Cyber Threat & Vulnerability: The Security Risks - A Visual Presentation

In order to better understand the "Cyber Threat & Vulnerability Series," we have prepared the following visual presentation to help you gain perspective in how vulnerable your children are when using TurnItIn.com. As Parents, educators and guardians of our future leaders, you must understand how this one system can not only compromise you, but the children you have brought into this world, or are responsible for on a daily basis as educators. This series is to alert you to the seriousness and potential harm it could put your child in, through no fault of your own. 

As depicted in this slide, when a student submits their application for college, they are required to include all personal information: name, address, phone number, social security number of both themselves and their parents. They are also required by the software to include parents’ occupational information and point of contact number for parents’ employers, along with financial information from tax returns.  Upon acceptance to college, they are required to submit all assignment papers to instructors and TurnItIn.com plagiarism system for comparison to all known documents on the web as well as Turnitin's own database system of held documents from previous students. Based on our investigation, the database held by this privately owned company based in Oakland, California, with international headquarters in Newcastle, England, has the potential vulnerability to be compromised in many ways. We will not disclose the capabilities to hack into this system for obvious reasons. However, the vulnerabilities of this system are plentiful. Accordingly, the risk of all users to include their information in this database affords hackers, and nefarious individuals the opportunity to steal identifying information of both the students and their parents – not to mention stalkers, sexual predators and other persons wishing to cause irreparable harm to students in any specific area.  See Scenario 1 and 2 for how easily it would be for a student to be harmed, and the potential security risks for our country to be harmed at the same time. 

With a unique sales staff who are trained to use covert tactics in selling their product, similar to the old car salesman tactics, any unsuspecting high school principle, dean or president of a junior college will fall prey to the opportunity to help their students succeed.

Outside of financial gains, let's look at the legal side of this investigation. 

How does any private business achieve such success without spending a dime on legal fees? They manipulate the legal system by hiding behind their customers. 

 

 What are the risks to academic institutions?

 What type of remedy does a parent or an academic institution have to stop this type of security risk?

Invited co-author of this article, Sean McGowan is published author, a teacher of Civics and American History, as well as a Chaplain.

Cyber Threat & Vulnerability: Part 5: Forced Plagiarism

"Drawing Hands"   

by M. C. Escher:"ESCHER on ESCHER Exploring the Infinite", 

p. 59 Published in 1989 by HARRY N. ABRAMS, INC., New York

Academia has a quandary. How does it effectively discourage plagiarism without discouraging effective inquiry and original thought? Are students frightened into believing that their professors are working against them when it comes to the efforts employed in regulating scholarly writing? Anti-plagiarism websites have grown in popularity and usage in recent years, from ‘college-bound’ high school curriculum to universities – the hopeful breeding ground of new ideas and concepts. But is the practice of intellectual scrutiny inhibiting intellectual exploration?

“Because of this program, the vast majority of you who do your own work and cite your sources of information properly will not have to compete with students who commit undetected plagiarism.” –Tom Fleming, University of Arizona coordinator for TurnItIn 

There are two inherent flaws with the approach above. First, there is the implication of competition within a system of accepting original thought. Secondly, Mr. Fleming fails to warn students that all creative works submitted to Turnitin will be placed in a database that will ultimately strip them of their copyright protection of their original creative work.

There is a third major flaw within Mr. Fleming's message to the University of Arizona faculty, one that implicates them in abdicating their proper authority to encourage student growth. He instructs the faculty to include the following statement in their syllabus:

"If you decide to take and continue in this course, you are agreeing to submit your papers online, when so instructed, to a plagiarism-prevention program called TurnItIn.com." - Tom Fleming

This one statement is an implied threat to every student who is required to take certain courses to finalize their degree. Instead of giving a student the option to use said software, they are demanding it as if it were the quintessential programs to stop plagiarism. The veiled threats and underhanded collection of intellectual assets must be stopped. 

