Privacy Concerns,
Jacob Harrison
Kaplan University

While looking up Privacy concerns on Google News I came across countless articles about how the United States would like to be able to possible collect and analyze American Emails.  In an article called, "Cyber defense: Should Americans be concerned about their privacy?" by Anna Mulrine a staff writer for Christian Science Monitor.  She shows how we might be being watched with what we put into cyberspace.  To me personally I don't see what the big deal is if the government is watching my email, because I have nothing to hide.  These people who get all offended about the government spying on them must really have things to hide or at least trying to cover up.  The first Concern she had was government going to "Stockpile the private e-mails of Americans?" which in the defense of politicians seems up in the air at the moment (Mulrine, 2012).  In the way Mulrine writes in the article you really don't get a clear answer but reasons to why it won't affect American emails, to unless you're talking about one of the concerns of the United States.  Another Concern about this issue was that the main reason they want to be able to read everyone's emails is so that they can respond quicker to a cyber attack (Mulrine, 2012).  Which doesn't make too much sense to me, because if they could of stopped it before then, why didn't they?  Another concern is a quote that Mulrine talks about from James Lewis, a director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he states that the only thing their getting from the information going across the internet is "ones and zero's" (Mulrine, 2012). However, that may be true but those one's and zero's can quickly turn into words with you know your coding.  He further explain that their truly looking for just "malicous codes" that can be a source of a cyber attack and he also shared that there is no personal information in those codes (Mulrine, 2012).  However, that is not entirely so, in those codes you can easily trace back to who sent those codes by using things I have been learning about in my IT-331 class.  In those codes are links and block that help your data get to where your sending the data.  Some who wanted to know who sent it could easily put blocks back together and trace back to sender through the use of IP address.  I think it would be in everyone's benefit if the government would just come out and say yes we have been spying which would put an end to this silly debate on which their now having.  

Reference:

Mulrine, Anna (July 13, 2012).  Cyber defense: Should Americans be concerned about their privacy?  Christian Science Monitor, Acessed on July 15, 2012.  From http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2012/0713/Cyberdefense-Should-Americans-be-concerned-about-their-privacy