Journal #14 - Where do I go from Here?

                Before taking CIS 115, I knew that I wanted to do something with computer networking because it is what I did for the United States Army for 4 years and it is what I studied in college before I joined the military.  I enjoyed the experience I had with the Army building computer networks and brainstorming of new Information Technology methods.  This class gave me the insight to go deeper into the computer networking field and study Cyber Security.  It seems that Cyber Security is a major topic of discussion in today's society and I would like to go more in dept with it while attending Kansas State University.  Cyber Security experts are in high demand with the government, and this is the reason why the government has poured a lot of money into the Cyber Security Department at K-State.   This money allows the university to give out grants and scholarships to students who want to peruse a degree in cyber security.  As one of these students who is interested, I want to take advantage of this opportunity in the semesters to come.  The Cyber Security Department is small at K-State and so that means that I would have a lot of quality time in class to share my thoughts and ideas with the professor and my peers.  I will get the opportunity to build a professional relationship with my professor and my peers and this will make the knowledge easier to grasp and working on projects easier.

                After I graduate from K-State, I would like to be a hacker and work for the government.  I think being a hacker would be an adventurous career and no two days will be alike.  I will use all of the knowledge that I would have learned from the Cyber Security Department at K-State to outsmart the enemy and come up with new and innovating ways to stop and neutralize the threat.  I will hack the government's own network system to find exploits that the enemy can use and fix them so they are no longer a threat.  I have fought on the front lines before when I was deployed in Iraq, and I have a feeling the next World War will be fought will be in cyberspace.  I will be on the front lines again, but instead of staring at the battlefield from iron sights I will be staring at it from a computer monitor.

Journal #13 - Making Meaning

                Blown to Bits by Abelson, Ledeen, and Lewis gave me a whole new perspective in information security.  This book gave me the idea that any form of technology can be used help us, or be used against us to invade our privacy.  Chapter 2 talks about GPS and how it can be used to help people find their location and maybe even save them from being lost.  GPS can even be used to find important geological and cultural discoveries. This same technology can be used by hackers or criminals to infiltrate our privacy and stalk us.  Chapter 3 warns us of who we send PDF and Microsoft Word Documents to.  This chapter explains that the information we erase from a document can easily be brought back.  Technology provides convenient solutions to programs but in the wrong hands can be used to exploit society.

                This book has tons of valuable information and shouldn’t be taken lightly by anyone, especially CIS students, and especially CIS students who plan to go into Cyber Security, like myself.  This book is relevant to anyone who signs onto a computer, uses GPS to get directions to a destination, has a Facebook account, and everyone who has ever Googled something.  All of the information being inputted is going somewhere.  The big question is “Where does it go?”.  Chapter 4 educates the reader on how search engines know what you are going to search before you even finish typing it in.  For instance, when bring up Google on your web browser and you start typing in the question “Who won…” and all these suggestions pop up like “Who won the Vietnam war?”, “Who won top chef Seattle?”, “Who won king of the nerds?”.  This makes us feel like the entire world is at our fingertips, but in reality Google has already made a profile of your interests based on millions and millions of bits of information obtained from you and other users.  This is information obtained without permission from you and stored somewhere where Google can access it anytime.  You are not anonymous on the Internet.  You have a number associated with you.

                I found a huge amount of interest reading this book because a major topic in society right now is the Counter Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).   CISPA is a bill that if passed would allow the sharing of Internet traffic information between the U.S. government and technology and manufacturing companies.  The government already tracks your activity on the Internet for the purpose of Homeland Security (another department that strips us of individualism and humanity), but this proposed law will allow companies to access your information.  This information then can be used to manipulate the way you think, interests, purchase patterns, and eventually how you act.  Your freewill will dissipate over time.  Propaganda will be designed specifically to you and your morals.  You will believe anything if it you think it is morally correct and the idea promises progress.

Journal #12 - Copyright in the 21st Century

                Although I don't agree on some DRM being used today, I do think that some DRM should be used to protect the creator.  Some DRM methods that are being used today are irrational and extreme, like the one used by Diablo 3.  Diablo 3 forces the player into having an Internet connection and being constantly connected to authentication servers in order to play.  Gamers have to be connected at all times even when the player isn't playing multiplayer mode and plays the game on single player mode.  This creates lag - on single player mode!  In this case, DRM is creating more problems than solutions.   I think the DRM that irritates gamers the most and forces them into piracy is the method used by Serious Sam 3: BFE.  This game unleashes an invincible foe in the form of a scorpion.  No matter what players do it cannot be defeated.  This taunts gamers and forces them to find a way around DRM.  In situations like this, skilled gamers usually hack games to get rid of the problem and then release in to the public.  Now a hack is floating out there on the vast Internet for other gamers to use on their pirated copies.  The game thinks it is a legit copy and the invincible foe is gone, allowing gamers to play the game with no restrictions.  DRM has failed and has increased piracy.

                I think certain programs used to rip movies from DVDs should be outlawed and made illegal.  Programs like this are being used to make digital copies of movies and users post these on the Internet for the community to download.  DVDXCOPY was a program that was banned for a little while because it infringed copyright laws, the ban was lifted after the details were finalized in court.  If the government outlawed programs like this piracy won't cease to exist, but at least it will drastically decrease.  It will send a message to pirates that the government is serious about cracking down on piracy.