Academia should encourage students to explore and expand their own horizons of learning, not worry about what the next student is producing. Colleges and universities should be sowing seeds of individual perspective on multiple streams of inquiry. The implication of competition assumes that all will eventually realize the same stream or pattern of thinking, that which is already fully realized by the professor and detailed in the course syllabus. A syllabus that guides areas of thought, cited resources, and supposed length will ultimately breed conformity of thought, which will ultimately be picked up by the algorithmic software as a plagiarism flag. The professor no longer encourages individual thought, but a group consensus on the handling of a particular issue. However, when the ultimate goal is consensus, the patterned thought of selecting some perspectives and rejecting others breeds unilateral agreement, or the same conclusion given by multiple hosts – which by definition is plagiarism. So the patterned syllabi encourage plagiarism of thought but hope to somehow sift and select those who plagiarize in words? Why is this celebrated in academia? It appears that science has infiltrated the humanities. The goal of the professor is to replicate the patterned thought to validate his perspective. When the syllabus is organized in such a way as to encourage specific steps of learning and limit perspectives, it becomes a self-fulfilling paradox of unoriginal thought.

“However, it is respectfully submitted that the operative fact is not whether the Turnitin system is foolproof, but whether it is contrary to the public interest because it actually encourages plagiarism.” –Appellants Petition for Rehearing, Robert Vanderhye, Esquire 

David E Harrington, in an article for the Economist, thinks the use of such software deters teachers from looking for plagiarism, thinking it will naturally be picked up by other sources. For the student who lacks literary skills, the professor has already determined to abandon them to an unfeeling, unwavering courtroom of computer opinion – one where the student is guilty until proven innocent. Just as Mike Smit objects to the presumption of guilt, the under skilled student has no recourse for their own lack, even though the public university is the very place that should be designed to help that student improve in all intellectual areas. Instead, that student is hung out to dry, left as collateral damage along the pathway to better academic conformity. Since when did the university become all about universal thinking?

Why is it so important that the professor not abdicate his role as reviewer? Look to another cultural example: How well has spell-check increased grammatical accuracy in the vernacular? Writers and bloggers no longer review their own work for error – that’s the job of the computer program (in this case, spell-check). It’s a way of using unproven science to shirk responsibility and lighten our workload. And it produces the very opposite of what it is intended to grow: an absence of original thought.

What is wrong with the use of the scientific method here? There is no ‘control’.  There is no group of students who examine the same coursework and subject matter within a world where only the teacher is the ultimate judge of plagiarism. The honor code could be doing more to instill academic integrity and discourage plagiarism, but the college that enforces all students to submit work to TurnItIn has eliminated the control of that variable. When you eliminate the possibility of a control group coming to similar conclusions from varied sources, you undermine the scientific method. This undermining is seen as desirable, for what humanities professor wants to guide the patterns of student thought based on science? Yet the use of data driven solutions to a very real problem means that science has already forced its way in. Therefore, science in its entirety should be enforced to protect the rationality of the experiment.

The idea that we should be of one thought and one mind is not a synthesis of ideas, but a guided meditation on ideas already constructed. This is not freedom of thought, this is tyranny in the mental sphere. If students who offer varied perspective to the discussion are not welcomed, the result is a shared mind not unlike zombies. The professor is doing the thinking for you. The point you need to arrive at has already been scripted out. And the plagiarism software is a way of hiding the overall goal of patterned thinking by masking the universal thought with uncommon phrasing. All must arrive at the same point, but with different styles and approaches.

We quickly embrace what we can do that we don’t stop to think of what we should do. The response by the University of Arizona was to add a legal disclaimer to classes, rather than to examine the implications of whether they want to be tied to the controversial software and copyright infringement implications. Does an institute of higher education wish to purport the ideal that all student work is an extension of the university’s intellectual property? This is different from the private sector, or is it? Patents in the private sector fall back on the company that provided the research space, collaborative environment, and raw data that support the creative thought. Should every university, as part of admission requirements, stipulate that no intellectual property is totally belonging to the student? What about doctoral theses? A doctoral student has full rights to the usage of their intellectual property, as long as the doctoral board does not cut corners and hire a software algorithm to do the hard work for them? And would this policy attract the best and brightest? Or repel them?

