Is Our Government Telling the Truth?

Can we trust the people on Capitol Hill?

It seems that we hear this all the time in the news and in the headlines but we only care for a short time before resorting back to our day-to-day rituals and go on as if nothing is wrong, but we are the ones who are wrong. Situations that have come up in the news such as the recent “Heartbleed bug”, “sceurity breaches at the center of Apple”, or “constant breaching of credit card accounts” among members of companies such as Target and Neiman Marcus, are but only a few that we seem to read about and see on television and yet we do not do anything about it when the time comes to act.

Internet privacy has continued to be a huge issue among large corporations, local businesses as well as everyday, hardworking citizens of our country. We turn to our government for help or some sort of guidance but how do we know that they are going to help when we see no results. According to sources at Digital Trend, over half of the people in the US have reported that the government is “not doing enough to protect their data and private information” and since those upbringings, over half of the country has pushed to have more regulations toward protecting our data and personal information.

Many people have complained that their should be a law passed in order for more reform or a push for some change in the way that the government regulates privacy among users of the Internet but what others have worried about is that having the government involved is not such a good idea in the sense that we need to self-govern ourselves on the Internet, although that idea may seem rash when first thinking about it, the Internet was created by people and so were the security systems that we use before word of the government or NSA getting involved started to sprout up.

What there needs to be in today’s ever expanding technological society is that we have to establish a middle ground with the government and online companies in order to feel safe on the Internet once again without the fear that our accounts, personal information, data or any other area of our network is at risk of being accessed. However, the way in which we can meet this middle ground is still very unclear and will be for some time until we can get straight answers from our own authority, which, in this day and age only seems like a pipe dream, but it is a goal that can be reached if we persist as a nation who feels violated. There can be change, change that would bring a desirable outcome to our nation. However, in order to reach that outcome, we as a country need to remember that we all have a voice and still have a right to our privacy.

Are we safe online?

Article written by: Geoff Duncan – April 21, 2015

More on this article can be found at: http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/government-warn-us-data-breaches/#!FEFKr

Pictures found on Google Images (search term): US Capitol Building / “Government” + “Internet”

Government Attempting to Strew the Unimportance of Network Security

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/4/10/1397128389426/Skull-and-crossbones-on-t-011.jpg

Security amongst the Internet is still a prominent issue in today’s tech world and the government is doing just about nothing about it but tell us it is nothing to worry about. The term that has spread throughout the Internet is the “Heartbleed computer security bug” and it is anything but okay. This has revealed that we do not view Internet security as a big issue which is, in fact a huge issue. This neglect simply demonstrates that we do not care enough for our own safety on the Internet.

According to the Long Island Press, we spend more than $50 billion dollars a year on spying as well as intelligence while software engineers are building defense soft-wares such as OpenSSL which insures that we are protected from hackers as well as assures that our connection is strong. The corporation that supports the OpenSSL software only receives donations of $2,000 a year, which is no where near enough to ensure that we are protected. Steve Marquess, of the OpenSSL software company stated recently that “There should be at least a half dozen full time OpenSSL team members, not just one, able to concentrate on the care and feeding of OpenSSL without having to hustle commercial work” (LongIslandPress) The problem here is that the software company depends solely on those donations that fund the company’s research and development.

Again, this neglect is a mere sign that we are considering this as a non-issue and we are almost completely vulnerable to hackers and software failures. Sites such as Facebook and Google are but two companies that are large contributors to the OpenSSL software company and are affected the most by the “Heartbleed 2014”. These companies code is displayed publicly which puts all of their users at a huge risk of loss of privacy.

The one thing that the government continues to tell us is that we are to frequently change our password in order to prevent the threat of being hacked or in trouble. The NSA says that they had no idea that this was happening and are not concerned that this “issue”, according to them, will be something to worry about. Something that can be noted here is that the risk of your passwords being stolen and used remains much lower than the risk of your password being hacked from a website that were using “broken encryption standards”. Although we are told that we are not at risk, criminals as well as the government have many different ways to obtain your information these days by sending out fake emails, spam, or impersonating emails from your bank.

I do not know how safe I am these days since we are told that this is a non-issue according to the government. I feel as though it is coming to the point where we are never going to be safe while using the Internet, even though just about everything we do is online these days.. Hopefully by changing our passwords often, we will feel like we are going to be safe, even if it is a small feeling of hope. So remember, beware that the websites you use are at risk of obtaining your information, no matter how complicated your passwords may be.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-f8dC01RcSqc/U0yHd6wGkrI/AAAAAAAABq4/Smbhmi-7ZGw/s1600/heartbleed-bug.jpg

Original source: http://www.longislandpress.com/2014/04/20/the-u-s-government-paying-to-undermine-internet-security-not-to-fix-it/

Written by: Julia Angwin ProPublica on April 20, 2015 Long Island Press

Pictures obtained by: Google Images (search term: Heartbleed computer virus)

US transfers control of the Internet to foreign countries

Recently, a decision in Washington was made regarding the U.S. government ceding its last bits of control and power over the Internet. Over the years, the government has maintained its control over the Internet by keeping in contact with those who administer the Internet such as ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles. The decision to transfer the power is still up in the air, but as to where the transition is going is still unknown to the public.

According to a source at Fox News, this decision has been a topic for a number of years now, nearly two decades in the making. The recent acceleration in the transfer of control of the Internet to “global” communities has become more and more apparent because of the government’s invasion of privacy amongst US citizens and high amounts of pressure coming from foreign countries. The fear that the US faces with this transfer is whether or not that other nations will share the same concept of commitment to free speech and expression in the Internet and if these countries are going to have a significant influence on the Internet. President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Robert Atkinson came out on his organization’s website stating that the US is stepping back from its “bodyguard” role indefinitely and will remain that way if this push for control of the Internet comes to fruition.

