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Abstract
Computers are becoming an important part of our life. It allows us to do thing that are not possible otherwise. Communication and information transfer is much easier and quicker due to the advent of Internet. Now a person sitting in Canada can talk to anyone sitting in India. People who like to meet and talk to new people around the word use social networks. On such social networks people not only give their whereabouts but also share pictures, videos and other personal data. There are hackers and criminal minded people who misuse computers to commit crimes like identity theft, bank frauds etc. On a personal level there is data in a computer that the user does not wish to share with unauthorized people or anyone at all. On commercial and corporate level, a computer might act as a datacenter or server with critical and sensitive data. Naturally, these systems with all the information and data flowing around the world become a target for hackers. To secure data from such attackers, encryption is required. It is not guaranteed to be 100% secure but encryption ensures that no one can easily get any confidential information from a system.
Encryption comes under the topic cryptography. Sukhraliya1, Sumit and Solanki stated “cryptography is the branch of art and science of keeping secret messages secret by which unauthorized users can’t access that secret message.” (. Sukhraliya1, Sumit & Solanki, 2013, p. 1).
There are many ways of data encryption; digital signature is one of them. It is a set of rules and parameters that manages the identity verification of signatory and also that of data. Digital signature can be generated on both stored data and the data transmitted over communication channels.
Key Length
According to Lenstra “The key length used for a cryptographic protocol determines the highest security it can offer. If the key is found or ‘broken’, the security is undermined.” (Lenstra, n.d., p. 1).
In encryption the relationship between key lengths and security is bit confusing. The keys with the lengths of 80, 160, and 1024, look different from each other but they give same level of security. Key length also shows what kind of encryption method is used. A key length of 80 shows usage of symmetric encryption while key length of 160 shows hash length. All this is not the same in case of passwords. Strength of password does not depend on key length, rather it depends on the protocol used.
Patriot Act
After 9/11 attacks the US government introduced Patriot Act, which was aimed to provide additional security to US Citizens and help Government in combatting terrorism. The Information System Security protocol needed to be stricter and it was ensured that more detailed and accurate records would be kept and used to aid the Government where deemed necessary.
The generic advantages of Patriot act were better protection of citizens, support victims of terrorism and promulgate proper checks and balances. The Patriot Act gave government more authority and tools for fighting terrorism. Profiling for specific prototypes, searching for accurate information and broadening the base of surveillance, enabled authorities to monitor terrorist threats in a much better way.
With phones being tapped, data being monitored, locations being traced based on IP addresses; the Patriot Act certainly infringes the privacy rights of individuals. But as this is the need of the hour, it should be reevaluated, analyzed and then adjusted to be acceptable across the majority of people of USA.
References
Lenstra, A. K., Key Lengths Contribution to The Handbook of Information Security
http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/164539/files/NPDF-32.pdf
Sukhraliya, V., Chaudhary, S., Solanki, S. (August 2013) Encryption and decryption algorithm
using ASCII values with substitution array approach, Vol. 2 (Issue 8), International
