One87ll

podcast 2 fixed

2009-11-30T14:07:00.001-08:00

Online Privacy

2009-11-19T08:39:00.000-08:00

The Internet brings us great websites full of information and entertainment, and email, chats, Skype, Facebook and Twitter have allowed us to connect with the world in ways that a few decades ago no one could have fathomed. The internet has revolutionized communication as we know it.

But with every revolution, and with every advancement, their lives an accompanying dark side. With the recent leaps and bounds of the internet, Internet users are increasingly being subjected to fits of online hacking, information sell outs, habit tracking, private investigating, and even physical stalking stemming from information found, or purchased online. Users are becoming increasingly concerned about how much of their personal information they're giving up in exchange for the internet’s marvels.

As more and more people are being forced to realize and accept, the huge amounts of information we inadvertently reveal online are a lot less private then we could ever imagine. Every time we post a picture, click a link, visit a website, or even fill out personal information for new online accounts, all of this data is simultaneously sent to thousands of buyers, marketers, advertisers, and even government agencies across the globe. By simply clicking our mouse we are instantly signing, in metaphorical blood, a disclaimer allowing the world into our private heaps of personal information, pictures, online preferences and spending habits. We are allowing people to track us down, we are giving away our phone numbers and addresses, and we are allowing companies to sell us what we want, or at least what they think we want.
Sometimes the information is openly requested: you register on a website and you fill out a form. Next time you log into the site, ads for playboy start popping up if you checked the male box, or maybe some hot new mascara ad invades because you checked female. Other times, websites and advertisers seem to magically know our interests, and we stop and ponder how, and when, our computer got so smart.

All this is possible by one seemingly harmless word, cookies. And an appropriate name it may be as cookies are simply little text files created on our computer that contains little pieces of information behind about what we have been up to. Just follow the cookie trail and it will lead right back to you, and all of your internet habits,a lot of them of which may be deviant. Cases such as the Craigslist Experiment by Jason Fortuny have illuminated how quickly our lives can be put on public display, and most of the time with shock and utter embarrassment.

So what one may ask can we do about it, if anything? With seemingly no help from government regulations,The American Civil Liberties Union's has launched a new campaign to try and force the government to have a more active role in helping protect online privacy. The online privacy alliance is consistently concocting campaigns and legislature to help erect more laws and regulations to help protect our online lives.

But for now, protecting ourselves on the internet is going to have to be a personal mission. Using common sense and some tips from the experts, wage your own war against online hackers, predators, and sales snipers.

CYBER WARFARE

2009-11-12T08:20:00.000-08:00

The nation has constantly been evolving and developing rapidly within the last few decades, and with advancements in economics, social affairs, and technologies, so instigates advancements in our warfare capabilities. The internet and cyberspace has become an integral,vital element in the progression and evolvement of warfare tactics, in not only the United States, but also economically inclined countries around the globe.

Gaining important knowledge of information systems in today's warfare market demonstrates the importance of the internet in gaining power and speed on opposition in war.

Cyber intelligence affects development of armies through physical and psychological means, as it is used to develop 3D training via video games and battle field simulations, and is used to create widely dispersed means of evaluating psychological fitness, and technological understanding, two vital elements of creating a successful army or military team. It is also currently being used to further develop our understanding of new weapon advancements and technologies, allowing operators to maintain important intelligence necessary to keep warfare tactics relevant and up to speed.

Cyber warfare is not a technology to be taken lightly as its tactics can be used to shutdown entire internet infrastructures, and can allow users to gain complete control over other entire systems, such as the case of NATO gaining access to Serbia’s state television service (RTS) in 1999, rendering their control over content and access obsolete. Although they were able to gain control in a few hours, the initial shock of cyber abilities has had a rippling affect over countries use of cyber warfare in the last decade.

A decade ago, cyber warfare was more so just a mythical theory, and today, constitutes one of our most valuable, and intricate parts of warfare as we know it, but as with any great technology, cyber warfare has also allowed astronomical threats to enter the lives of millions globally. Hacking into computer systems has allowed the technologically inclined to potentially gain access to bank accounts, stock portfolios, online identities, operating systems such as air and ground traffic control, television programming and countless other means of electronic intelligence, rendering a volatile relationship with its publics.

