Intelligence Report FINAL

1

NAME OF DEPARTMENT AGENCY

UNCLASSIFIED

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

MEMERANDUM FOR: Professor Carmen Arostegui

FROM: Irving Toruno

Student of Analytic Writing, POS 4784

SUBJECT: Your Issue

ANALYTIC WRITING IN POLITICAL SCIENCE, GOOGLE THREAT

Introduction: Over the years, technology has been positively embraced and is continuously used in various sectors. The internet allows the big techs to access personal information, government information and access passwords, new communities, and networks. The need to tame has increased because of the potential threats they pose to the world, and the United States is not an exception. The dominance of a few big techs continues to generate privacy concerns. Big techs have a history of violating their user’s privacy over the years of their existence and have also become a threat to national security (Romm, 2019). Several actors behind the scenes of these violations benefit from the potential chaos brought about by the big techs' actions and victims. This proposal will look into the leakage of data, the dangers resulting from unregulated activities by Google as big tech and where they exist and the players benefiting from the big tech's actions and the victims.

Background: Data and information leakage is a way of breaching privacy and information exposure. Data exposure occurs when the database is left for anyone to see by a big tech company happens in various ways. Data breaching involves a security incident in which there is data exposure without authorization. The most obvious one is weak passwords. Weak passwords allow a straightforward breach of personal data by hackers. Employees in Google can also be a reason for the leakage of data. They can lose devices that contain Google’s sensitive information or even steal them. These devices can then fall into the wrong hands and lead to data leakage. Software glitches are also a reason for data leakage because hackers usually search for these vulnerable mistakes to breach their security. An example is the software glitch that led to the exposure of personal data of Google+ users. The scenarios mentioned above can explain how private data can be leaked from Google without authorization; however, the big techs' leakages are tied to the companies' stakeholders.

Analysis: Data leakage and breaches cause adverse effects to the company and individual whose information has been compromised. Several big techs, such as Facebook and Amazon, rely on Google’s search engine to dominate their sectors (Wagner, 2019). The government’s operations and legal information could be adversely affected by Google’s interference, and data leakage could lead to chaos. Google, over the years, has enjoyed exponential growth, and the current cyber-attacks and exposure of information have brought about the need to regulate goggle as a big tech company. Currently, Google has become highly politicized, with most of the politics surrounding the description of Google as the internet’s monopoly gatekeeper. The democrats target Google for its monopoly power, while republicans target them with censoring conservative speech accusations. One of the champions of critics is the former president Donald Trump. He frequently accused big techs of censoring him and even gave threats of taking away their protections.

Context: The leakage of personal information such as health information, emails, contact information, education and social security numbers may lead and stir chaos, the pages one likes, and even where an individual works. Google can collect data based on one's activities, location, and personal information, leading to national instability exposure. (Azmoodeh, and Dehghantanha, 2020). Other big techs such as Facebook share the data and give several large tech companies access to their users' data, increasing accessibility to data stored online. If Google fails to protect its user’s data from misuse, the nation’s integrity could be affected (Whitman, 2004). During the 2016 presidential elections, a political-data firm, Cambridge Analytica, linked to the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump, targeted voters by collecting private information (Schechner, & Secada, 2019). The data collection was from 87 million Facebook users who had not agreed on letting their data be leaked. Personalized messages were then sent to the users that were believed to affect the elections' results, which involved the esteemed democracy of the nation.

Outlook: Google interference and data leakages have both benefactors and victims. Google would benefit from the interference depending on the reason and motive behind the leakage of the information. The person influencing the leakage of data, and the third party involved could also benefit. In several ways, data leakage is a type of data-driven exploitation, with the victim being the person who is being exploited. Due to the infringement of the nation's sovereignty and the citizen's right to democracy, both the government and the people become victims.

Unregulated actions by Google lead to potential threats big enough to cause chaos in the United States. Big techs such as Facebook and Amazon rely on Google’s search engine for domination in their sectors; therefore, Google’s actions affect their operations in many ways. The government and users of Google products face potential threats that could violate several rights and regulations in place. If any of the possible consequences occur, turmoil and uncertainty will result, necessitating the regulation of large tech companies such as Google.

Conclusion: The United States Government must focus on securing vital national security data from leakages and manipulations in order avert the dangers explained above. The data security mechanism must focus on detecting the threats, prevention mechanisms and safe storage of data.

The detection aspect focuses on improvement or developing new ways that enables government to realize threats to data leakages before they actually occur. The federal government must make policies that are in tandem with the digital era in order to fill the gap that has made private enterprises take advantage of. While the government still relied on industrial economy era regulations, big tech companies took advantage of the benefits of a digital economy that has led to immense data leaks both unintended and malicious. Making private enterprises to self-regulate is an aspect of a free market economy that is strongly rooted in the United States but such free market economy must have boundaries when it comes to national security matters. The big tech companies are now urging the government to regulate them, a contrast from the opposition to regulation that was there a decade ago. To ensure the detection aspect of breach to data, the United States Congress must relook at the legal barriers existent on the federal commissions responsible for enforcement of data privacy.

On data loss prevention mechanism, the federal government and its agencies must focus on strengthening private enterprises to own up and accept that prevention of data loss is everyone’s responsibility. Companies and organizations must develop encryption options that are strong and unbreakable in order to deter malicious activities. The US congress needs to also check on legal mechanisms available for companies who breach antitrust laws and regulations. The ability and scope of investigative and prosecutorial agencies needs to be strengthened to ensure organizations that breach any of their governing laws on data are fully prosecuted to serve as a lesson to similar companies.

Lastly, the future implications of data threats calls for safe storage mechanisms. Further research needs to be undertaken on aspects such as cloud storage and the rights and ownerships of such storage facilities. For example, should government use cloud storage facilities from private organizations? Or can rival companies rely on each other for cloud storage facilities? The government needs to grow the data storage industry as an industry of the future. Organizations and companies will rely on this data storage industries to store their sensitive data. A critical aspect of growing the industry is a focus on more Research and Development directly funded to research centers to device safe data storage mechanism utilize latest technology. Being a growing industry yet, data storage presents an exciting experience that has the potential of generating huge revenues when sold overseas.

References

Azmoodeh, A., & Dehghantanha, A. (2020). Big data and privacy: Challenges and opportunities. In Handbook of Big Data Privacy (pp. 1-5). Springer, Cham.

Bill Curry, B. (2019).“Elections Canada puts Facebook, Google, other tech giants on notice over political ads,” The Globe and Mail. Retrieved from:https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-elections-canada-puts-tech-giants-on-notice-over-political-ads/.

Botha, J. G., Grobler, M. M., & Eloff, M. M. (2017). Global data breaches responsible for the disclosure of personal information.

Schechner, S., & Secada, M. (2019).“You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook.” Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from:https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-give-apps-sensitive-personal-information-then-they-tell-facebook-11550851636.

Romm, T. (2019). “Facebook and Google to be quizzed on white nationalism and political bias as Congress pushes dueling reasons for regulation,” Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/04/08/facebook-google-be-quizzed-white-nationalism-political-bias-congress-pushes-dueling-reasons-regulation/?utm_term=.d7bc3a78c5e6).

Wagner, K. (2019). “Digital advertising in the US is finally bigger than print and television,”. Retrieved from:https://www.vox.com/2019/2/20/18232433/digital-advertising-facebook-google-growth-tv-print-emarketer-2019.

Whitman, J. Q. (2004).“The Two Western Cultures of Privacy: Dignity versus Liberty,” The Yale Law Journal 113. Retrieved from: http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/ylr113&div=52.