RR 6

Are We Getting Privacy the Wrong Way Around-is great. The writer Kieron O’Hara is a researcher for the Electronic and Computer Science Department at the University of Southampton and has spent time working on the ethical implications behind the gathering of big data and how it affects privacy.
I like the writer’s point of not just supporting the idea of the companies playing God and deciding to take away our individual rights because, “they can”. O’Hara believes “privacy isn’t a private benefit like health or champagne, but a public good like clean air or scientific research” (92). He understands and even works in the world of big data and number crunching, but he also knows that if you are honest with people about what you are doing with their data, there might not be such uproar about the collection of information. It is the secrecy that makes people uncomfortable. It is the secrecy that has to change.

I didn’t enjoy the article, What Is ‘Evil’ to Google, as much. Ian Bogost writes well enough, but we all know Google controls the world, but the idea that they have evolved into a different species is obvious to anyone who started with google in the early stages, and how often they have changed their privacy policy in the last 14 years or so. It seems so obvious, why mention it?

Bogost, Ian. “What Is ‘Evil’ to Google?” The Atlantic. October 15 2013. <http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/what-is-evil-to-google/280573/

O'Hara, Kieron. "Are we Getting Privacy the Wrong Way Round?" IEEE Internet Computing 17.4 (2013): 89-92. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6547595

Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography

Coutin, S. B., (2003). Illegality, borderlands, and the space of nonexistence. Globalization Under Construction: Governmentality, Law, and Identity, 171-202.

This article continues the discussion of living off the grid, which had been the norm for many who were crossing the border and coming to the states for a better life. After 9/11 the Unites States realized the borders were very fluid and loose. The essay is an “ethnography of the space of nonexistence. This space is both imagined and real. Like its residents, it both is and is not there.” At the time of the writing of this, the government was trying to get a handle of who was in the country and where they were.

Coutin, S. B., & Chock, P. P. (1996). “Your friend, the illegal:” Definition and paradox newspaper accounts of US immigration reform. Identities Global Studies in Culture and Power, 2(1-2), 123-148.

It discusses how many in America are living within the shadows of society, but they are not really off the grid because they receive services from the government. Many of the people discussed came across the border or were born here. This is part of my paper because I want to show how times have changed since 1996 and how as technology has integrated in to more of daily life, it is harder to live within the shadows of society.

Orwell, G. (2009). Nineteen eighty-four. Random House LLC.

This book discusses the totalitarian state that George Orwell feared and also felt the world was becoming which he tried to make others aware of when he originally published in 1949. Orwell was way ahead of his time; maybe some of his paranoia is what gave the governments the ideas. Discusses George Orwell’s 1984 and the original plot. 1984 is a reminder to people what happens when the government has complete and total control of your life. It explains how society can change and not for the best when we get to the point of Big Brother keeping tabs on everyone and what happens when a few people have all of the power. While we are not living in his world, many of the predictions did come true. I am including reference to 1984 as an example of our societal shift from the “go out and prosper” to “go out and prosper but remember we are watching your every move”, world that we live in now.

Outram, E. (2011). Living Off the Grid. Earth Common Journal, 1(1). Retrieved from https://journals.macewan.ca/index.php/earthcommon/article/view/10

This is just an over view of what living off the grid requires. It doesn’t discuss technology but discusses the basic needs of a person who intends to live without the creature comforts. “Off-grid living in its simplest form involves finding ways to provide for basic human comforts.” This really discusses the idea that off the grid is not always about hiding from the man, but many times it is about being able to respect mother earth and not over use resources. It presents it in a very positive light.

Philbin, G., & Borkovich, D. J. (2014). American dossier: your life on the internet. Issues in Information Systems, 15(1).

This discusses our information, online. How much there really is. It discusses the fear we should all have and also understanding of how we cannot hide or be anonymous, somewhere there has been something attached to your name and you should really know what is out there on you, but in reality not really sure if it matters.

Robey, B. (1989). Two hundred years and counting: the 1990 census. Population bulletin, 44(1), 3-43.

