Technologcial Security (BLOG 1)

     With supportive customer  reviews and booming business, It has been said that if you are working for either Apple Inc. or Google, you have a job that not only pays good, you will probably be there for years to come. Both these companies have contributed so much to the culture of our generation. Many people strive to land a job at either of these companies. Morgan Marquis-Boire is an official engineer agent at Google. Over the summer, Boire worked with a friend,  Bill Marczak, who is in the process of obtaining his Ph.D. in computer science. They both do an outstanding job and do their jobs well. Over the summer, they were not in Hawaii or Malibu soaking the sun's rays. No. They were undercover. They were in the hunt to obtain more information on a surveillance tool, that they thought was violating individuals rights, in about five countries.
     Not only did they find information in these countries, they found their hypotheses being true, that these mechanisms were being used to violate individual's rights. First of all, this equipment was being used in a way that was necessary for the government in some of the countries. The government was actually using them in order to track down criminals and to archive information that would lead to suspicious activity. Therefore, this program was meant for officials who were specifically trained to use it for the government. And in reality, the main targets were individuals who uphold a position within the government. The individuals who were misusing this program were basically threatening them by taking over their web enabled devices and obtaining government information.
    During their investigation, they took matters in to their own hands and decided to not only stop this problem, but the wanted to prevent such things to happen again. Boire and Marczak worked along technical organizations to stop this from happening. As their time was wrapping up, they didn't successfully end the British programs, they help to reduce the activity.
   In my opinion, we should not incorporate these softwares at all into society. doing so would only make the government look bad and people would start riots and declare their hatred towards the their safety. Also, our government archives and holds information that should never be accessed for security reasons. If people could access these files, our security would go down hill and people could cause danger to our communities. It is very important to always have security in mind. We in Ameica have seen danger before our eyes. And we obviously don't anything bad to happen. This might sound like a technological glitch, but it could turn to something horrible.


Lorenzo Pedro
Aug. 31, 2012
1:38PM


Reference: NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/technology/finspy-software-is-tracking-political-dissidents.html?ref=technology