Big Data and the Goverment

An interesting discussion was had in class: to what extent is it okay for the government to gather data that for some might me considered private? In The Cuckoo's Egg this idea is also explored, and I have reached the conclusion that if we want some security, we need to allow the government agencies to have access to this data. Nevertheless, where do we draw a line? If it is to little, then it cannot be used for any good. If it is too much, then it can be damaging to people's privacy and to our trust of the government. I have often thought about the amount of power that we can give to government agencies if we let them have all of our data; visions of Big Brother dystopian societies come to me. I believe that we must be wary of this problem, and that we have to accept that some of this data must be shared. Nevertheless, we must not stand in silence and let it go by if at some point the government crosses the line where we as people do not have any more privacy.

Modern Day Cuckoo's Eggs?

It has become evident to me that the problem of cyber security will be a problem that we will continue to have for as long as computers exist, and for as long as we continue to be computer illiterate. As I read The Cuckoo's Egg, I just couldn't help but be dumbfounded at how careless the people in charge of computer security were, and at how they left critical parts of a system completely open for anyone to pry on; the most sobering part of it is that it could all have been easily avoided if they had just cared a little bit.

In the book, we read about how the hacker kept turning knobs in hope that some careless system manager would've left a door unprotected and wide open for them to come in, explore, change and steal. What I ask myself is, what where they thinking? Were they really this oblivious about the security holes? As I kept reading, and as Cliff Stoll continued to interact with the system managers, it became apparent to me that they were not clueless, that they had knowledge about the holes, but ultimately neglected them on the grounds that they didn't think any normal person could come in and cause any harm since they were not educated enough in computer systems to know about them. The problem is that all the people that came knocking were the people that knew of such exploits, and would not forgive once they found any open doors.

Many years have passed since then, and with it a wave of changes have come into society because of the Internet and of modern day computers. Computers have disseminated everywhere, and people use them everyday as a fundamental part of their lives, and hackers have not stopped to exists. I believe that now, more than ever, people need to be conscious about the risks and the problems that can arise in regards to computer security. Even though children are learning about computers and using them from a young age, they are not really learning much about them in terms of security, and problems within the corporate world continue to exist in the same way that they existed in the time of the events of the book. For example, just a couple years ago Sony had a huge hacking problem with their PlayStation Network. In it, millions of user's personal data was compromised, including credit card numbers, and mostly because of carelessness (the data was not encrypted). More recently, there has been a wave of celebrities' phones and their internet accounts being hacked, and their personal data and files disseminated to the internet, much to their dismay; again, because of carelessness.

So, there seem to be two fundamental problems: people not being educated in how to properly secure their data in the internet and personal computers (ie. choosing bad passwords or pins) and also negligence from the industry in regards to acceptable security standards (ie. leaving open holes or not encrypting sensitive data). It believe it is our utmost responsibility to take care of these issues, because computers are not going away, on the contrary, they continue to evolve and I'm sure that they will continue to be more ingrained within society. If that is the case, security has never been more important to us, and I believe that from a young age we should be educated about it seriously so that both users and developers can be better prepared to secure cyber information.