Cloud Privacy and Security

This report analyzes the personal and ethical implications of the Smart Sensor and WiFi Networks implemented by the Australian Government. It also discusses the use of digital identity and the security and privacy measures that can be adopted to protect it.

Running Head: CLOUD PRIVACY AND SECURITY
Cloud Privacy and Security
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Introduction
Sensor networks are smart devices that can detect the identity of a human being just by
having a face scan even from a distance. This technology finds significant amount of application
in the security cameras that help to determine the identity of a man from a street or a building.
This is applied in the field of security where this technology helps the police to keep track on
people passing through a particular area and catch any people who violates rules like traffic
rules, pedestrian rules and others or commit a crime on the open road like fighting, trafficking
and others (Denkovski et al., 2015). Singapore government has implemented a Smart Nation
Plan as a part of the national security measure so that the government can keep tabs on the
citizens in order to prevent any issues on the important roads. Following the example of
Singapore, the Australian Government has also decided to roll out a Smart State Plan where
smart sensor devices will be implemented throughout the CBD. However, before implementation
of the plan, the government needs to consider the ethical and other concerns and implications of
the smart system as the citizens may not always feel safe and protected in the smart network.
In this particular report, the personal and ethical implications of the smart sensor network
as well as the smart WiFi network have been analyzed in order to determine whether both the
systems will be accepted by the citizens and whether these will ensure the safety and security of
the citizens.
1. Personal and Ethical Implications of Government’s Smart Sensor Network
Following Singapore Government’s Smart Nation Plan, Australian Government has also
planned to implement the Smart State Plan that will involve installation of a network of smart

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cameras and sensors in various parts of the central business districts (CBD) like traffic lights,
rubbish bins, bus stops and others. The main objective of this implementation is to monitor the
behavior of the citizens in the respective areas as well as prevent street crimes at any cost.
However, there are several personal and ethical implications that the government will need to
consider before implementation of the Smart State Plan.
1.1 Types of People Affected by the Proposal
By this proposal, mostly the street criminals will be affected as they will always be
monitored from any point of the street. The smart sensors and cameras are advanced enough to
capture the face of any person and run a digital enquiry in the database to identify the particular
personal and immediately send feedback to the control room regarding the crime (Adamo et al.,
2015). On the other hand, the common people, who travel through the CBD daily for jobs and
other purposes, will feel much more secure and safe on the streets. Other crimes like eve teasing,
child trafficking and street fights will be reduced significantly. Other than crimes, the smart
sensors will also benefit the elderly and sick people who can be assisted by a police officer after
the sensor cameras will send immediate feedback to control room in case of emergencies.
1.2 Behavioral Changes
If this Smart State Plan is finally implemented, significant amount of behavioral changes
will be noticed among the citizens who will pass through the CBD at any point of time. Some of
the most possible behavioral changes that might be noticed as listed below.
i. The people will be much more careful about their personal behavior on the roads
and less conflict will be noticed among the citizens in the rush hours. Currently,
due to sudden traffic blockage or any other outage, a lot of conflicts are noticed

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on the streets that lead to more complications and inconvenience for other office
goers.
ii. One significant behavioral change that will be noticed is the reduction of the
tendency to break the traffic rules. Currently, a large number of the citizens have
tendency to break traffic rules like ignoring traffic lights, over speeding and
others, especially in the rush hours (Ilyas & Mahgoub, 2016). With strict
monitoring using the smart sensors, it is expected that these tendencies will be
reduced as if a rule breaker is caught, there will be strict actions taken by the
traffic police department.
1.3 Changes in Individual Behaviors
Based on the target of the Smart State Plan, there will definitely be changes in individual
behaviors of the citizens. With constant monitoring through the smart sensors, any wrongdoer or
law breaker can be easily identified and caught for punishment. As a result, the citizens will be
forced to change their individual behaviors and reduce their tendencies to break the street rules
and laws while they pass through the particular area. The choices of activities will be
significantly affected as well; people who are more interested to have heated arguments with
others regarding issues like traffic blockage, not allowed to overtake a vehicle and others will
start to ignore these issues and move on their own path without any conflict. Again, when in a
hurry, some people choose to drive their cars as fast as they can, without caring about speed
limits or even traffic signals. With the implementation of the Smart State Plan, they will change
their behavior, prepare better time schedules and travel in time such that they will not need to
hurry to reach their destinations.