This discusses how the census has changed since it was first take in the US in 1790. This study discusses, how the populations have changed and migrated throughout the US and the shift which has occurred based on where the jobs are. It also discusses the populations of those living here off the grid, who have for many years not been counted and how changes to the Census are capturing the homeless and off the grid populations.

Rosen, N. (2010). Off the grid: Inside the movement for more space, less government, and true independence in modern America. Penguin.

This author is talking about the restrictions put on those who want to live off the grid in developed countries and how easy it is to live off the grid in less developed countries. There are a lot of hoops to be gone through which require money and time to try to fulfill off the grid living in the US.

Strunk, D., Colin, S., Chris, B., & Desmond, L. (2014). American Cyber Insecurity: The growing danger of cyber attacks.

Discusses what we should be afraid of others being able to do with our online information. It’s already out there, and they already have access. This paper covers how as we have more information available online and in databases, our lives are an open book, we as citizens should be concerned with who has access, how they get it, and what they are doing with it. The paper discusses the deficiencies in the current response to cyber attacks and suggests what can be changed to make our information safer.

Does Digital Scholarship Have a Future?

I enjoyed reading this article, not because it was written by the president of the university but because it really does make sense. I can remember a time when just the mention of something new which could be done online would send everyone running to their dial up connections trying to be part of the “new thing”.

Dr. Ayers has provided research to indicate this trend is over, there are those who are skeptical of the “new thing” and not so quick to jump on band wagon.  This could be good or bad, but to me, it seems if it is related to knowledge and learning, it is important to try to find some common ground so education and information can be accessed by as many people in the world, no matter their economic background, (24).

The thesis of this paper is, “The innovations which would have amazed us 20 years ago are just considered part of everyday life and no one really gives too much thought to how they intertwine in what we regularly do”, (25).

His definition of Digital Scholarship is the concept which has grown from the grass roots efforts to combine traditional teaching and learning with the digital world.

The purpose of all scholarship is to contribute in a meaningful and enduring way to an identifiable collective and cumulative enterprise.

The challenges to Digital Scholarship are that scholarly innovations are slow moving, scholars have to be willing to commit to a new pace and schedule to stay current and be relevant, and few scholars are trying to do and be innovative today in the same ways they were 20 years ago because the web isn’t this new exciting and cutting edge thing, it’s just part of our lives, (28).

How does scholarship grow when monographic is what it has looked like for a long time, the monographic culture performs hard and essential work by reducing the range of risk in the risky world of original scholarship, (28).

Book Review Big data: A revolution that will transform how we live, work, and think

Big data: A revolution that will transform how we live, work, and think is written by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier. Mayer-Schönberger is the Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford His research focuses on the role of information in a networked economy. He taught for ten years at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Mayer-Schönberger has published seven books, as well as over a hundred articles. He is a personal adviser to the Austrian Finance Minister on innovation policy. Yes, he is an expert. Cukier has as just an impressive resume, Kenneth Cukier is the Data Editor of The Economist. From 2002 to 2004 he was a research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, working on the Internet and international relations. 

His writings have also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Prospect, The Financial Times and Foreign Affairs, among others. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s global agenda council on data-driven development.

The authors of Big data, are experts in their field. They bring years of experience and vast knowledge to present their case that big data, is going to change our lives, each of us and basically we better get used to it, because the revolution has been going on for years. We as laymen are just now coming to full understanding of how much information has been out there and mined on us. The author’s explain, the data mining has been going on for years but because of the size of data sets available, most of it was not being used. Samples were taken to try and determine patterns and make predictions, and these patterns were used to summarize theories of well, basically everything.

Big data, if we are not careful can be used for bad. Examples, have been given throughout time, but a good example provided by the authors is the escalation of the Vietnam War. They argue the use of data was used to give power to those who were already powerful, “And it was a similar hubris that led the United States to escalate the Vietnam War partly on the basis of body counts, rather than to base decisions on more meaningful metrics” (Mayer 168). Robert McNamara was Secretary of State at the time of the war and later in life admitted many of the statistics used and data assumptions made-were incorrect. Hindsight being what it is, he was still not able to admit data manipulation by powerful people was one of the reasons the United States found itself so entrenched for so long in Vietnam (Mayer 169). If all of the data available at the time had been able to be used to make policy decisions, the authors argue this part of history might have played out a little differently.