“Ultimately, I want a policy that respects students, respects our intellectual copyright, and respects that many of us work hard at university.” – Mike Smit 

Students should be reassured that they will retain rights to the original and creative work. But could they also benefit from the future use of their work within a database created to catch plagiarists? How would it work to give money to those authors who submit to TurnItIn for copyrights? Each time a plagiarized work gets flagged, a few pennies go to the original author as a sort of ‘thank you’ for giving their work to TurnItIn? What about the pure coincidence factor? Where a work is not actually plagiarized, but closely correlates to a newly submitted work? And then there is potential for manipulation, where authors wishing to make a profit turn in multiple sources of work, only so future writings will be flagged and the author compensated for contributing to catching a plagiarizer – even the very same author himself? The software has not proven to be free from manipulation, either from the real plagiarists who wish to skirt the system (and will find ways how), and the self-interest of the user who simply wants another forum for their budding body of work. What about those who have already breached the system, and access previously submitted work to the database and submit it to various cheat sites for money? Isn't that considered as theft and plagiarism within a system that makes no promises to protect original work? TurnItIn is not encouraging original thought within the system it has devised. So it begs the question, are schools who use TurnItIn getting what they pay for?

Tricks and Illusions - False Advertising To Produce Sales (Part 3)

‘Have I got a deal for you. You don’t want to be left out in the cold. If you miss the boat on this, who would want to go to your school? You would be a laughingstock. Everybody’s doing it. Ok, maybe not everybody, but a whole heap of people. Thousands have tried it. Most have stuck with it. And many are unaware of the dangers to themselves or their students. But let’s not worry about danger now. This is education! What could possibly go wrong? Who would want to try to hurt you or your students?’

Best in False Advertising

More than 3,500 higher education institutions use Turnitin, including 69 percent of the top 100 colleges and universities in the U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges list. -TurnItIn.com

Don’t you want to be part of the top 69%? At least, the above statistic leads you to assume that the top 31% did not blatantly reject the greatest anti-plagiarism web service known to man. Or did they? What about the Ivy League schools? Would you imagine Harvard and Princeton to be among the top 10% of the “best colleges”? In many years, they make up #1 and #2. So wouldn’t it be a great way to sell your service if one or both used and publicized your product?

“As far as we know, there is no current subscription to any plagiarism detection software at Harvard.  In 2006, the FAS Instructional Computing Group conducted a pilot of Turnitin for one course.  Subsequently, the university decided not to subscribe.” –Harvard Library, Ask a Librarian website

The truth remains: Harvard did a pilot of anti-plagiarism software, and decided not to sign a contract. Princeton, Yale and Stanford also have chosen their internal honor codes over an external database run by a private company. However, TurnItIn has grown to a meteoric rise in educational partnership thanks to standing on the shoulders of the integrity of past clients. The most famous example is the use of Harvard University in marketing slogans, either formally or informally. “Used by Harvard” is often the only explanation given over multiple years of promotional material, despite the truth of the limited test sample. And even Duke University, which is mentioned in many articles regarding the software, seems to have spent more time studying the effects of anti-plagiarism websites than subjecting their students to them. But the desired effects are astronomical. Even if Harvard were to refute the inclusion claims, 1000's of contracts have already been signed on their supposed endorsement:

Close to 6,500 secondary institutions worldwide now use Turnitin, including 56 percent of the top 100 high schools listed on U.S. News and World Report's America's Best High Schools. –TurnItIn.com

(Each Ivy League University realized the legal implications and recognized the red flags surrounding the use of such a software. How easy the database stripped a student of their intellectual property by stripping them of their copyright under the U.S. Constitution. Potential for their school to be placed in unwanted litigation. How easily the system could be breached, whereby putting their students at risk for identity theft, and cyber-stalking.)

Principals, board members, deans, academic facilitators – all strive to be the best educational institution around. Even when not in direct competition, the struggle to get ahead and stay ahead breeds interest in all types of pilot programs and new methodology. But the use of TurnItIn also breeds exposure of an undesired kind, as everyone wants to be known for curtailing cheating, but no one wants to be known as a hotbed for cheaters. Increased reliance on TurnItIn could garner unwanted media attention as more false positives are acquired as students lean more and more on internet access and ease of copying than relying on writing and researching skills that are currently disappearing from the daily lexicon. Schools may be breeding distrust in their students, and in turn the students may be finding better ways to beat the system. And education suffers. When honor is removed for convenience and human investigation replaced with cyber-policing, the gap widens between the teachers and students in the areas of trust and greater educational accountability. After all, the teachers are no longer detecting incorrect assignments – they have a computer do the dirty work for them.

