information – Information Science

Data Insecurity

In the modern age there are hundreds of companies that have access to its users personal information. Many companies require some sort of sign up process for first time users. This often involves the user giving the company their name, address, birthday, and in some cases even more sensitive information such as a credit card number. Most people do not expect this data to be leaked around the internet, but it happens quite often. When a data breach occurs, the sensitive information that is gathered is likely put up for sale on different dark web sites for anyone to purchase. This type of information breach can happen to any company, even if they might not seem like they would have much sensitive information on their customers. For example, Panera suffered a massive data breach last year where the data of 37 million customers were exposed. Here is a website that talks about some of the other biggest data breaches of last year, and dives more into the specifics of each breach. The cyber criminals that are responsible for these data breaches continue to find new hacking methods to uncover this data. So since any company seems to be susceptible to these data breaches, what can be done to improve data security and keep everyone’s data safe?

Big companies use a variety of techniques to keep their customer’s sensitive data safe. At a purely physical level they have many policies to restrict the possibility of a data breach. For example, many companies use encrypted hard drives to store information, encrypted USBs to protect moving data, and also encrypted phones to protect data shared through telephone. Many companies have policies that require theses devices to be used, and also extra policies about employees own devices. Employees are often required to use a laptop or other device that has no USB slots, and is not able to download or export data over cloud. This is to prevent data from reaching outside sources by employees. A statistic that I got from this website (also a very interesting article) says that ignorance and negligence from employees cause 54% of all data breaches.

Many people also falsely believe that the big companies just have all the data encrypted, so it would not be accessible anywayss, but that is often not the case. Most large amounts of data from companies get stored in a relational database, as it is the easiest method of storing big data. However, it is difficult to encrypt data that is stored in a relational database, so whoever has access to it can often just read the data inside. Encrypting a database is also very expensive when you are purchasing that database from another company. All companies should be required to encrypt their customers sensitive data. It is a major violation of data integrity.

People tend not to think very often about how much information about their personal lives are truly out there for companies to sell around. We have no real idea how well protected the data, that we casually enter in when registering for a website, truly is. Most likely it is going into a database with no real protection at all! Data security still has a long way to go, and certainly more companies need to start implementing better encryption of their customers data. We all need to be more careful with our sensitive information, and pause to think where exactly the credit card number we are entering in is really going.

Nick Bagley

Catastrophic Miscommunications

Miscommunications happen all the time. It is very easy for somebody to mishear another person and think they said something other than what was spoken. However, miscommunications do not always come from mishearing something, but also from misinterpreting what is said. When people communicate what they want, they often are not very specific because what they say may seem obvious to them, but the listener could take it another way. Miscommunications happen in very high-stakes situations too, not just in normal conversation. A very famous example is a 1999 Mars mission lead by NASA which blew up when it entered the atmosphere of Mars. This was due to a lack of understanding between scientists about which units to use when doing their calculations. This resulted in some numbers being in Newtons while others related to pounds of force, and this miscommunication caused billions of dollars to blow up.

There are other examples of catastrophic miscommunications throughout history. In 1854 a British brigade advanced in a suicidal charge towards a much larger Russian force. However, this was not what the British commander wanted, but there was a miscommunication of orders through the ranks. The commander wanted the brigade to make sure the Russians did not move their heavy artillery guns. However, the brigade thought the commander wanted them to charge and try and reach the Russians artillery, which was located on the other side of the Russian defenses. This miscommunication of orders resulted in the lives of hundreds of British soldiers being taken.

Another tragic miscommunication was between the US and Japan. In 1945, a declaration of surrender was made by the US. When reporters asked Japan’s prime minister about Japan’s decision, he responded with the Japanese equivalent of “no comment.” However, the United States mistranslated his statement into something more closely resembling “not worthy of comment” or “holding in silent contempt.” This miscommunication prompted the US to launch an atomic bomb on Hiroshima just 10 days later, making this translation known as one of the most tragic miscommunications in history.

In my IS 2000 class, we discuss the challenges of gathering information. Miscommunication is always one of the greatest obstacles in eliciting information. There are many reasons this could happen such as a language barrier, a mishearing, or someone having trouble communicating what is in their mind. This is one reason why ontologies are incredibly helpful. They allow people to visualize what is going on in a system rather than just rely on implicit information and word of mouth. There is no language barrier when dealing with shapes and symbols on a chart, and no chance to mishear what the chart is saying. Working together to form one collective understanding of what is happening is necessary to successfully complete objectives. If the scientists at NASA had collectively decided on what units to use, then their shuttle would not have exploded. If the British had formed a battle plan on paper and made sure all commanders understood the plan before executing it then they would not have charged into certain death. A confirmation of Japan’s intentions or a better translation of the prime minister’s statement could have possible avoided Hiroshima. Miscommunications can be incredibly small yet still have enormous consequences. This is why information must be stored and organized before it is used, because a misinterpretation can be the cause of major problems.

Here is the link to an interesting article that talks about other major miscommunications in history. It is interesting to think about how the implementation of some sort of ontology could have prevented these events.

Nick Bagley

What is information?

“Information is a difference that makes a difference” – Gregory Bateson

When beginning the study of Information Science, it was evident very early on that there was a discrepancy over what information truly is. There are countless different definitions of what constitutes information, with every scholar, professor, and student having a slightly different outlook on the subject. The Wikipedia definition of information is something that “provides the answer to a question of some kind or resolves uncertainty.” This allows a very broad interpretation of what information is. However, experts including Theirauf and Floridi say that information can only be structured data, which eliminates any sort of unstructured data that can answer questions or resolve uncertainties. From reading all of these sources, I have generated my own idea of what information is.

In our class, a definition for information was given that said information can be used to make decisions. This is similar to Wikipedia’s explanation about how information can answer questions. We also said in class that a tweet was not considered information in Floridi’s map because it was not structured data. However, I believe that a tweet can be used as information in other definitions. If somebody were to tweet something such as “I love the Patriots, Tom Brady is the best of all time” then that would answer the question of what football team that person supports. Tweets also cause many people to make decisions. For example, Donald Trump’s tweets cause many people to decide that he is not fit for presidency. People absorb these tweets as information to make decisions and resolve uncertainties they might have. In that sense, I believe that tweets should be classified as information.

The extent to what I think could be considered information goes on from just tweets. In one of the readings, a study showed that Americans spend half of each day consuming information. The study focuses on television and radio heavily, but I believe that information is consumed in many more places, even when somebody sleeps. If somebody were to watch a horror movie before bed, and then have a bad dream because of it, they might learn from it and decide not to watch horror movies before bed anymore. The dream was an event that happened that led a person to make an informative decision. Looking at it in that sense, that dream could be information, although many sources such as Floridi would not classify it as such because it is not structured. These sort of events happen constantly throughout the day, often subconsciously so that people do not even know they are absorbing information. People’s actions and decisions stem from information they are consuming, even if they do not realize they are consuming it.

Our professor told us that if you asked anybody in the field of information science what information is, they would give you a slightly different answer. Conforming to this statement, I have already begun to have my own idea of what information is, which is sure to change over time and over the course of this class. I believe that information is anything that can be used to alter somebody’s decisions, opinions, actions, or knowledge. This definition allows for a much broader classification of what is information. This idea of information follows most closely with Bateson’s interpretation, “information is a difference that makes a difference.”

– Nick Bagley