The authors explain, it is not so much about the data being big, it is about capturing everything that is available. The processing of data has changed businesses approach to sales, What Big Data realized is it didn’t matter ‘why’…knowing ‘what’ is how you get clients to click and buy (Mayer 52). The authors applaud Google for figuring it out before everyone else. Google started scanning and adding all ‘available’ data to their database long and then let their algorithms figure out how to make sense of it. Messy, dirty- it didn’t matter. What mattered was have all of the information on hand and eventually patterns would emerge, (Mayer 45). Google proved it could be done, and in doing so, they helped change the way we look at information and how it is gathered.

So, as I said, the authors do a great job of explaining and giving examples of how big data works, but I am going to be honest here-it is scary. It is scary to have this much information available out there to anyone who wants to spend a bit of time digging and finding it.

In the article, Big data: are we making a big mistake? Tim Hartford discusses specific examples of some of the downsides of Big Data. One way he explains it is, though the companies like Google and Amazon are analyzing all this data, because they do not share their data sets, how do we know what is being studied. He cautions the reader to not jump too quickly on the bandwagon of the experts, Cukier and Mayer-Schönberger and argues that their theory of N=ALL cannot in fact be true, because we really have no way of ever having all of the information, it’s continuously changing and impossible to capture (Hartford).

Big data, is an interesting book, however I believe it spends too much time talking about all the wonderful things data has to offer us, and not enough time questioning how the intrusion in our private lives is effecting the individual. The ability to manipulate and control our lives, seems a bit disturbing and makes me want to unplug from the internet even more, as I realize how much information they already have.

http://www.cukier.com/knccv.html

Harford, Tim. “Big Data: Are We Making a Big Mistake?” Financial Times. March 28 2014. <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/21a6e7d8-b479-11e3-a09a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2ziUgQIoH>.

http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=174

Prospectus

Rulers throughout time have tried tracking the people who live within their lands. Different methods were used to try to identify who was born, who died, and who moved away. Tracking was often the responsibility o the church or local government. In the United States there is not an actual federal law, which indicates how records are to be kept, however, there are certain requirements in place that guarantee most citizens will comply with the norms of 2014 America.

There was an original purpose for trying to track citizenry, there was a shift which occurred, and now all of our movements appear to be watched; everything is tracked, an the tracking is less associated with being for the good of the people and more to do with nefarious activities by the government and everyone who is watching. Is it possible that a person born today; could ever truly live off the grid and not be tracked by the government?

I. History of Tracking

A. Church

B. Local government

C. No Federal Law

II. Social Security

A. Benefits require proof.

B. Wanted to make sure fair and equitable payments

1. Wanted to prevent fraud

2.  Started tracking life events

a. Moves

b. Marriages

c. Birth

d. Deaths

III. Reasons changed

A. Crime

B. Terrorism

C. 9/11

D. Patriot Act

IV. National Security trumps Privacy

A. Everyone is a suspect

B. Starts at pregnancy

V. Countries of the world

A. Who do not have our sophisticated systems in place

B. Possible to start life off the grid

C. Possible to disappear if you can get there

Working Bibliography

Coutin, S. B., & Chock, P. P. (1996). “Your friend, the illegal:” Definition and paradox in newspaper accounts of US immigration reform. Identities Global Studies in Culture and Power, 2(1-2), 123-148.

It discusses how many in America are living within the shadows of society, but they are not really off the grid because they receive services from the government.

Dice, M. (2011). Big Brother: The Orwellian Nightmare Come True. Mark Dice.

This book discusses some of the original fears George Orwell brought to light in his book 1984, which was published in 1949. It shows how much of the original predictions from Orwell actually have come true

http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/

Discusses George Orwell’s 1984 and the original plot.