Though the government does not have complete control over ICANN, they continue to oversee just about everything that the organization does for the Internet. ICANN manages many important areas of the Internet which include the domain name system and IP addressing. The government is concerned that with this loss of control will result in classified information being leaked, much like the WikiLeaks scandal that occurred several years prior.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-nsa-collects-all-phone-calls-from-one-foreign-country/

Original content written by: Judson Berger of Fox News (Published March 18, 2015)

Pictures taken from: Google Images

More on the this story can be found here: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/03/18/us-transfer-internet-control-years-in-making-fueled-by-foreign-pressure/

Zuckerberg vs. the US Government (Privacy)

It seems that Internet security seems to continue to be a hot topic in today’s use of the Internet and even Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg thinks peoples’ security are in jeopardy. Earlier in March, Mark Zuckerberg made a personal call to President Barack Obama to discuss his concerns with how the government is “damaging” the Internet’s security. In an earlier posting on Facebook, Zuckerberg posted multiple times that he has been feeling “confused and frustrated” because of how the government continues to intrude on their users private online interactions. This is not the first time that Mark has been on the alert for government involvement of Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg and his team of engineers has continuously worked toward bettering the security of their Facebook users and preventing others from hacking other profiles and gaining private information, but he never dreamed that he would be protecting his users from our own US government. This problem is something that Mark is trying to figure out and work through with the President’s help. Reports from a friendly journalist of Zuckerberg’s, Glenn Greenwald, informed the Facebook CEO that the NSA allegedly “masqueraded themselves as a fake Facebook server” in an attempt to infect their intended users with malware. Upon further discussion and an attempt to speak with the NSA, the NSA denied that they had any action involving impersonating Facebook and other social media sites. As mentioned before, Mark Zuckerberg reached out to President Barack Obama to find a solution for reform, but unfortunately it seems that in order for that to come to light in the public eye, it is going to take a long time to see a true change in the government’s activity on the Internet. Zuckerberg continues to find a way to a reasonable outcome but in the mean time it is nothing but mere frustration for the young Facebook founder.

Facebook is one, if not the ultimate, dominant social media website to be used since the rise and fall of MySpace in the early 2000’s. Facebook, as well as other sites including Twitter, have continued to complain about the “limited information” that they can release to the public regarding the requests from the government for consumer data. This is not the first attempt that Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have made in order to see a change in the way that the government access certain pieces of information. It is now a waiting game as far as seeing if the President will follow through with a reasonable answer to Zuckerberg and the Facebook populations’ demand for privacy. Only time and diligence will tell.

 

Original Source of news: NBC News

Link to news site: http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/zuckerberg-u-s-government-threat-internet-security-n52151

Photos taken from: Google Images (search term: Mark Zuckerberg)

How Government Influences GOOGLE

Earlier this week, Google’s transparency report was published highlighting on how much the government saturates the Internet and basically shapes what people can and cannot find on dominant sites such as Facebook, Google and Twitter. In the report Google announced that there was another upswing in “removal requests” from multiple governments. Google is continuing to fight the government on these removals of certain sites while trying to maintain a relationship to where they can post regarding political events and not be penalized for it. This struggle with the requests shows how difficult it is to balance between having Internet freedom while upholding local laws and how this will continue to harm search sites such as Google. The government wants sites such as Google to restrict the public from viewing certain documents such as results from defamation lawsuits  or visiting specific sites that they do not want them having access to. Amongst all of this chaos, Google as well as other tech sites are trying to find a “common ground” where the government can regulate them while maintaining the goal of a “free and open Internet”.

Google owns seventy-five percent of the Internet today, basically giving them nearly almost if not all the power to publish what they want, regulate what people can and cannot see and maintain the structure of freedom on the web. In my eyes, the government should only be regulating certain areas of the Internet that would put the people as well as themselves in any sort of danger or harm such as hackers, obscenity and sites such as “wikileaks” because those are the areas of the Internet that cause the most trouble more than anything else on the Worldwide Web. Google offers some sort of degree of transparency on how it censors and removes certain pieces of information at the governments’ request. However, the main thing that Google must do is to take a stand on how they should go about these removal requests, no matter where the information originated from, be it from the U.S. or other restricted areas. Google has continued to rise over the years since its initial launch and gradual takeover of the Internet, but in order to maintain the power and the credibility that they have been able to perserve, they have to be able to handle the removal requests that the government throws at them while remaining true to their audience who uses their site on a daily basis.

 

More on this article can be found here: http://www.mobiledia.com/news/154287.html

Image taken from: Google Images (search term: Google headquarters)

Google’s Main Headquarters

About Me

Hello,

My name is Evan Thomas and welcome to my blog page. Every post on here has been appropriately read and interpreted by myself as well as cited properly in order to prevent any sign of plagiarism. I respect every writer who I read information from and they hold all rights to their original content. I hope this blog helps give you a look into how our government is not doing much of “governing” of our own privacy.  I am a graduate from THE Florida State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Information and Communication Technology. I am eager to be posting commentary on the evolution of the Internet and the government involved in it. I hope that you review my posts with an open mind and see that there are alternatives to just about anything, and to remind you that what the government says is “best” for us is not always the “best” resolution. Thank you for visiting my page and I hope to give as much intellectual insight that I can. Thank You!

If I Ruled The Internet

Source: http://the-soccer-essentials.com/5583-2/world-in-your-hands/

It’s a far fetched idea, but just watch I will show you what it would be like if I ruled the Internet 😉