Cornyn's Stand for Government Transparency

National Security is an issue I’ve never really looked into until now. I found an editorial from our own Austin American Statesman entitled Cornyn’s Stand for government transparency. Personally, I thought it was very interesting, I never knew the dangers reporters and journalists put themselves in when reporting anonymous information. Apparently the government is known to use threats of subpoenas and jail time in order to find out who initially leaked the information. That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? I guess it gets the point across, they want to know who “betrayed” them and they will do just about anything in their power to find out. Quite a scare-tactic if you ask me.


The author’s intended audience looks to be the general public, but more specifically voters and people who actually have a say in what goes on in our government. He’s looking for support of what he calls a “shield” to reporters, and he’s got mine. I think he did a great job explaining in simple terms what is going on and arguing his point. I agree that the public should know what’s really happening in our government, whether it’s “classified” or not. That’s what builds trust, and with no trust where do we even begin with relying on and believing in our government? We have a right to know what goes on in our country, and reporters should have the right, along with this shield the author speaks of, to disclose any valuable information without having to state their sources as long as they are positive it is credible. Although it does bring up the question of credibility to the public, again comes the issue of trust. Most policies will not allow a story to be leaked without being 100% credible, and I believe that if a story was leaked and later found to be untrue, they would correct themselves right away. They can’t afford to be giving the public false information. I’m really interested to see what affect Cornyn has on this policy, only time will tell!

Government's Role in Web Security

The article I chose involves the government’s role in securing the internet. “There is no kill switch for the internet, no secret on-off button in an Oval Office drawer.” The author, Lolita C. Baldor of the article, “What‘s government‘s role in making the Web secure?” makes points such as hackers taking over the internet is somewhat similar to terrorists taking over. So far at least 18 bills have been introduced to Congress to protect the country in the event of a “massive cyber attack.” Now, this is something interesting to me, mainly because I have never thought of a terrorist attack being online. But why not? We do just about everything online these days, we depend on so many things to work, function properly, help us on a daily basis, all because of the internet. I have never stopped to think where we would be without the internet, without email, without being able to research, etc. Our world would definitely come to a halt. So many people are dependent upon the internet today, and there are tons of hackers out there that I’m sure have the intelligence to do such a thing. They may just be simply waiting for the right moment or too scared because of the repercussions of their actions, either way, I believe there are people out there that could ruin the internet. We could potentially lose all of our stored information, whether it be personal emails, pictures, important business documents such as finances, inventory, history, etc. Anything with out a paper trail would be lost forever! Think of what that could do to our country… Most companies would be ruined! We would probably end up in an even worse recession than we’re already in, actually scratch that, we would end up in a major depression. We would have to start over from square one, or for the less fortunate, they would have to give up and move on. Maybe they don’t take over the entire internet, but they find a way to hack into our bank accounts, our financial records, they could rob us with out anyone knowing! Our funds would be depleted, and I’m sure we would eventually find where the money was transferred, but in the mean time it would really screw with a lot of people. Businesses would die, our cars would be repossessed, houses would go into foreclosure… Plain disaster! I think the government should have at least some control (which I am 99.9% sure they have more than we think, and probably more than we would like to know). If they did not, we could have a major crisis! I am glad I came across this article, it really makes you see how dependent we can be at times. Most of my school work, my connections, and sometimes just my boredom or fun come from the internet. Maybe I should be more responsible and start keeping paper trails of things such as my invoices, no more online banking, no more online purchases. But then I ask myself, is that really necessary? My dad always tells me not to do such things, but I catch myself telling him he just doesn’t understand, “It’s 2009 Dad, everyone does online banking/purchases/bill pay” So I ask myself, is he right?