The ‘Harvard Guide to Using sources’ warns of two types of plagiarism: intentional and unintentional. As evidenced above, there will always be students trying to beat the system, and the inclusion of anti-plagiarism software only means there are different tricks to try in avoiding detection. Just as the experienced cat burglar will find away to avoid the invisible laser security system, the experienced cheaters will find ways to thwart the database protocols. In this scenario, there is little that a computer system can do to completely eliminate all instances of cheating. Instilling honor among all students seems the best way to encourage discipline and discourage abuse.

But what about ‘unintended plagiarism’?

You know the scenario: You’ve been working on your paper all semester. You seemingly have a thousand sticky notes littering your desk from the multitude of books, essays, and internet sites you have read in preparation for your work. You are frantically searching for that one thought to end all thoughts – the final quote to drive the whole paper home. And there it is, right in the middle of your desk, staring at you this whole time incredulously like the star athlete that somehow gets picked last in the neighborhood game. You plug that glorious sentence in and submit the paper, satisfied that you have reached the conclusion of a long process. But then the unthinkable happens. That wasn’t an original thought, but something you pulled from your library musings. You forgot to cite the source in your notes, and passed off someone else’s thought as your own. Albeit in a fit of nervous fatigue, but still you are guilty of the crime. How could you? Don’t you care about the honor code? What will your parents think? Your friends? You can kiss that academic internship goodbye. And good luck moving on with your education, or cashing in on those business contacts that your professor had promised to deliver your way.

How does TurnItIn distinguish between the above two scenarios? Quite simply, it doesn’t. It doesn’t care if the student was malicious or messy, underhanded or exhausted. As long as the algorithm tripped a positive result, the job here is done and they move on, happy to have thwarted yet another miscreant on the road to academic perfection. There is no suspicion of innocence, no benefit of the doubt given to the student. The almighty program has spoken, and another career bites the dust. And the positive example of cheaters caught substantiates future use by future clients, who equally wish to lay a heavy hand on those who cheat for the sake of the masses who just want to learn. But what do we really learn through this exercise?

Beware of the Optical Illusion of false advertising

Harvard and Princeton have their own methods of curtailing cheating: honor and knowledge. First, students are encouraged to embrace the honor code. Students should think of themselves as higher entities that represent their families, communities and university well. Second, they are encouraged to know how to avoid common pitfalls that lead many to plagiarize. Avoid procrastination. Cite all sources at every step of the research project. Cite thoughts that are paraphrased and synthesized into your own work. In order to produce the best work, you must examine multiple sources of information and consider many perspectives that came before you. Do so honorably. Turn in knowledgeable, well constructed work. Be careful and consistent in your research. Allow your integrity to guide the note-taking process, and it will naturally shine through in the end product. For many universities, holding students to a higher standard is a more effective measure of combating cheating than any distant database could ever hope to instill.

The ultimate problem is that the use of false advertising by TurnItIn is just the sort of thing its website claims to rid the world of. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, TurnItIn supports the narrative that the best educational institutions employ its services, no matter how minor or short lived their involvement. The numbers touted on the website are instantly suspect. Do former clients count? Are schools included only if more than 50% of teachers mandate usage? Or is 1% enough to warrant inclusion in marketing schemes? iParadigms seems to be on a crusade against faulty submission of written work. But false or misleading claims for the sake of advertising are acceptable and promoted, if it helps spread the use of a program that only desires to save the world from evil. It’s time for TurnItIn to turn itself in to the moral standards it claims to uphold. And that scrutiny of a moral standard can begin by examining the processes used to determine a positive case of plagiarism.

Invited co-author of this article, Sean McGowan is published author, a teacher of Civics and American History, as well as a Chaplain.

Part 4: Dummy Science and FuzzyLogic

RESTORING AMERICA'S COOKIE JAR

America faces a very serious problem, both liberal and conservative alike, and it has nothing to deal with politics, the environment or economical plight; it is much more serious than anyone wishes to admit too or address. This writer is bold enough to address it and put certain individuals on notice at the same time – beware of dipping your hand into my cookie jar again.