Outram, E. (2011). Living Off the Grid. Earth Common Journal, 1(1). Retrieved from https://journals.macewan.ca/index.php/earthcommon/article/view/10

This is just an over view of what living off the grid requires. It doesn’t discuss technology but discusses the basic needs of a person who intends to live without the creature comforts. “Off-grid living in its simplest form involves finding ways to provide for basic human comforts.”

Philbin, G., & Borkovich, D. J. (2014). AMERICAN DOSSIER: YOUR LIFE ON THE INTERNET. Issues in Information Systems, 15(1).

This discusses our information, online. How much there really is.

Rosen, N. (2010). Off the grid: Inside the movement for more space, less government, and true independence in modern America. Penguin.

This author is talking about the restrictions put on those who want to live off the grid in developed countries and how easy it is to live off the grid in less developed countries. There are a lot of hoops to be gone through which require money and time to try to fulfill off the grid living in the US.

Strunk, D., Colin, S., Chris, B., & Desmond, L. (2014). American Cyber  Insecurity: The growing danger of cyber attacks.

Discusses what we should be afraid of others being able to do with our online information. It’s already out there, and they already have access.

Reading Response 4

So my question that I am trying to narrow down is, how are we being hacked, and how is it still continuing?

Are we safe, should we go off the grid? Can we even go off the grid? Is it possible that a person born today; could ever actually live off the grid?

As I continued to follow up on the idea of who is hacking and how, I came across a few articles. One is an excerpt from the Bank of England Financial Stability Report. The report is a synopsis of everything that has an effect on the financial health of the Bank. The report is from November 2013 and discusses what the bank has to worry about outside of inflation and interest rates, “The BoE said: “Cyber attack has continued to threaten to disrupt the financial system. In the past six months, several UK banks and financial market infrastructures have experienced cyber attacks, some of which have disrupted services”,(Cyber).  Banks understand cyber attacks are a concern, but this is a product and not the beginning. 

I am trying to understand how, we get to the point that banks are no longer just concerned with inflation and interest rates, how is cyber security one of their main focuses. I found a book titled, Cyber Forensics: From Data to Digital Evidence, the book discusses the history of code, amongst other things and explains how a system had to be agreed to which allowed for communication by everyone in a standardized way. This code is called binary, “The representation of complex language patterns for digital communications began with the primary building blocks”, (Marcela 284). 

I am at the beginning binary and the end, where we are all concerned about cyber attacks but the middle is what is missing. What happened, to allow hackers to infiltrate our safety and security zone. How did it happen and why?

Countries of the world have been attacking each other in any way possible, since th beginning of “countries”. Contrary to popular belief, cyber warfare started way before the 1990s. According to the authors of American Cyber Insecurity: The growing danger of cyber attacks, cyber attacks were a concern of the United States Government in the 1970s. As more of the government became connected through computers, more warnings occurred that our government was becoming vulnerable. In the 1990s, the truth of the vulnerability was revealed when “cyber attacks for fun”, were created and released, just to see what “they would do”(Strunk 7-10). While other countries were trying to figure out how to get into our computers, at home we had people doing it for fun. This fun, helped expose how vulnerable we were as a country. 

Now I have the history, middle, and present day. Where does this put me? I am not sure, yet. I haven’t narrowed down my idea completely, but I do have quite a bit of research I have already conducted. 

 

Will it ever be safe to be on the Internet, and in reality, does it matter?

Is this my question? Maybe.

Clara 

 

Bibliography

Cyber attacks. (2013, Nov 29). Financial Times

Marcella, A. J., & Guillossou, F. (2012). Wiley Corporate F&a, Volume 587: Cyber Forensics : From Data to Digital Evidence. Hoboken, NJ,  USA: John Wiley & Sons.

Strunk, D., Colin, S., Chris, B., & Desmond, L. (2014). American Cyber  Insecurity: The growing danger of cyber attacks.