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2. Personal and Ethical Implications of Government’s Smart WiFi Network
In addition to the Smart State Plan, the Australian Government has also planned to
implement a Smart WiFi Network in various cities to provide internet access to all the citizens
dwelling in the selected cities. As per this plan, several WiFi boxes will be installed in various
parts of the cities and the nearby citizens will be able to access the internet through the WiFi
without even having to use mobile data. Furthermore, they will be able to switch between the
connections using simple applications. However, there are several personal and ethical
implications of this particular network plan that are discussed as follows.
2.1 Types and Categories of People Affected
WiFi is a technology that is widely popular among the young generation due to its high
speed of internet surfing and download, ease of use and no requirement for any attachments on
their devices like smartphones. Furthermore, since one WiFi router can provide internet
connection to multiple users simultaneously, a number of users can share the connection as well
as the cost of the internet usage (if it is already not free of cost) (Ayyash et al., 2016). Hence, it is
evident that the Smart WiFi Network will affect the youth mostly although other regular internet
users will also be affected. However, with several ethical and security implications, some people
may not be interested in using the smart WiFi network.
2.2 Behavioural Changes
Significant behavioural changes will be noticed among the citizens especially the youth
who extensively use the internet for various purposes. With the government’s low cost or free of
cost internet service through the smart WiFi network, the people choose to use the network
instead of high cost internet services provided by the cellular networks. However, since the

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internet usage through the smart network will be monitored every instant, the users will be less
inclined to access illegal or unauthorized websites while active on the network.
2.3 Changes in Individual Behaviours
Individual behaviours of people will also change significantly with the introduction of the
smart WiFi network. More and more people will stop using internet service provided by the
cellular networks as they will start using the free or low cost internet provided by the smart WiFi.
Some other behaviours like accessing illegal sites like torrent, dark web and others will be
reduced significantly due to constant monitoring through the smart network (De Gante, Aslan &
Matrawy, 2014). With a large number of users accessing the internet through the same smart
network, it will be easier to track internet usage and the sites accessed by the users through the
network. This will also help to reduce cyber crime as most of people will choose not to perform
any unethical action through the internet in the smart network.
2.4 Implications of Keeping Sensitive Information on the Mobile Device
While using a public WiFi network, the first thing that comes to a user’s mind is the
privacy and security of his confidential information stored in his phone. In a phone of a user,
there may be numerous sensitive and confidential data and information like personal photos,
videos, contact numbers, bank account details, identity card details and others. While accessing a
public WiFi network, it is common fear that other users connected to the same network in the
same locality may try to break into other users’ systems and steal confidential and sensitive data.
This is even more possible if there are not sufficient security measures implemented. The
Australian government has chalked out a plan to prevent this situation and has planned to
implement various WiFi security actions and measures that will help the users to feel free to use
the internet without fearing about losing sensitive information.

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3. Use of Digital Identity
Digital identity mainly refers to a computer based system in which various information
about a particular individual like name, date of birth, place of residence, job, annual income,
family details, bank account details, driving license and others are stored within a database. The
main reason behind the implementation of digital identity is that searching for a particular
individual is easier and only a search function is run on the database to find a particular
individual within seconds. There are various positive and negative implications of this particular
system that are discussed as follows.
Positive Implications –
I. Digital identity simplifies various official operations like recruitment procedure,
identity verification, passport processing and others. In the existing processes, the
individual whose identity has to be verified needs to submit a large number of
documents like birth certificate, identity card, voter ID card and others to the
authority who will undertake the verification process (Grassi, Garcia & Fenton,
2017). However, with the digital identity, the authority can only run the search
using name and cell phone number and find all the required information of that
particular individual.
II. Digital identity helps to create a local network like university network, job
network and others through which various individuals working within the same
network can interact with each other and get access to various private resources
like e-library, job resource database and others.
Negative Implications –

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I. While there are significant numbers of positive implications, there are negative
implications as well that require attention before they are extensively
implemented. The first major implication is that the common citizens may feel
their privacy is breached as the government can monitor each and every
individual 24 hours every day through tracking the digital identity. This might be
a case of breach of democratic rights of the fellow citizens.
II. Since in the digital identity, a huge number of personal information is stored like
phone number, permanent address, ban account details, driving license number
and others (Vivienne, 2016). Hence, although the Government promises to secure
the information and prevent any unauthorized access, it is possible that if a major
international level data breach occurs and breaks into the government database, it
may steal and misuse of the personal information of millions of citizens. This is a
very extreme risk that needs to be addressed before the digital identity system is
implemented.
From the analysis of the positives and negatives, it is evident that although digital identity
will be very useful in the near future, the loopholes must be solved first in order to ensure
absolute privacy and security of the citizens.
Now, if a citizen is to visit the State Capital after the implementation of the Smart State
Plan, the use of digital identity will definitely assist him to maintain privacy while using any
smart device. One main advantage of digital identity is that enables the user to be anonymous in
a public forum while interacting with other individuals in the same forum (Dunphy, Garratt &
Petitcolas, 2018). However, as discussed earlier, there will be a major reason of concern if a