What is the problem I am referring to that we as a nation must address? It’s the overwhelming infringement on another person’s intellectual property and copyrighted work! This problem is not limited to the writing profession, television and movie industry, corporate world, but reaches into the private sector too.

Every writer who has ever written anything throughout history is flattered when another writer utilizes their work. When a writer references or refers to another writers work, it gives value to their hard work and long hours of research. However, when certain people who have no creativity within their veins to create an idea or produce prose, feels it necessary to steal another individual’s creative ideas or published work, it shows the world you lack the ability to do your own research in order to produce a viable product. When an individual, writer, or reporter must cherry pick anothers work, or steal another’s intellectual ideas and claims them as their own; their not professional people, they're thieved. This type of behavior show’s the world a lack of integrity and character and says you shouldn’t be trusted.

Those who feel it necessary to infringe on another’s intellectual work fail to understand the history of America. Maybe they just don’t know the history behind why the founding fathers felt it essential to create the intellectual, copyright and patent laws; we hold sacred in this county. Allow me to give them a history lesson as a reminder.

Throughout the 1700s both Britain and Europe had a serious problem whereby inventions and creative works were being stolen or taken by those who held titles such as Count, Earl, Marquees. These men of nobility claimed works of intellectual property, inventions and innovative ideas created by others because they felt it was their right, based upon a title, to take ownership of said works. This caused great strain for those who tirelessly researched, created and worked to produce such writings and inventions, but they had no recourse to fight and lost their own work and inventions. These individuals might have retained their research material, but credit for their findings was stripped from them without any profit or fame.

When the founding fathers began laying out plans for their experiment of a new nation, they addressed the travesties befallen on those creative individuals whose work had been stolen by the nobility throughout Europe and Britain. Benjamin Franklin, a writer and inventor himself, brought before the Continental Congress the plight of his fellow writers and inventors from across the sea and requested a new law that protected their rights as creative individuals across America. While drafting up our new laws, our founding fathers included a strong intellectual property, copyright and patent law to ensure an individual's creative ideas were protected America became the promise land for creativity and inventive promises whereby making it attractive to new settlers who wished to be so creative and innovative to come to America. Their creativity can be seen throughout America today.

If it were not for this one law, America wouldn’t have prospered so quickly. This law made us stronger, more powerful and more attractive to the world as leaders in every field. It allowed for the freedom to produce writers of amazing books, poetry and screenplays. It protected inventions that have transformed the world of science, medicine and technology.

It is because of these laws that I as a professional writer, pride myself on doing my own extensive research before I produce an article. As a sign of respect for my fellow writer’s hard work, I give credit where credit is due because PROFESSIONAL RESPECT is a two “Way Street!” Unfortunately, there seems to be unprofessional individuals out there who lack respect of another’s work or the laws that protect a person’s intellectual property. The major culprits are those so-called writers who feel it necessary to cherry pick my work, then claim it as their own. When YOU write an article or produce any other creative work; you should give credit where credit is due - to the person who did the original hard work. By citing your source of information, you’re not only acknowledging a fellow writer’s work, you’re also giving respect to the other person’s endless hours of research.

What makes this country great is our intellectual property, copyright and patent laws, so respect these laws or don’t call yourself an inventor, writer or creative person.

For those who feel it necessary to cherry pick my intellectual property from the “Picasso – The Art of War” series, which clearly has a United States of America and International Copyright Clause at the bottom of each segment, understand this: I am the original source of this material, and I am the one who put the dots together. I am also the one who has the loyalty of the owner of this piece of artwork along with the supporting information contained therein. If you feel your liberal or conservative political cause outweighs professional responsibility and courtesy, you are gravely mistaken. Your profit and gain is not capitalism, its theft and infringement on my copyright and intellectual property. Either do your own research, or respect my hard work of endless hours of research in order to put the dots together and give credit accordingly.

This will be your only warning for the future because there is a ball-peen hammer ready to strike the next hand who dips into my cookie jar and steals my intellectual property or copyright material.