Exploratory Essay

The Ted Talk that I watched or the one that stuck-because I watched a few, was The One’s and Zero’s Behind Cyber WarFare presented by Chris Domas. Domas is an expert, at least in his field. He works for a world renounced research group, Battelle Memorial Institute, that has somehow managed to keep their nonprofit status in a for profit universe. Until I do some more digging and find a different answer, he as well as his group will be some of my go to sources for finding additional information-if I am able to pursue the topic.

I watched several different talks. At first, I tried narrowing down based on subject but after a few Ted Talks that did not really grab my attention, I came across this one. It could have been due to my previously relationship with the government, but I have been fortunate enough to be in some of those watch centers in the major metropolitan areas of the United States and seen the number of people working to keep us safe. The crazy part is, the number of people receiving the information who probably don’t understand it. It’s like, there are just Zero’s and Ones, so how come those who are sneaking up on us can just sneak code in, how can they do it if we have just as many people trying to stop them.

Who is watching and are the watchers on our side? Why are they watching?

Is the watching really keeping us safe or is it causing others to try harder to sabotage us?

Who is really in control?

If they stumble across something not related to national security, what do they do with the information? Are they keeping it on the side, for use later to use against us? Paranoia is a gift that just keeps giving. If we were to think about this too much, I think it would really take many of us off-line.

I remember waaaaaay back when the Internet was a new thing, and as companies launched websites, there was discussion of whether or not our information was “safe” on the Internet. The question always arose of who had access to what we were putting out there. Companies did a great job of selling us on the technology and security. There were many who were skeptical, and purchasing items on the internet started slow, but then as larger companies started creating sites and offering their merchandise, the skeptics lost out. It seemed that overnight, everyone was purchasing on the Internet. No one looked back, security breaches were accepted as just being part of doing business.

So as I am writing this, I realize I am getting in the weeds.

I am getting bogged down in the WHAT: what, why, when, who; I realize I need to back up and say HOW?

How did/ do they continue to get access? How is it so easy for the 1s and 0s to get hacked? How did it start? How did the computer companies leave such a huge access door in to the systems?

After figuring out the HOW, then the question is was it intentional? Did the computer companies do it so they could watch what people were doing and now that the door is open, they can’t close it.

Who were the original hackers and who were they after?

I think about some of the movies from the 80s where teenagers used computers to change grades or absences like in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It was considered cute and fun to have teenagers easily hack into the school systems or as in War Games, the US missile defense system.

I say these things to bring up the point of, why we have a country of the most intelligent people with access to all of the information and tools, why are teenage kids in Russia, with far less sophisticated equipment able to hack some of our most protected systems and gain access.

Has the ease of technology made all of us unsafe? Who is watching?

How far off the grid does a person have to go, in order to be considered safe?

So I have been trying to not sound like a paranoid person as I puzzle on how to narrow this down to a specific topic, but as I read more articles-it a scary world out there. Is it to the point that no matter what we do, we cannot escape someone always watching?

I want to know how the hackers get through the Ones and Zeros and why can’t we stop them. I want to know if it is possible to feel safe in a digital society when with a few taps on a keyboard and a credit card, all of a person’s information can be obtained.

So, I don’t have my complete question YET, but I feel like I am getting close.

Clara

Working Bibliography

Easley, L. E. (2014). Spying on Allies. Survival, 56(4), 141-156.

Hjortdal, M. (2011). China’s use of cyber warfare: Espionage meets strategic deterrence. Journal of Strategic Security, 4(2), 2.

Kim, Y., Kim, I., & Park, N. (2014). Analysis of cyber attacks and security intelligence. In Mobile, Ubiquitous, and Intelligent Computing (pp. 489-494). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Marcella, A. J., & Guillossou, F. (2012). Wiley Corporate F&a, Volume 587: Cyber Forensics : From Data to Digital Evidence. Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons.

Strunk, D., Colin, S., Chris, B., & Desmond, L. (2014). American Cyber Insecurity: The growing danger of cyber attacks.

Vande Putte, D., & Verhelst, M. (2014). Cyber crime: Can a standard risk analysis help in the challenges facing business continuity managers?. Journal of business continuity & emergency planning, 7(2), 126-137