Chapter 15: Everything You Read on the Net is True.

Everything you read on the Internet is true. Right?

Let’s make it easier. Everything in the New York Times or your local newspaper is true. Everything you see on the NBC Nightly News is true. Is that better? Ask your teachers and parents how they feel about that and what they believe? Which newspapers or magazines do you believe and which do you not?

With the Internet, everyone is suddenly a publisher. The First Amendment, Freedom of Speech, lets anyone say just about anything they want with only a few exceptions.

With billions of web pages on the Internet, how do you know what to believe? Who is writing and publishing real and accurate information, or maybe opinions that actually make sense. Who else is publishing mindless clutter?

Making that distinction is becoming harder and harder. That is why many teachers are asking students to do real research in libraries where sources can be identified and verified.

When you go to an e-commerce site and there is a price for a specific item, you expect it to be accurate. However, what if malicious hackers have changed the contents so that everything is wrong? That kind of criminal hacking is known as an ‘integrity attack’. The integrity, or accuracy of the information has been changed.

Notably, the New York Times was subject to this kind of attack, although the front page news was not modified. Instead, the hackers added all sorts of information in the background of the web page.

The problem is that nearly 100% of web sites today do not use any security or protection against ‘integrity’ attacks.

As they say: Caveat Emptor, the buyer beware. Or in the case of the Internet, definitely do not believe everything you read, see or hear.

The Law

The first amendment is often considered the most important of all of the Bill of Rights. It allows us to criticize government, religion, big companies and voice our own beliefs.

However, there are a few exceptions. You cannot threaten the President of the United States. The Secret Service will be at your door in a hot minute, even if you email President@WhiteHouse.Gov a threat. Don’t do that. You cannot yell ‘Fire!’ in a movie theater or scream ‘Bomb!’ at an airport for public safety reasons. And you cannot tell lies about other people or companies. That is called slander and libel.

What do you think?

1. You build a personal web site. You decide to have some fun and make up news and stories about things that never happened. Is that only fun or is there some harm in it? What does everyone think about that?

2. What is the difference between a parody for humor and telling lies. How do you tell the difference?

3. You go to the New York Times web site and read a story for school and then the CNN web site says exactly the opposite. What do you do? Who do you believe?

4. How do you decide whether the information you are reading is accurate, true or distorted lies?

5. How do you or your family decide which ‘legitimate’ news organizations to believe? CNN? ABC? CBS? Which newspapers are more ‘right’ than ‘wrong’ and how you make that choice?

6. How do you know that a web site has not been hacked and that the information is either right or wrong?