Project 03: Security and Encryption

My group wrote a letter to Senator John Kasich advocating for strong encryption and warning about creating a precedent of lowering security standards at the government’s request.  Our letter can be found at https://caseyhanleyethics.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/letter-to-government-representative-regarding-encryption/.

In my opinion, encryption needs to be a fundamental right.  I think that privacy is a right that all citizens should have.  In today’s age, so many people keep extremely confidential and personal information on mobile devices and most have no idea how vulnerable their information is.  I believe that citizens’ personal information belongs to them and them alone.  In an ideal world, all information would be encrypted so that no entities could use the information in malicious ways.  At the same time, if these individuals committed crimes then the government would be able to see their data to help solve the crimes.  Unfortunately, the ideal world is not achievable with today’s technology.  As a result, my current hope is for encryption for all, regardless of the circumstances.  It is much more dangerous to lower security standards and potentially strip privacy from everyone in the US than it is to lose one form of evidence in a handful of criminal cases.

Encryption is a very important issue to me that unfortunately does not receive much attention due to the general public’s lack of knowledge about it and its implications.  I wish that it was a political issue that received attention and discussion.  Because it is not, I unfortunately do not make my political decisions based upon politician’s stance on encryption.  I do not normally spend enough time researching politicians to vote based upon encryption.  However, because it is a pressing issue I really hope that in the near future it will be brought into the spotlight at which point it will certainly influence my voting decisions.

In the struggle between national security and personal privacy, I am extremely scared that privacy will be reduced to the point of non-existence under the pretense of national security.  Already the Snowden leaks have revealed that our government lies to us and does not value security in the same ways that we (or at least I) do.  In so many popular dystopian novels, authors warn of a terrible future in which the ever prevalent factor is always no personal privacy under the guise of national security.  Despite all of these warnings, our world seems to be rapidly approaching this future.  I strongly believe that this is the wrong road to take.  However, I do not know how I can influence this future.  Sadly, in our political system I feel as though individual voices carry very little weight and I have trouble relating to the masses.  I want to fight for privacy and I do voice my opinions with my family and friends (even when it leads to arguments), but I do not know how I can influence the nation and the direction we seem to be heading.

Reading 08: Patent Trolls, Open Source

Patents are government granted license granted to a person or company for an invention or unique process that allows the entity exclusive privileges to commercially produce and sell products that use the patented technology.  Patents are necessary because they protect all of the work that companies or people put into creating a new design/technology/method.  If these creations were not protected, there would be no incentive for people to continue to innovate because as soon as a new idea came to fruition, any other company could take the invention and sell it as their own.  Patents protect the rights to these new designs and help to incentivize continued creation of new and better things.

I think that patents promote invention.  Without protection of intellectual property, the incentive to research and invest in new technologies is largely diminished.  Patents help to even the playing-field so that companies with the means of quickly mass-producing products due to their scale are not at liberty to steal ideas of individuals or small companies and benefit unfairly from their work.  However, this line of thinking does have some problems.  When all parties collaborate, innovation would likely occur at a faster scale because all parties would have access to the most up-to-date technologies.  I think that this trade off is worth it because it protects individual rights and ensures product diversification, which is very important in preventing monopolistic markets.

I admire Elon Musk and Tesla’s decision to release all of their patents and to make their hard work and technologies public knowledge so that the world can benefit from cleaner energy usage.  However, I also recognize that this decision was not solely made for the good of the world.  While Musk seems to be an altruistic individual and in it for the betterment of the world, the article about the decision also stated that Tesla realized that their competitors did not have the electric car infrastructure necessary to quickly out produce Tesla with similar electric cars.  Instead, the lack of popularity of electric cars and continued output of new gas cars was the biggest competition that they faced.  Knowing this, releasing their patents also served to help other companies produce electric cars in the hopes that they would divert some energy away from gas cars and help to make electric cars more popular in general, which would help Tesla.

For the specific case of software patents, I definitely believe that software should be able to be patented.  Algorithms and complex strategies for many technological challenges are just as impressive and unique as physical inventions.  However, due to the fast-paced evolution of technology, I think that it would be preferable to have shorter-term patents for software.  A twenty year patent in the realm of computer science is absurd.  Some physical buildings take 20 years to build.  Cars can still be used 20 years after production.  Software is currently changing so rapidly that 20 years represents many several to dozens of evolutions in all aspects of computer science.  This extremely rapid period of growth makes me wish that software patents would only hold their value for a few years-enough time for the creators of the invention to benefit from the patent but not so long that progress is extremely hindered by a 20 year long hold on other entities being able to use and improve upon the technology.

Lastly, these articles discussed patent trolls.  Patent trolls seem sickening and despicable.  I can never imagine getting satisfaction out of working for a company that only produces patents and makes money solely off of suing other companies for infringing upon obscure protocols that we were able to get patents for.  However, I currently don’t know how a system can be made to protect rights while also preventing these patent trolls from abusing the system.  I hope to hear more about this from my classmates.

Reading 07: Cloud Computing, Advertising

Cloud computing has become one of the ruling strategies of the future.  Just as it has become totally absurd for companies to store their data on printed paper when computer hard drives are available for so little with the capability to store the data in a much more secure manner, in less space, and a more easily accessible manner, so to has the era of storing electronic data locally come to its end.  For users, who wouldn’t want all of their data to constantly be available at the touch of a finger?  I absolutely love being able to switch off texts and internet tabs between my Apple devices, being able to continue shows where I left off from my iPad to my television, and being able to see all of my emails and important documents on my computer or phone.  This has become the norm and is what users want for conveniency.

Unfortunately, because cloud computing comes in so many varieties and is a new and vulnerable technology, it also leads to insecure data.  The sad truth is that currently nothing that is in the cloud is completely safe.  Whether it be from physical attacks destroying servers or (more likely) hacking and security holes in the system, all data put into the cloud can be lost or seen by other parties.  I think that this lack of security is where the ethical concerns about using cloud computing come into play.  While I see no problem storing my data on it and would happily volunteer for most of my data to be stored on the cloud, it would be irresponsible for me to store other’s info in an insecure manner without their permission.  This information can be stolen much more easily in a Cloud-based environment and therefore the users should be warned of the risks and asked if they would rather have extra convenience or security.  I suspect that it largely is based upon the application at hand.  Financial information, for example, while it is nice to have it at the ready on all devices, is dangerous if taken is should therefore not be willing to compromise security to convenience.  For most applications, I believe that the Cloud is the right solution.

Using cloud computing offers a ton of advantages such as speed, monetary savings, convenience, and cheap security of information in terms of redundancy.  At the same time, it takes some implementation options away from you and brings a lot of security risks into play.  Using cloud services can also put a developer at the mercy of their provider, who could have a system failure or sudden change of policy that you will have to deal with and receive the blame for if it results in a failure or poor performance for your system or application.  I think that these same advantages and disadvantages hold true for the consumer.  The Cloud offers savings, speed, convenience, and more copies of data in case of failure at the price of reliability and security.  To me, the tradeoffs are worth it.  I hardly consider cloud computing an ethical question.  I think that it is the technology of the future and as it improves, more and more information will live in the cloud.