CISPA?

CISPA was almost big news recently. But the news has been full of a lot of big subjects, so it was pushed down to near the bottom of the stack. First, North Korea went as far against the "speak softly and carry a big stick" policy as they could, hurling threat after threat at the rest of the world. Studies showed that the majority of Americans were worried about them. And this past week has been rightly called the week from hell. The Boston Marathon bombings stole the front page, leading to larger font sizes on headlines that I think I've seen since Bin Laden was killed. Then, a factory blew up in West, creating a crater nearly 100 feet wide and 10 feet deep. It was so crazy that even a ricin-laced letter aimed for the president hardly got on the front page.

So you can't be blamed for not realizing that CISPA, a bill that is very similar to SOPA and PIPa, and is aimed at allowing the government to track us more closely online, and to use that information to prevent piracy and as criminal evidence, passed the house on Thursday, April 18, 2013. It's currently sitting in the Senate, fate unknown. Anonymous tried to run a campaign similar to the SOPA blackouts of last year that were so pervasive and gained so much attention and opposition to that bill, but they failed pretty miserably. I didn't even know that the blackouts had happened until I started researching the bill in detail, and I'm about as heavy of an internet user as there is.

I don't think that CISPA is a good idea, but not for the same reasons as the majority of arguments that I've heard. I don't even think that those arguments are particularly valid. They mostly revolve around a person's privacy. On the internet, I think this is utterly ridiculous. Even tongue in cheek rules acknowledge that on the internet, "anything you post will eventually become public," and "anything you post can and will be used against you." Nothing on the internet is private, and you should not expect that it will be. Even if it's not the government that finds it, it's out there, and someone can find it. Privacy on the internet is an illusion, and government bills will do nothing to change that. I know that anything that I put on the internet will be public, somehow, some day, and I don't post or do anything that I wouldn't mind if everyone saw.

However, even though the majority of material that I personally post is true, or real, this is sadly not the case for everyone. The internet gives an amazing amount of anonymity to its denizens, so people feel like they can post anything. The amount of garbage on the internet astonishes me every day.

It's also amazing how much malicious stuff makes its way out on the internet. And I'm not talking about just viruses or scam sites, I'm talking about major things such as the tweet yesterday, from a hacked Associated Press account, claiming that the White House had been bombed, and the president injured, that made the stock market plunge by 143 points. These have become more and more pervasive. False information is everywhere, and it's often hard, or even impossible, to track down what is true, and what is false.

Because information is so hard to verify on the internet, I do not think that CISPA, or any other bill, should pass. I do not want to be convicted because of a post that a jealous ex made on my Facebook page because they still had my password, or some other false lead that a hacker in China planted in my email account. The recent Reddit misfires in identifying the Boston bombers are an excellent example of how the internet can be wrong. That, not privacy, is why I think CISPA is not a good idea, and should not be passed.

Asteroid Incoming!

In her post, Here I am sitting on my tin can far above the Moon; Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do, my classmate, Cheri Morris makes the argument that cutting NASA's budget is very, very dangerous to our future, because of the ever-present danger that we face from a possible asteroid impact.

She begins by pointing out that the government is cutting NASA's budget, and then proceeds to argue that we should give them more money for finding asteroids and protecting Earth. While I agree with both the fact that asteroids are incredibly dangerous to us (not just as people, but as a species), and that we should not be cutting NASA's budget in any way, I also disagree directly with some of the conclusions she reached in her post.

First, while NASA's budget is indeed being cut, they are shuffling money around. As noted in various articles around the internet, such as this one from Slate, NASA is actually spending more money on asteroid detection and collision prevention this year than they did last year, so that budget is not being cut.

I think that the true issue here is the programs that NASA is going to have to cut to be able to keep funding in areas deemed critical, such as the asteroid program. The article I listed above does a nice job of outlining the various areas that have been cut that should not have been.

These areas include planetary science (Trips to Mars, etc.), crewed missions (You know, actual humans in space...), and most importantly of all, education.

Cheri points out very directly that one of the biggest issues, one of the reasons that there's not more backlash against this cut, is that the public is uneducated. I completely agree on this subject. I subscribe to the belief that "Space is the final frontier", and that it is one of the most important topics to educate people about. Education funding should be critical, and one of the very last things to get cut in any circumstances.

Thus, while I agree that the budget cuts are bad, and that they are hitting NASA, I do not think the biggest issue is the danger of an asteroid strike--in part because the budget in that area was not actually cut--but rather education.