How Can We Trust People to Protect Us if They Can’t Even Protect Their Computers?

With the presidential race well and truly on, it seems the country is divided. We have certain presidential candidates spewing true hate speech and losing support even from their own party members while being stripped of international positions and honorary degrees. On the other hand, we have people who have been plagued by controversy since they first entered into the public eye. As a result, there is virtually no trust in the government at all.

This is, in part, due the fact that a common political tactic is not to prove why you are good, but rather why the other one is bad. As a result, people only hear the smear campaigns. Leadership is called into question regularly, politicians try to embellish the real state of affairs and more. Much of this is little other than gossip on a massive public scale. However, some of the things are actually cold, hard facts, and particularly the various hacking events that have been happening.

Millions of Americans have been affected by data breaches, finding their identities stolen from databases such as the IRS, telephone companies, banks and government computers. It has even happened that medical records became public knowledge, being readily available in cyberspace. Yet, the government seems to ask us for more and more information.

photo Anonymous9000 via Flickr

Earlier this year, a report was released that showed an ex-government employee had tried to sell nuclear secrets. This was in relation to someone who used to work for the Department of Energy and that they tried to sell nuclear secrets to Venezuela, China and Iran. Then, there are stories such those who Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning (then Bradley Manning) and Edward Snowden, who have all managed to get their hands on damning electronic data.

Is it that politicians are self-righteous and lack responsibility, doing all they can to have their 15 minutes in the spotlight? Do people simply want the money that information can pay them? Or is it truly about information needing to be free? The answer isn’t clear, but what is clear is that more technical data is being taken and released publicly.

Unfortunately, it also seems that the problem is accelerating with every day. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been lost and people’s confidential data has been released in the public stratosphere, which includes not just our allies, but also our enemies. So how can we trust a government to protect us, when they can’t even seem to be able to protect something as simple as a computer?

After all, everyday people like you and me simply compare antivirus software and find that our computer is virtually unbreakable. Yes, data in public and private companies are more interesting so hackers will try a little harder, but these people are supposed to have some of the biggest brains in the world working for them. Interestingly, when someone is able to hack into a high security computer and comes forward, the government jails them instead of employing them.

Guest Author: Lolita Di

photo Donkeyhotey [email protected]