"It is now clear this cyber threat is one [of] the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation," President Obama said during a speech, naming cyber warfare as one of his top national priorities.

In a recent 60 Minutes report, correspondent Steve Kroft and retired Admiral Mike McConnell ,former chief of intelligence, sat down and discussed the potential threats cyber warfare poses to the country, naming electrical blackouts as one of the most severe threats we may be currently facing in reference to cyber warfare.” McConnell went on to explain how much we as a public are ill informed of cyber warfare’s capabilities, and how dependent upon power grids and computer networks we actually are, as they supply our oil, electric, water, keep track of our finances, and control order though traffic lights, air traffic control, banking systems, prison systems and transportation systems; the list is endless.

"If I were an attacker and I wanted to do strategic damage to the United States, I would either take the cold of winter or the heat of summer, I probably would sack electric power on the U.S. East Cost, maybe the West Coast, and attempt to cause a cascading effect. All of those things are in the art of the possible from a sophisticated attacker," McConnell explained.’

The government is hiring children no more than 13 to help develop and implement online defenses against these attacks, but these children’s technological intelligence could just as easily be channeled into the dark arts of cyber warfare.

Creating and maintaining defenses and counter attacks will be a consistent and ongoing development as internet intelligence and tactics evolve.

Digital Divide

2009-10-27T07:37:00.000-07:00

The digital divide, although maybe sounding like more of a technological problem, is a huge social hindrance not only within our nation, but globally, nation to nation. This touchy subject has consistently been a source of aggravation within the United States, and since our country continually grows to be dependent on the internet and its capabilities, the digital divide continues to plague society and its social ladders.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, for example, called the digital divide "classic apartheid," the NAACP's Kweisi Mfume dubbed it "technological segregation," and President Clinton addressed its importance and the need to begin "national crusade."

President Clinton is also quoted as saying "Technology can be the greatest equalizing force our society or any other has ever known." CAN being the operative word in that statement.

But is it? Are we making process in closing this canyon, or does the divide just keep growing?

Recent studies have begun to show an ever increasing close in this gap. More than half the population of the United States is now online; an increase of 26 million people in 13 months, and the number continues to grow with every passing year. The report also shows that Internet use is continuing to increase for everyone regardless of income, education, age, race, ethnicity or gender.

But for the last five years the government, along with internet big business providers, have avidly sought to begin taxing the internet and other digital media. If they were to succeed in implementing these taxes, what would that mean for the economically inept? The whole hysteria of the digital divide is the access, ability, and education of the haves and the have nots. If the government were to enforce these taxes, a regression of progress in closing this digital divide is inevitable. If they succeed, some lower income people could lose the access they've (finally) gained when faced with paying more for online access further dividing our society.

Other countries are addressing this problem with much more rigor. The U.K. is currently using the genius and business connections of internet entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox, to begin acquiring public and private partnerships to help launch a program to have all UK citizens online within the next 3 years. Ambitious and intimidating, but socially and possible even fiscally responsible, as the government could gain over $35 billion in projected benefits from the stimulus of having all citizens online.

"Greater access to consumers through the web is one of the main advantages of digital inclusion for businesses" said Scott Morrison, the vice president of Gartner’s Technology Business Research, a globally respected firm.

Although America has some of the most promising statistics in reference to percentage of users online, we are still far from closing the gap in digital use and access. Figures do continue to grow with each year, however, providing a glimmer of hope that one day a technologically erect bridge will pave the way to a more equal society.

Net Neutrality Podcast

2009-10-20T10:31:00.001-07:00

StalkFest 2k9

2009-09-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

With the significant incline in access to computers and internet, and the explosion of online social networking, modern civilization has become dependent on creating and maintaining online outlets of self expression and communication with the outside world by means of creating our own personal online identities.

Everyone has at least one, right?

In this age of online identities we all brush our involvement in these networking sites to simply being an "outlet". A parallel universe where we can just be "ourselves" or at least who we want to be. Casual "stalking" of friends and even just acquaintances is normal, if not encouraged, by most of these sites.

But is it really normal?

