Friday, October 3, 2014

How Safe are we???


In today's day and time, we entrust our devices to store almost every piece of information about ourselves, from our name to our social security numbers and addresses. Most recently,  the U.S. has been making large strides in the tech industry further integrating society into technology. Current examples of this would include, further automation of wall street as well as the push in the pentagon for online voting. First, as far as wall street goes, the government now has almost 50% of trades for the US government debt in bonds to give traders a more competitive edge, leaving the prosecution of millions of orders left to a machine. To continue, the pentagon now is investing millions on online voting, giving a voice to those who may be unable to reach a voting poll such as our soldiers in other nations.

But is it really safe? We like to think that our government is impenetrable from any attack, living up to the superpower image that has been created for our nation, but it simply is not true. As of recently, it was made public that JP Morgan Chase-the largest bank in the US- was hacked and that the information of 76 million was breached releasing addresses emails and banking information. While this is one of the largest and most frightening security breaches for America in a while it represents a trend of hacking that is becoming too common in our society. Large companies such as Target, Home Depot, and many more name brands are now being targeted with little to no defense. With so many Issues of security it brings to question, is the government doing enough. Are they providing enough protection for the private sector? Is it right to move forward with integrating society into technology with so much uncertainty in privacy?

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Well, the government should do more to protect their own things that are related to technology. I think protection is something that entities should be self-reliant in regards too. If companies want to maintain customers and clients, then they should be willing to put in the money and time to guarantee a secure system, the same going for governments. Yes, the government should try to do more in regards to hackers and attempting to cut off this sort of malicious use of technology. Essentially, protection is an independent concept within the private sector. I think the progression that with we integrate technology into society with lots of uncertainty regarding privacy is dangerous. Rapid implementation of technology is a rocky road of failure and public outcry.

Unknown said...

I agree with Christian. Security should be handled by the individual companies/people, though I'm sure many companies would cut corners to maximize profits. I believe that the government should stay away from regulating the internet for a variety of reasons. For starters, it is a global thing, not something that is US owned or even US operated, meaning any sort of regulation would have to come unanimously from every country. Secondly, due to the nature of the interwebs, itll be essentially impossible to remove or prevent any sort of info spread (ie the Fappening). Government is doing as much as it should right now, and i think it would be a costly mistake to try to expand its role in internet privacy.

Unknown said...

I agree with Christian's assertion that integrating technology into society when it does not necessarily secure privacy and other important factors is very risky. That is why I'm not sure if the government should be pushing online voting when the system could be hacked and manipulated. In regards to recent hacks on businesses like JP Morgan, I think that while security is important the advancement of technology is still necessary even if it means more security breaches in the future.

Unknown said...

I feel that we have moved to far in the process of integrating society into technology to stop the process. In this case, we have to accept that much of our own personal information is on some sort of storage and that it is potentially accessible to people who want that information, whether it be trying to steal it, or to make profit from it. Many private companies put much of that information in places with good security that is essential. The governments appears to also put our own personal information at risk by having it accessible on the web. At the same time we ourselves also do that. I feel that the government definitely needs to take lead on ensuring security exists to protect our information and it should require private companies to do the same.