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Thomas Cocoli
Dr. Kenneth Thompson
ENGH 302-SN2
15 August 2015
Metacog Assignment
The Internet and its lack of security along with government abuse poses a serious
problem to society and this paper addresses citizens and governments on the few potential
consequences on the design of the Internet without security. This paper talks about some of the
steps that society must take, in order to safeguard personal information or anything about
themselves so that hackers and other criminals cannot damage or steal from. This paper also
addresses governments on the steps they should conduct in relation to their searches of people
responsible for certain kinds of threats occurring on a large scale, for example the
telecommunications grid being hacked and simultaneously seeing that the rights of its citizens
are not violated.
During this class we have explored the rise of technology and how it has shaped modern
society today. There are many inventions that tie with electronics and they are: cell phones, IPads, I-Pods, radio, television, cameras, calculators, computers, and so much more. Everybody in
today's society depends on telephones for calling other people (friends, neighbors, colleagues,
etc.), I-Pods and radio for listening to music and hearing what goes on in the news respectively,
television to watch favorite movies, cameras for taking pictures of special events or occasions,
calculators for calculating math problems, and computers to explore vast amounts of knowledge.
Out of all inventions tied to electronics, the biggest invention out of all is the Computer. The
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computer has shaped society in a profound number of ways from aiding school work to
constructing an entire city.
The computer originated during World War II when the military needed to calculate
projectile ranges for missiles in different atmospheric or weather conditions on that given day.
Not only could the computer perform scenario computations but it could also perform regular
mathematical calculations like calculating 5,000 addition and subtraction problems in just one
second. The computer was also designed to be user friendly and allowed for human-computer
interaction by allowing people to draw shapes for example and the computer would then change
that drawing to either a rectangle, circle, square, triangle, sphere, cube, or pyramid and allowed
kids to give simple commands to robots or other computer programmed machines by telling it to
move or stop.
An addition to the open collaborative nature of the computer, inventors and scientists like
Bob Taylor, Larry Roberts, Joseph Licklider, and Paul Baran all proposed a network that was
envisioned to be free of government and corporate abuse with no central or master switch and
this network became what is called the Internet.
From what we have learned, I developed two possible questions for my research with one
question being on how computers have shaped society compared to the time before ENIAC
(Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) came out and another question being on
decentralization vs. centralization of the Internet. I then went and found five different sources for
each of the two questions on how computers shaped the world, how centralization poses
problems to society by controlling the entire network, and how decentralization seeks to disarm
this one man control of the Internet respectively. This was the first step towards my research.
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I then brought my questions to my instructor and he explained to me that my questions
were too broad and that I should narrow down my research to a few issues. My instructor
suggested to me that I could write about centralization and decentralization and he showed me
three articles on Net Insecurity from the Washington Post which deals with privacy and its
connection to how the Internet was designed. He then gave me an idea for my question on how
privacy can be affected based on how the Internet was designed. From these suggestions and
ideas, I developed my question and it was: Is privacy affected based on how the Internet was
originally designed (a free network with no security) and what would happen to privacy if the
Internet had no security protocols? This was the second step towards my research.
I thought about this question and I thought that this would be a good question to write my
research on and privacy is a major topic discussed in the news today. I researched different
articles relating to Internet security and Internet law as well as centralization and decentralization
in terms of what it is? and how the Internet can be safe at the same time without governments
abusing their power. This was the third step towards my research.
This is similar to what professional writers do, they develop questions, they conduct
preliminary research, they present what they find to their peers, and based on given feedback and
suggestions, they narrow and refine their research question.
A good place to look at would be the works cited page and this gives readers an idea of
where the facts came from and how those facts were analyzed in developing the research.
When I began my research, I started talking about the architecture of the Internet and how
it worked. For example, I talked about ideas like Packet-Switching and Message-and-Forward
Switching and the main protocol that the Internet runs on is TCP/IP (Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol). When my research was being reviewed by my instructor and peers
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for feedback, they said that my paper was very good and everything was tied to the thesis;
however, they wanted me to look over at some of the ideas related to the Internet structure and
pick which were the most relevant and I went back and expanded more on TCP/IP and PacketSwitching since these were the two most fundamental components to the design of the Internet.
This was the first step towards the revision of my research.
When my instructor and peers were reviewing my paper, not only did they suggest that I
narrow down my discussion and analysis on the different kinds of components related to the
design of the Internet as described above, they saw that I was also writing about the Internet on
both the government and corporate side in terms of obligations and responsibility in regulating
the Internet. They suggested that I should pick either government or corporate and expand on it
fully. I choose the government side and wrote about the Internet in terms of terrorism which is a
threat people in society already know too well about and provided an example on thirty hackers
disrupting the telecommunications grid. From this example, I talked about how the government
should narrow the search in finding the one's responsible for the disruption figuring out when,
where, and why? this disruption took place and arresting those telecom hackers so something
like that does not happen again. I mentioned that governments should narrow their search of who
did it? and not overstepping their authority in choosing to create a police state in which every
citizen are being monitored 24-7. This was the second step towards the revision of my research.
I also mentioned how social networks and personal identity can be affected in terms of
social media, Facebook and Twitter. I talked about how Facebook and Twitter allows for the
upload of pictures and post of any message desired and how hackers can harm people through
these sites if proper precautions are not taken. In terms of personal identity, I talked about viruses
and theft and a few examples mentioned were computers acting up (playing with camera, file
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loss, etc.) and how criminals can steal a great deal amount of money through transactions. They
suggested that I should tie these points to the Internet existing with no security. This was the
third step towards the revision of my research.
Internet privacy ties to what is happening in society today in relation to unwarranted
surveillance on citizens whether good or bad. There are several countries out there like Russia
and China and both of them have a police state and a good example of this is the prohibition of
free speech. Privacy invasion is a big issue because governments are obligated to protect their
people from outside threats not intrude in their personal lives. The government cannot just throw
people in jail for no reason and interfere with what they do in everyday life by patrolling people
24-7. People are arguing that they should have a fair trial instead of being unjustly treated and
that governments must obtain search warrants before searching through a person's phone records,
monitoring where they go online and searching a person's home. Perhaps the two biggest
questions in regards to privacy are: Should the government be monitoring my every move? and
What fundamental rights does the United States Constitution give us that the government cannot
infringe upon? These two questions also applies to what is going on in other countries on an
international level.
Not only does privacy relate to people through the rights granted to them but it affects
them electronically and a few things tied to electronics are: Telephone, Computer, I-Pad, IPhone, and the Internet. Out of the electronics family is the Internet and just like how police can
come to a person's home and conduct a warrantless search, the Internet faces the same problem
too in which the government through abuse of power and online criminals can try to patrol and
hack you respectively. Potential researches currently being conducted are: What is going to
happen to a particular country if nothing is done? and What are some potential consequences if
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that country keeps heading in the direction its going? This helps us to understand what will
happen to that country and how the problem can be solved.