eat is same to consume. If food safety is to become a lesser issue, there are going to need to be major changes made to the FDA and the other governmental agencies in charge. After reading the following articles and pieces of writing, “Resisting Food Safety“, “You are what they eat“, “Food Inc.”, “Organic Illusions,” and an outside news article. It is clear that this is a major issue that needs to have action taken in order to squash it.

In Marian Nestle’s “resisting food safety” the lack of organization and integration between the USDA, FDA and the government is exposed. “Any facility producing a food that involves both agencies must deal with inspectors operating under two entirely different sets of guidelines and schedules.” (Nestle, Page 57). The egg industry for example has three different agencies involved in regulations and food safety. This is an issue because they don’t work together making it harder for the company to please each of the agencies. It also makes it less efficient as they don’t work together and pool their resources together, instead they act completely independent of each other. Making their already small budget even less effective.

“You are what they eat” takes on a different approach by focusing on the issues with the feed supply and how little the government is doing about it. The FDA doesn’t seem to truly care if the acts that they put in to place, are actually followed. “Four years after the feed ban took effect, the FDA still had not acted promptly to compel firms to keep prohibited proteins out of cattle feed and to label animal feed that cannot be fed to cattle.” (You are what they eat, page 29). This just shows that the FDA put in place a policy and doesn’t even make sure the firms are following it. It seems like they made the act to please the public, yet don’t care about making sure the act is used to its full potential.

Marian Nestle further more extends this idea that the FDA does not go all the way with its policies. “The initial system worked well to keep sick animals out of the food supply but was poorly designed to deal with the challenges of microbes.” (Page 55). In this passage Nestle is talking about a policy that was put in place to make the feed safer for the final product. However, she points out that it might help some of the issues, but they completely ignored the issue of microbes. Which she argues is the main issue for food safety and the FDA needs to do more to control.

Blake Hurst’s “Organic Illusions,” focuses more on the false idea behind organic foods. His argument is that organic foods are not as safe as most people think. He even argues that they might be more dangerous and that the farming techniques are more impractical. “We don’t have enough land to turn our backs on the work of generations of agriculture scientists and industrial farmers, and we can’t afford the opportunity costs of a return to some romantic version of agriculture.” (Organic illusions). Basically saying that with the current demand it isn’t possible to produce enough food using organic methods, instead we have to keep “industrial” farming. But hopefully with better regulations that can improve food safety. Organic illusions also focuses on how Organic food isn’t the answer to safer and healthier food. This is an issue as the other texts offer organic food as the main way to avoid all of these food safety issues.

Next is Food Inc. which shows how big business is ruining farming and with it is producing more issues with food safety, while the FDA sits idly bye. The reason why they don’t intervene much is, as shown in Food Inc., most of the FDA has connections to a lot of these big meat packing businesses such as Tyson. A lot of the higher ups in the FDA has other motives when it comes to food safety. Often making decisions that benefit the big businesses rather then food safety as a whole.

Another trend that is seen in most of the sources, is that the FDA is severely under budgeted and doesn’t have the money to control all of the food that is consumed in the United States.“About 80 percent of seafood sold in the US is imported. Yet the FDA test only about 2 percent.” (You are what they eat, Page 30). This is just one example of how little the FDA is able to regulate compared to the huge quantity of food that is being produced as well as imported. The FDA only has 700 employees to regulate not only all food but meat poultry and eggs. They also regulate all drugs that are used in the United States. They are severely under manned in order to effectively regulate all of the markets they are responsible for. Due to this they only do inspections every one to five years. It is not frequent enough to squash the issue of food safety. The USDA does a better job as they have 7000 employees which allows them to inspect almost daily. (Nestle). Yet with the lack of solid policies even the USDA struggles as they regulate all meat after the slaughterhouse.

Luckily, the FDA is starting to notice these issues as well as the rise in food-borne related illnesses. “The eight per cent increase is due to a number of factors, including $268.7m in user fees for projects tied to a number of areas including the implementation of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FMSA).” (Food Ingredients First). Although it might not be a huge overhaul, it is a step in the right direction. The proposed budget would be $5.1 billion for the period of October 2016 to September 2017, meaning that it would not have an impact for a decent amount of time. Just another reason why the FDA is struggling as everything moves on a very slow basis. They are always reacting to a problem rather then trying to prevent them from happening. The FDA and other government agencies responsible for food safety are constantly playing a game of catch up, and losing. Big business knows this and has the resources to exploit it. Food Safety wont begin to decline as an issue until the FDA and other government agencies begin to take charge and make changes before an issue arises.

