With every large advancement of technology the incentive for people with power to control that new said technology grows. In this current state of the world the idea of control is a huge topic of discussion. Whether it be in the domain of finance. Such as the race to compute an AI that will auto trade stocks at high frequencies for large corporations, that will ultimately create an endless income of money. As well as in the domain of politics in that being the scandal of Facebook fact checkers purposely running advertisements to poorer neighborhoods that displayed the wrong election date. The idea of control and who should have the power is the foundation of Cyber Security.
The internet is an interconnected network of information that is decentralized. Due to the internet being a collective of information the question stands should one regulate this massive connected environment? The answer is that we should see the internet as an extension of our own reality. We all are bounded to rules and regulations in the real world, and for the most part we also have universal rights, and for this country we also have amendments. Many countries tend to watch and police all web traffic, for the United States this is present as well. This year of 2020 senators have been presented bill (https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/4051/). This bill is known as the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act, which states that the United States would have lawful access to look into a companies user data and are allowed to persecute anyone. This ultimately means that for users of an app, encryption would be redundant. As you can understand this is completely unlawful and violates several amendments that this country was built upon.
My solution for hopefully slowing the over looming reality of our lives being completely over watched is to create an application that will act as a medium for people to be informed of what the people in power are really doing in terms of our private cyber security. The application will send notifications to its users of up to date bills that are being presented to the senate which threaten our rights to privacy and security. On the app itself it will hold petitions that are a click away of signing to stop these bills. I hope to create a center in which many people can turn to for reliable sources of present day problems that endanger the future of our society.
When evaluating the idea of this project with the PEST analysis I have come up with the end idea of what I want to see come to life with this application. The solution to create an application that notifies its users of up to date news that pressurize our rights is a perfect idea for today's age. Politically this application is perfect for the current environment. Seeing the trajectory of where this country is going, which is a police state this the idea of preventing this does seem fitting for today's politics. In terms of Economics cyber security is always self efficient economically. I could also run some light advertisements through the application that are related to VPNs, proxies, password mangers and software products that could help with a person’s privacy. Sociologically speaking this current state of the world has so called woken people up to the true reality of human nature and power. You can see this online and with the amount of protests that are being taken place. People are willing to educate themselves on the things that are important. This will bring as lot of traffic to the site. Technologically this application is up to date and is not that hard to produce. I am willing to spread important information that needs to be heard.
From my knowledge there are no one application that is releasing knowledge that is current and that also has resources to help and try to solve those problems in the world of cyber security. I also want to only render advertisements to security companies that are not bought out by larger corporations. I am also willing to sell user data and will hold my footing if the US government is pressuring me to give them my knowledge.
When conducting feedback on the topic of privacy I looked towards interviewing people and understanding their input. Being able to gather information from who the user would be is one of the most important steps into making a functional successful application. For the user interview questions I tried to be as unbiased as I can. I asked people from my friend group to family, and even a couple of random people on street. I used a technique in which I was basing my questions of their answers. I also made sure to use open ended questions instead of questions that would result in a “yes” or “no”.
My first question was to ask “Do you care about your privacy, and why?”. With this question I can gather somewhat of a base on how much this person cares about their security. With my second question being “How do you keep yourself safe on the internet?”, I can understand how people who care or who do not care take care of how they protect themselves on the web and if they put their trust into companies and the government to help them be protected. My third question was to ask ”Are you up to date on the news of your online privacy?”. From this question I could understand if they are informed of the current politics of cyber security or not. By asking these essential questions, it gave me insight in to who the demographic of my application users would be.
Most of the people who I interviewed all seemed to put their trust into the US government and companies. They all seemed that they never put there thought into their privacy, but after asking them the questions they began to question their own knowledge on who really controls who does what on the internet.
From the information that I gathered from my user interviews, I now understand that the majority of population is not informed about their own cyber security. This creates a market for an application that can spread information to the not informed. The idea of having an application that spreads information can also open opportunities to have a platform in which people could use for change, such as having a section where users could sign petitions. This only solves the issue for the short term, so creating a platform in which users can get recommendations on how to protect themselves online in their current moment is a good idea too. This would be a section in where they could see the most top rated VPN/Proxies, and other cyber security tools. In the future I could partner with reputable companies that offer privacy tools and such, but with this application will partner with companies that are not bought out by the US government and will not be pressured by them. They are always more to improve on and with an idea like this it would be very easily applicable I am hoping that this will create a whole space in which users can come to understand what they can do to protect themselves from the overlooking power of the internet.
I believe that the world in its current state is a place of misinformation and deception. Whether that be politically economically or sociologically. The need for correct information is in need. Bias is everywhere and there are is no sourced information online. My solution to this is an application that at its base is to spread sourced current information. My goal is to make an application in which anyone can come to be informed about the current state of the cyber security world. I would like my application to pull its information through web scraping government bills, so that all information is accurate and quick. The information will be put into a database which other companies could use, creating a black box. Evidently this will create a product within itself. I hope my application can be a product that holds its own reputation and stance on what is right. Strong values will be going into this project. would like to see my product being sourced to help people understand their knowledge and to educate people.
The user journey of my application will be presented with the home screen. The home screen will hold the most recent piece of news that is most detrimental to everyones cyber security. Then from there they could navigate the different parts of my application that being current solutions to current problems or petitions to stop in future problems. I would then have a section that has honest reviews of privacy tools that wont be bought out. I will have a new stream section.
Wireframes for an applications are an essential part for an application if your application does not look good then there is not point to making the application in the first place. I hope that this project will go further and will just be the beginning of something much larger.