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large scale data breach occurs and steals all major and personal information of the users from
their digital identities stored in the database.
4. Security and Privacy of Digital Identity
There are several actions that can be adopted in order to ensure the security and privacy
of digital identity of an individual while using the network of Smart State Plan. However, it is to
be noted that these are only preventive measures and do not absolutely ensure the privacy and
security of the digital identity. Very mass scale of data breach still may occur and it is the duty of
the government to ensure the security of the digital identities. Some of the actions that can be
adopted are as follows.
Passwords – Digital identity requires the user to open a personal profile in a particular
portal where he can enter his information as required. In order to ensure a personal profile of a
user is not accessed by someone else, it is important that the user applies a strong password in his
profile that should not be known by any other user or person. Moreover, in order to increase the
strength of the security further, the user should change his password frequently (for example,
once every 15 days) (Beduschi et al., 2017). The password must be strong and a mixed collection
of letters, digits and symbols so that it cannot be decrypted easily. In addition to the password
system, there are other security measures that can further strengthen the security of the user.
These security measures include thumbprint impression, eye retina scan, security image, security
question verification and others.
Prevention of Identity Theft – There are some unethical entities that send some auto
generated messages to users asking for their bank account numbers, PINs, credit card numbers
and the sender name suggests the message is sent by a particular bank in which the user has an

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account. Falling prey to the misleading message, the user often discloses his personal
information and the unethical entity can easily use it to steal his identity and personal properties
(Nocera, 2017). This type of threat can also come through various phone calls where the caller
says he is calling from the bank and asks for information regarding the user’s account. Just as the
user discloses the information, the caller uses the information for identity theft. Hence, it is
important to raise awareness among people regarding such calls or messages so that the users do
not accept these calls and never disclose their personal and private information.
Malicious Files in Emails – It is a very common incident that a user receives a rogue
email with a masked identity containing malicious files. Unable to detect the malicious nature of
the email, the user opens the same to read the contents and immediately, malwares infect his
system. Malwares not only destroy the internal storage of the user’s system by tampering and
deleting files, they can also steal personal information of the users and send it back to the source
of the mail. This way, the mailer can extract personal information of the users and use them as a
part of identity theft process (Magno et al., 2015). Other than emails, the malicious files can also
enter the system through various websites that the user surfs while using the internet connection.
This occurs mostly when the user’s internet connection is not encrypted and there is no security
filter for malicious and suspicious websites. As a result, the user is free to access any website and
without his knowledge, he may come across suspicious websites in which he enters and
ultimately results in the entry of malware in the system. Hence, it is important for the users to
ensure he is using a secure and encrypted network and additionally, he has sufficient filter in
which system that will detect and block suspicious websites available in the internet.

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Conclusion
Finally, it can be concluded that the Australian government should not take a drastic step
and implement the Smart State Plan immediately just by eyeing the advantages of the same.
Before implementation, the government should consider the loopholes and disadvantages that
might result in major implications on the citizens of the country. While the government promises
to provide maximum security of the digital identities and other personal information of the
citizens, there are still some major questions that are to be answered by the government. One
major question is whether the government is ready to counter or prevent any type of major cyber
security attack or data breach attach that may steal massive amounts of the personal information
of the citizens from the digital identity database prepared by the government. Furthermore, there
are fears of internal attacks too. Due to the use of a common network for accessing the internet,
although there are certain security measures, one unethical user may try to enter another user’s
system through the common network and steal personal information from the device. There are
also ethical concerns regarding the smart sensor networks. Due to the constant tracking of the
citizens’ actions and movements, the citizens might feel that their basic democratic rights are
breached and they are under constant surveillance of the government in spite of performing no
wrong work or crime. Hence, it is also important to convince the citizens regarding the
importance of the sensor network and its use in ensuring the national security. Furthermore,
handling of the digital identities of the citizens must be done efficiently such that the data is only
used for verification purposes and not for other unethical means. Also, strong security measures
are required to ensure the privacy and security of the personal information of the citizens. Unless
the government can absolutely ensure all these important security measures, the proposed smart
plan should not be implemented in the state.

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