Homeland Security Organization - Book Report/Review Example

Homeland Security Organization: critical review The article “Technology, security, and individual privacy: New tools, new threats, and new public perceptions” authored by Lee S. Strickland and Laura E. Hunt, talks about the technologies which are being used for security purposes and their usage and acceptance from the point of view of people on whom they are being used. It was published on February 1st 2005 in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Volume 56, and Issue 3. The above mentioned article does have a clearly stated research question – “Do the people, who are being tracked by the information collection and technologies, understand and approve the use of the same?” It is being seen that government and organizations alike are using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and the smart cards etc. which are basically very handy information collection and transmission technology, in the working of their homeland security, information security, security of the physical premises, as well as the control of supplies in commerce. Most of these applications basically track the activities of an individual, yet it cannot be said unambiguously that to what extent, if at all, the common people understand the use of these technologies and whether they approve to these information practices. These unanswered questions are the research questions of the article under review. (Strickland and Hunt, 2005, p. 221) This article has some clearly stated hypothesis. Two types of information professionals were surveyed, namely the public librarians and the technology-oriented librarians and their understanding of the uses and privacy issues related to the RFIDs and Smart Cards were compared. The hypothesis was that the functioning of these technologies would be better known to the technology-oriented librarians but none of them would fully understand the inbuilt threat to individual privacy. It was further believed that both of these groups would have concern over the use of these devices but would in general have a supportive attitude towards homeland security. Lastly, it was also hypothesized that these findings about the specific groups can be extended to the common people of America. (Strickland, and Hunt, 2005, pp. 221-222) This article is unique from the point of view that it explains in details the technologies that are being used for different security practices, the existing laws regarding these and using the collected primary data, citizen’s knowledge and consent to the use of these technologies is ascertained. These technologies have been assessed from the view point of the people, who are directly or indirectly being tracked by these technologies. The article mainly aims at finding the answers to the questions about a general citizen’s perceptions about the technologies like RFIDs and the smart chips, there use and utility. This article first describes in details what exactly RFIDs and smart chips are and their origin and evaluation over the years. Then the article informs about the information policy issues that are currently in practice in America. It then goes on to explain the rationale behind the privacy policy and the reasons and extent of the conflict between security and privacy issues. After this the research methodology and the obtained results are discussed in details and finally the key findings and conclusion are jotted down. Using the data, answers to some of the questions like how knowledgeable the people are as far as these technologies are concerned, whether these should be used commercially or not, whether they are useful in Homeland Security or not, whether there should be some specific regulations in the use of these technologies or not, etc., have been found. The article does not have a literature review attached to it. It only contains the background of the technological tools, how they work and their evolution over the years. The authors have explained the research methodology in a very detailed manner, making it easy to understand. The information has been collected by conducting an online survey consisting of 40 questions belonging to four different categories. These questions ranged from standard information about age, sex, highest education attained to questions on the knowledge of RFID and the smart technology. (Strickland and Hunt, 2005, pp. 227) Ordinal scale of measurement had been used to get the respondent’s response in the 3rd and 4th sections where questions were about the level of support that these technologies had earned from the point of view of cost cutting and time saving and the views regarding the privacy issues. The response from 96 respondents forms the data set for this analysis. It is a simple questionnaire based research work. The authors have not used any alternative method of analysis. By going through this article, a fair idea about the research questions can be developed. Based on the given article, conducting a similar study becomes easier. Now, moving on to the findings of the paper, it was found that both the group of respondents had a near similarity in their answers to the questions. Most of the people had graded themselves in between 2-3 on a scale of 5 from the point of view of their knowledge about these technologies. But this grading was found to be a bit modest as on an average the respondents had answered nearly 50% of the times correctly to a given question on the RFIDs and smart chips. (Strickland and Hunt, 2005, pp. 228) Secondly, the research has shown that people had mostly positive views about using the RFID in anti-theft and inventory tracking devices as they keep the prices in control and in car transponders as they reduce the travel time considerably. This is a positive signs for the producers who are looking forward to these cost cutting measures. But the response in the case of smart chips has been very less, even if it involved reducing commercial frauds or identity theft, i.e. around 16.6% in case of government issued smart chips and 23.9% in case of privately issued ones. (Strickland and Hunt, 2005, p. 229) Thirdly, the answers regarding the use of RFIDs and smart chips in homeland security have given less than satisfactory results which goes on to show that in United States, privacy is more over-bearing than security. (Strickland and Hunt, 2005, pp. 229) Another significant result of this study is the fact that a large number of people have shown desire for certain governmental regulations in the use of technologies like RFID. This finding went against the initial hypothesis where it was thought that the interference of the government will meet with even more rejections. The reason for this could be that the citizen are so against the idea of intrusion in their private lives that they are ready to support the regulations bought forward by the government and in turn wants the government to safeguard the privacy of the people from the hands of both government as well as commercial interest. (Strickland and Hunt, 2005, pp. 230-231) The authors have summed up the findings from the research that was conducted and their implications have been stated. The authors have tried to address these implications. It is seen that the public, in general, fear the technologies that increases the specter of substantial invasion of privacy. These policies generally meet with a lot of public objection and this result in more and more demand for governmental regulation in this area. The authors have stressed on the importance of making people comfortable with the idea of these technologies as it has been seen that it is of lesser importance that how an organization wants to use the smart chips or the RFIDs but how people think they can be used. (Strickland and Hunt, 2005, pp. 231) Again, it was seen that people are less enthusiastic about the use of smart chips even if it was for the purpose of reducing serious issued like identity theft and commercial frauds. To this, the authors have cited the examples of other nations who are using this technology and doing well with it. It has been stated that the people of America stress a bit too much on the word privacy but in nations like Spain and United Kingdom, people are comfortable in discussing and using the identity cards. (Strickland and Hunt, 2005, pp. 229-230) The strength of this analysis is that the observations have met the minimum calculation requirements. At alpha=0.05 and 0.1 tolerance there was no need to correct for extreme proportions or for small population bias. (Strickland and Hunt, 2005, pp. 233) The limitation of this research is that it is based on data collected from questionnaires. Therefore, there remains the chance of respondents replying superficially, respondents overestimating or underestimating their views, especially in case of ordinal questions. Again, the chances of the respondent misinterpreting a particular question can also hamper the results obtained by doing the research. Moreover, many of the questions in the questionnaire were of the true-false type and in such questions the chances of people merely guessing and not replying honestly persists. The problem of sample bias also remains i.e. the 92 respondents, as mentioned by the authors themselves, differ from the general American population in certain respects. Therefore, it is not absolutely right to extend the findings from this data set to the whole population of United States. The article Technology, security, and individual privacy: New tools, new threats, and new public perceptions is a standard research article which has definite research questions, relevant assumptions and hypothesis, well explained research methodology which includes how the data has been collected, the obtained results and their implications etc. It is a good read as it well addresses the issue of technologies used for security purposes from the view point of the common people. Reference: 1) Strickland, Lee S. and Hunt, Laura E. (2005). Technology, security, and individual privacy: New tools, new threats, and new public perceptions, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 56(3), pp.221-234 Read More