Unfortunately, it is easier said then done. Although an increase in budget by a small percentage sounds good. It is nowhere near what they need. They are still severely under budgeted and understaffed to effectively prevent the issues of food safety. $5.1 billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, but as a percentage of how much the government spends it is next to nothing. Food-borne illnesses are becoming a huge problem in the United States as big outbreaks such as Chipotle are becoming more and more common. An issue as large as food safety, which is causing millions of illnesses and thousands of deaths, deserves a much larger budget in order to attack it in an effective manner. Yet the issue continues to grow and the FDA continues to sit idly by, just doing enough to satisfy most people, but not enough to actually tackle the issue.

Food Safety is a growing issue as more and more food becomes contaminated. Causing the amount of Americans getting food borne illnesses to rise, including the deadly ones such as e coli. The FDA and the other government agencies responsible must begin getting larger budgets as well as producing policies that can better regulate the food in America. The government needs to allocate some of its trillion dollar budget in order to tackle an issue that is increasing every year, and next to nothing is being done about. The FDA and other government agencies are slowly beginning to do a better job, but they still need to do a much better job.

1. A writers project was something that I have  never heard about before WRT 205. However, I believe I have a solid grasp on what it is. Basically it is the reason why a writer is writing something as well as their motives behind it. Googling the author and learning more about them almost always helped me recognize their project. In my case for this paper my project was to show the issues of food safety and more specifically the issues with the government and try and give example of how they could improve.
2. The part that helped me out the most was the quotes and the arrows connecting them. This is because it helped me get direct evidence from the sources that were related to each other which made analyzing easier. It also helped me organize my paragraphs so they could flow better together.
3. Synthesis is basically using multiple sources and finding parts where they connect with each other, whether they are agreeing with each other or not. My first draft was mostly just showing what each source said, as the drafts went on to my final paper I began to add analysis of their connections to each other.
4. One main accomplishment that I had during this first unit was getting a great understanding of the issue of food safety and food borne illnesses. It was something that I had no knowledge of before and since then I have learned a significant amount about the topic and have a very good grasp of what is going on.
5. My first main idea was just showing what the issue of food safety was and a little bit of background. I quickly realized that this was too broad and I needed to get more specific. I ultimately decided to focus on how little the FDA is doing about it and what they need to do in order to slow down the issue of food safety. I realized I needed to get more specific when it was tough to synthesize the sources as there wasn’t any specific argument to try to find in the sources.
6. I decided to organize it by having a different main point in each paragraph and then adding a few sentences of synthesis. I did this from the beginning and thought it glowed nicely so I did not change it very must from the beginning. However one thing I added was the outside source at the end to provide additional evidence.
7. “This is an issue as the other texts offer organic food as the main way to avoid all of these food safety issues.” Here I was talking about how Hurst’s article says that organic food isn’t as safe as we believe it is. All of the other sources name it as an alternative to big business food which has issues with food safety.
8. Old:Food safety is becoming a larger and larger issue every year as company’s sacrifice safety for an increase in profits. The FDA and the government might seem like they are doing their job, but this is not the case as they are highly ineffective in making sure that the food that we eat is same to consume. If food safety is to become a lesser issue, there are going to need to be major changes made to the FDA and the other governmental agencies in charge.

   New:Food safety is becoming a growing issue every year as large companies sacrifice cleanliness and health for profit. The FDA and government agencies responsible are under budgeted and under manned causing them to be highly ineffective in halting this issue of food safety.

   The new one is much more concise and specific which was the issue with the first one and the feedback that I received on it.

9.  One thing I would like to work on for future projects is my ability to fluidly go from one point to another. I think although it isn’t terrible in this paper there is definitely a lot of room for improvement for future projects.

Food safety is becoming a larger and larger issue every year as companies sacrifice safety for an increase in profits. The FDA and the government might seem like they are doing their job, but this is not the case as they are highly ineffective in making sure that the food that we eat is same to consume. If food safety is to become a lesser issue, there are going to need to be major changes made to the FDA and the other governmental agencies in charge.

In Marian Nestle’s “resisting food safety” the lack of organization and integration between the USDA, FDA and the government is exposed. “Any facility producing a food that involves both agencies must deal with inspectors operating under two entirely different sets of guidelines and schedules.” (Nestle, Page 57). The egg industry for example has three different agencies involved in regulations and food safety. This is an issue because they don’t work together making it harder for the company to please each of the agencies. It also makes it less efficient as they don’t work together and pool their resources together, instead they act completely independent of each other. Making their already small budget even less effective.

“You are what they eat” takes on a different approach by focusing on the issues with the feed supply and how little the government is doing about it. The FDA doesn’t seem to truly care if the acts that they put in to place, are actually followed. “Four years after the feed ban took effect, the FDA still had not acted promptly to compel firms to keep prohibited proteins out of cattle feed and to label animal feed that cannot be fed to cattle.” (You are what they eat, page 29). This just shows that the FDA put in place a policy and doesn’t even make sure the firms are following it. It seems like they made the act to please the public, yet don’t care about making sure the act is used to its full potential.

