The NSA, Government Spying, and Privacy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The NSA, Government Spying, and Privacy - Essay Example Business records and domestic phone calls got recorded (Lee 1). Snowden also releases that the NSA has been spying on the foreign leaders. From the report, it had targeted at least 35 leaders. The Agency also spies on ordinary people overseas. It has been collecting data from common people, as in Germany and Brazil. The Agency also tracked the telephone location around the world (Lee 1). The agency does not have the authority to target the cell phone users deliberately in the US, but it collected the phone records incidentally. With nine major internet companies, the PRISM program lets the National Security Agency and access to the private user data on the online services. Snowden reveals that the companies comprise of the Google, Microsoft, YouTube, Facebook, Pal Talk, Yahoo, Skype, Apple, and AOL. The program enables NSA to get private information such as stored documents, Facebook messages, and emails (Lee 1). The NSA uses the Tailored Access Operations in hacking a wide variety of business IT systems and consumer gadgets. It also taps long distance internet connections. The agency works with countries around the world and taps into fiber optic cables known to carry much fiber optic data. Moreover, NSA has also intercepted the data flowing from Yahoo and Google data centers. From the encryption as one log into Gmail is an example in which the Agency harvested the bulk user data. The agency has also been collecting information on the internet usage of American citizens between the years 2001 to 2011 (Lee 1). NSA has also undermined the security of encryption products by persuading technology companies to make their products exploitable. Modification of the product was to make them vulnerable to attacks by the agency. The company has also been using tracking cookies in choosing hacking targets. In 2013, the company cracked one of the most popular encryption standards, A5 and intercepted contents of the cell

Internet privacy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Internet privacy - Essay Example People are encouraged to ensure timely update of their antiviruses and to be sure with what they click at any given instance. The widespread use of social media platforms has further aggravated the matter as personal information is made accessible to those within the social brackets thus increasing the chances of cyber crime. Internet privacy relates to the right of personal confidentiality on the storing as well as availing of information to third parties through the internet on specific issues. This is regarded as a subset of computer privacy in the ever growing information sector. The level of privacy in the internet can be divided into personally identifying information which refers to any information that is used in the recognition of given individual factors such as physical address or other personal bio-data and non-personal identifying information which excludes any personal information regarding an individual (Imparato, 2000). Countries all over the world as well as the United States of America are trying all workable methods that are aimed at ensuring total protection of personal information by maintaining their privacy (Frackman, Martin, & Ray, 2002). With the proliferation of social media, avoiding revealing sensitive data can be difficult making laws and government regulations necessary for maintaining privacy. One of the steps towards enhancing internet privacy is by encouraging people not to carelessly or mistakenly revealing personal information via the internet. One can easily made public their personal bio-data over the internet without being fully aware of it hence the need to be very careful when using the internet. One should make use of pseudonyms instead of using real names and actual personal information. The browsers used should not be in a position to leak out personal information or retain them for a longer period of time (Jakubiak,