Facebook, although saturated in the social networking market, is one of the top sites in reference to social networking, boasting over 150,000,000 users and an average of 50,000 new accounts a month.

Facebook has become less of a self expression tool and more so an outlet for our inner stalker.

According to DigitalMediaWire, online participation of facebook has rose 700% in the last year, from 1.7 billion minutes to 13.9 billion minutes.

So what are we doing all with this time on facebook? Like it or not, most of us, myself included, are simply stalking.

We put on public display where we work, our email addresses, phone numbers, a list of relatives, exact whereabouts at every moment of the day, and intimate pictures and details of our once very personal lives. We update our "relationship status" to make it official and pronounce our new found love to the world, but who cares???

Well, we’d be surprised. One of our main character flaws as naive youth is failing to recognize the perverse nature of many human beings, including our supposedly closest friends.

We are checking ex boyfriend’s pages and pictures, befriending girls that have written on their wall to stalk them out as well. We are going through thousands of pictures of potential lovers, tracking down friends who have failed to answer their phones repeatedly, tagging the girls we hate in horrible pictures we have managed to come across, sifting through hundreds of profiles, and having strangers we’ve allowed to become our "friends" have access to extremely personal information, all in the hopes of elevating our social status, and number of "friends". These aren’t opinions of mine, these are facts.

Facebook should be renamed Stalkbook.

I myself have a personal stalker, by the name of Jess Marvel, who has copied pictures from my Facebook account, and posted them as her own, often mimicking my posts, befriending my friends, and sending messages to close members of my Facebook inner circle.

My roommates and I have made an entire profile devoted to a plastic alligator named Jeffrey so we can "befriend" girls and guys with the sole intention of simply stalking them anonymously.

Facebook even has an entire "group" devoted to facebook stalking.

"I meet new people, and that's the worst, because I've seen them on Facebook. I know all about their life and who they're dating, but I have to pretend I know nothing about them," says Reus, 21, a Vanderbilt student from Birmingham, Ala in an article from USAToday.

The point of this blog? Although an outlet, and potential escape of our monotonous lives, social networking sites are also a plug in for our inner deviance. "Friends" be weary, we're watching.

Your Online Will

2009-09-17T08:22:00.001-07:00

I believe it’s safe to say that almost everyone with access to a computer and the internet has created some sort of online identity, whether a facebook page, twitter account, online banking, or just a simple iTunes account.

Our names, bank accounts, photos, and deeply personal information are all floating around somewhere in cyberspace, every moment of everyday. We create passwords, secret questions, riddles, and every other fence we can possibly erect to try and protect these online profiles, at any cost, but one thing we usually don’t take into account, given its morbidity and ever impending doom, is what happens with all of these accounts, profiles and blogs upon our hopefully timely death?

Prototype for a solution to this universal problem was introduced earlier this year, and became available to the general public this summer. This miraculous new software.... LegacyLocker a new online software aimed at protecting all of these online identities, on one simple, easy to use program.
"I had one of those `what would happen' moments, and realized that none of my online stuff in any way would be able to transfer to my wife," Jerry Toeman, cofounder of LegayLocker said when asked on how he came up with the idea.

How does this program work one must wonder...LegacyLocker acts as an online living will, and is boasted to only take 60 seconds to have up and running. For each online account you hook up to the program, you can assign a beneficiary. One may not want a spouse reading emails after their death, or to have a former coworker having access to business accounts and transactions, so each online identity may be assigned a different beneficiary, who upon your death, must provide documentation of not only themselves, but a copy of your death certificate (yes, still morbid) in order to access your accounts.

Upon providing proper documentation, the beneficiaries are then given your sensitive information including account names, passwords, and answers to security questions. They can then proceed to either manage your account, or delete accounts, all in compliance to your requests, pre-demise. Online bill payments can be stopped, paypal accounts disengaged, and online funds transferred at your discretion.

So no more tossing and turning at night wondering if your facebook friend requests will spiral out of control, or if all your twitter followers will abandon you thinking you simply stopped posting for them. Tragedy averted.

Legacy Locker has two payment options, $29.99 annually, or a onetime fee of $299.99, depending on your personal lifespan outlook.