Marian Nestle further more extends this idea that the FDA does not go all the way with its policies. “The initial system worked well to keep sick animals out of the food supply but was poorly designed to deal with the challenges of microbes.” (Page 55). In this passage Nestle is talking about a policy that was put in place to make the feed safer for the final product. However, she points out that it might help some of the issues, but they completely ignored the issue of microbes. Which she argues is the main issue for food safety and the FDA needs to do more to control.

Blake Hurst’s “Organic Illusions,” focuses more on the false idea behind organic foods. His argument is that organic foods are not as safe as most people think. He even argues that they might be more dangerous and that the farming techniques are more impractical. “We don’t have enough land to turn our backs on the work of generations of agriculture scientists and industrial farmers, and we can’t afford the opportunity costs of a return to some romantic version od agriculture.” (Organic illusions). Basically saying that with the current demand it isn’t possible to produce enough food using organic methods, instead we have to keep “industrial” farming. But hopefully with better regulations that can improve food safety. Organic illusions also focuses on how Organic food isn’t the answer to safer and healthier food. This is an issue as the other texts offer organic food as the main way to avoid all of these food safety issues.

Next is Food Inc. which shows how big business is ruining farming and with it is taking down food safety, while the FDA sits idly bye. The reason why they don’t intervene much is, as shown in Food Inc., most of the FDA has connections to a lot of these big meat packing businesses such as Tyson. A lot of the higher ups in the FDA has other motives when it comes to food safety. Often making decisions that benefit the big businesses rather then food safety as a whole.

Another trend that is seen in most of the sources, is that the FDA is severely under budgeted and doesn’t have the money to control all of the food that is consumed in the United States.“About 80 percent of seafood sold in the US is imported. Yet the FDA test only about 2 percent.” (You are what they eat, Page 30). This is just one example of how little the FDA is able to regulate compared to the huge quantity of food that is being produced as well as imported. The FDA only has 700 employees to regulate not only all food but meat poultry and eggs. They also regulate all drugs that are used in the United States. They are severely under manned in order to effectively regulate all of the markets they are responsible for. Due to this they only do inspections every one to five years. It is not frequent enough to squash the issue of food safety. The USDA does a better job as they have 7000 employees which allows them to inspect almost daily. (Nestle). Yet with the lack of solid policies even the USDA struggles as they regulate all meat after the slaughterhouse.

Luckily, the FDA is starting to notice these issues as well as the rise in food-borne related illnesses. “The eight per cent increase is due to a number of factors, including $268.7m in user fees for projects tied to a number of areas including the implementation of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FMSA).” (http://www.foodingredientsfirst.com/News/FDA-Seeks-Eight-Per-Cent-Budget-Uplift-to-Improve-Food-Safety-Standards.html?section=Food%20Ingredients%20News&tracking=All%20News&article_type=article). Although it might not be a huge overhaul, it is a step in the right direction. The proposed budget would be $5.1 billion for the period of October 2016 to September 2017, meaning that it would not have an impact for a decent amount of time. Just another reason why the FDA is struggling as everything moves on a very slow basis. They are always reacting to a problem rather then trying to prevent them from happening. The FDA and other government agencies responsible for food safety are constantly playing a game of catch up, and losing. Big business knows this and has the resources to exploit it. Food Safety wont begin to decline as an issue until the FDA and other government agencies begin to take charge and make changes before an issue arises.

Unfortunately, it is easier said then done. Although an increase in budget by a small percentage sounds good. It is nowhere near what they need. They are still severely under budgeted and understaffed to effectively prevent the issues of food safety. $5.1 billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, but as a percentage of how much the government spends it is next to nothing. Food-borne illnesses are becoming a huge problem in the United States as big outbreaks such as Chipotle are becoming more and more common. An issue as large as food safety, which is causing millions of illnesses and thousands of deaths, deserves a much larger budget in order to attack it in an effective manner. Yet the issue continues to grow and the FDA continues to sit idly by, just doing enough to satisfy most people, but not enough to actually tackle the issue.

Food Safety is a growing issue as more and more food becomes contaminated. Causing the amount of Americans getting food borne illnesses to rise, including the deadly ones such as e coli. The FDA and the other government agencies responsible must begin getting larger budgets as well as producing policies that can better regulate the food in America. The government needs to allocate some of its trillion dollar budget in order to tackle an issue that is increasing every year, and next to nothing is being done about. The FDA and other government agencies are slowly beginning to do a better job, but they still need to do a much better job.