Encryption Essay Research Paper Title encryptionfriend or

Encryption Essay, Research Paper

Title: encryption,friend or foe for the peopleCategory: ScienceDescription:Body of paper:In the good old days a pad lock was the best thing to have to keep unwanted persons from invading your privacy. Now that we have entered the digital age, it has been more and more difficult to keep our belongings to ourselves. I have never entered to win 10 million dollars before, yet I still might have the win number for it. How, who, and where did they get my information to send me this kind of junk to me. This is just one harmless way our privacy is invaded through the digital age. One topic that is raising question in privacy is the use of the internet. The internet has become an extension of the computers superhighway of information. In fact it lives in and of the net. One main feature of the net is the use of electronic-mail (e-mail ). What people do not understand is the net is open to anyone that can login to a computer with a telephone line hooked up to it. That means anyone with a small degree of computer knowledge can get into another persons computer with a little effort. It can be anything form turning on the persons computer to knowing their password and so on. Keeping valuable information on a computer is very dangerous. Lets just say your a banker. You decide that it would be a lot faster to send a customers account information via e-mail. For one reason or another it gets sent to the wrong place. This kind of information can be very useful to some -one who needs money and knows there way around a bank. This mishap could be very costly to you and your customer. Good thing for you it was encrypted and is unable to be read by the person who received it. Only the person with the encryption key can read that encrypted e-mail. Encryption means the scrambling of wire communications or electronic communications or stored information using a mathematical formulas or algorithms in order to preserve the confidentiality, integrity, or authenticity of such communication or information and prevent recipients from accessing or altering such communications or information s . A key is the latter part of encryption. It decrypts the information that was sent through the net. Encryption is the new pad lock for the digital age. It is one of the tools that people should learn about, if privacy is what you do not want to lose in the chaotic world of growing information. One of the rights we have as U.S. citizen is the right to bear arms. With this right, there also comes a set of rules we have to follow set by the government. In the last decade or so the laws have become so strict that it is almost impossible for citizens to obtain a gun license. This law was passed so citizens could protect themselves from harm. What good is this right if not everyone can use it to their benefit. The same goes for encryption. Encryption also works in the same concept. People use it to protect there privacy of important information. With the vast amount of information and interaction on the net, there is a need to regulate how information is transferred through the net while keeping it private through its transmission on the net. Therefore the government has taken it among its self to reconstruct the information superhighway so it does not end up a demolition derby of information. As with all road construction, it is a long and never ending task. With the government taking on this challenge they are trying to come up with blueprint to follow. The government wants everybody to have there right to privacy and be able to control it also. Unfortunately they are trying to lay the pavement down before the blueprint is complete. The government wants to set laws on encryption even before they have a plan of attack because security is one of the biggest topic involving the government. For some reason, the government likes to keep things very secret in there administration for one thing or another. Having control of this area of the digital age is a very powerful position. Who ever has control of the way encryption is managed, can completely steer the direction of the digital age to there liking. Just like Bill Gates has almost has complete control of the computer industry. Everybody is conforming to the way he runs his company. Everybody else is making sure that there program can work with the Windows operating system. This is what the government wants to accomplish with encryption laws. Make people have to conform to the laws set down, or be banned form using encryption methods. There should be someone to look over the use of encryption. It is to important for it to be left to the public. With out the right management it could be used against us as a citizen. With the way the government is taking it, more then likely it is going to be used against us. To understand why it is fatal to U.S. citizens for the government to have control of encryption, one must understand how encryption works a little more then the quick introduction from the first paragraph. Encryption is done by making information unreadable to protect its contents from unauthorized persons from accessing it. If anyone but the intended person tries to access the data, they will not be able to decipher the data. The only way to decipher the data is to use what is called a key. The key is the later part of encryption. With out the proper key to go with the encryption program, there is no way to unlock the data from the encryption code