                Piracy has always existed and will continue to always exist.  But DRM should not create problems for the honest consumer.  If a consumer legitimately buys a copy of a game or a movie then there should be no problems bundled with it.  If I created a product that I think everyone on the world would want to use I would license it as Proprietary.  I would go this route because I would like to make a profit from my product.  As a creator, I know that my product would be pirated because there isn't really any way around this fact, but at the same time I know most consumers out there are honest (or don't know how to pirate) so I would gain profits from those consumers.

Journal #11 - Filter Bubble. Good or Bad?

                Watching one news station is bad because instead of having your own thoughts and opinions about current events the viewer inherits the opinion of the one news station.  I avoid this form of brainwashing by watching many TV news stations and then after evaluating the points and opinions of the topics that I saw I create my own opinion.  I noticed a "filter bubble" when I was deployed in Iraq, when I went to the dining facility to eat chow there was only one news station that aired on the flat screen TVs all the time.  It was MSNBC.  I found this odd and wondered why only MSNBC was on the TVs instead of Fox News, CNN, or any other news channel.  After some research I found out that General Electric owns MSNBC.  It turns out that General Electric has a lot of contracts with the military so naturally the company is going to be pro war and brainwash the troops into thinking that being in Iraq is a good thing.  Sitting in the dining facility and watching the news while eating my food, I noticed that it always mentioned how even though the country was in debt billions of dollars and couldn't afford the war, occupying Iraq and fighting the war was a good thing.  Where is the logic in that?

                Filter bubbles are molding and shaping our society to think and act a certain way.  These filters are telling males and females to act a certain way that are different from each other, but then at the same time trying to create a custom profile to cater to our likes.  Whenever I visit Amazon.com to do some online shopping it tells me what I should buy.  It is always the suggests the new releases that are usually action movies, but the only reason why I shop online is to find merchandise that I can't find anywhere else.  The latest Bruce Willis movie doesn't interest me when browsing Amazon's online store because I can get that anywhere, even the checkout lane at Dillon's, but it thinks that it interests me just because I am a male between the ages of 25 - 30.  The next time I look up something to buy for my sister's birthday Amazon is going to flood my inbox with sales on Justin Beiber merchandise for a month straight.  I also noticed that Facebook flashes advertisements relating to the military because I listed that I was in the US Army in my employment history.  But now that I'm out of the Army I don't want anything to do with the military.  Nice try Facebook.

                Our society needs to be educated on how to create our own thoughts and opinions and not just regurgitate what we heard on the news.  We need to learn to open our eyes and our minds and listen to many sources before coming to a conclusion that we stamp as our own.  We need to learn to base the credibility of the opinion on the logic, and not who said it.  If we neglect to do this it will be only a matter of time before we lose our freedom and become pawns in a game of chess.  Before we become drones and lose our freewill.

Journal #10 - Personal Stance on Privacy

                Having a Facebook gives me a sense of identity, and I only have one just in case someone wants to look me up and contact me.  So to sum it up, I only have a profile to provide my friends and family another medium to contact me.  I don't update my friends on what I'm having for lunch and post a picture of a burrito I am about to eat from Chipotle.  I think that is unnecessary and find it annoying when people do that.  I don't even complain about a bad day that I am having.   My status on Facebook is usually an announcement about something important going on in my life.  For instance, there is an event that I am going to called Life In Color in Lawrence and I created an event and invited my friends about it just in case they wanted to come along.

                As a society we give too much information on the Internet, Google and Facebook even ask for a phone number to associate with your account.  They claim it is for an extra layer of security, but I think an email address is efficient enough.  Even though I was reluctant to give mine to Facebook I still did, with the logic that if my friends wanted to contact me they can look me up by my phone number.  But I personally know all the friends I have on Facebook, unlike some people who think it's a contest of how many Facebook friends they have and they only have meet 5 or 6 in reality.  There are alternatives to added security, the best method that I noticed and really liked is one used by BioWare's MMORPG Star Wars - The Old Republic.  This layer of security is optional to the player but very affective if you choose to use it:  when logging on, the game asks for a username, password, and the optional layer security is a place to enter a security key (See Figure 1.1).  This isn't a predetermined security key, it is generated on the fly from an iPhone app that is associated with your account.  When you log on, you use the iPhone app to generate a random key, and then you enter the generated key on the log on screen.  If the security keys match you are granted access to your account, if not then your account locks.  An email is sent to your email address notifying you that someone tried to tamper with your account and includes instructions on how to unlock your account.  This would be a good layer of security for online banks, online stores, and any other business transacting money.  Ecommerce could learn something from computer games, good job BioWare.
Figure 1.1
Click to enlarge image.

                Being anonymous adds a layer of security to the user, and other than a web site asking a few questions to verify the user's identity I think the user should be anonymous.  Otherwise some layers of security won't work, like BioWare's security key.  I was online the other day surfing Youtube and saw an advertisement for Pizza Hut.  The odd thing was I was about to open another browser tab to order pizza online.  How did Google Adsense even know that I was hungry for pizza?  Did Google Adsense know that I order pizza online about once per month and it's been almost a month since I've ordered?  I found that weird and disturbing.  Sure enough the advertisement convinced me to order from Pizza Hut and not Papa John's like I usually do.  This fact makes me wonder if Google is keeping tabs on my spending habits and have already created a psychological profile of me.  This makes me wonder if we have any privacy left on the Internet.