HEHA Strategy for Obesity

HEHA Strategy for Obesity Strategy for Obesity As health indicators have been better in New Zealand, the development of well being has not been consistently everywhere. Obesity is one of the most common public health problems all over the world that is increasing. It also has related some problems which include  heart disease,  stroke, type II  diabetesand certain  cancers. One of the countries is New Zealand, the number of obesity and overweight has been increasing ever since the 80s, most of them are aged 15 years and above (31%) and about one out of nine children aged 2 to 14 (11%), New Zealand Health survey (2012/13). This essay will talk about the HEHA Strategy on obesity; techniques, procedure and its programs. Obesity is a disease of having too much body fat. It is not similar as being overweight, which means weighing too much, (Wikipedia). The response of New Zealand commenced on 2003 to obesity is theâ€Å"Healthy Eating-Healthy Action- Oranga Kai Oranga Pumau (HEHA) Strategy†with the a vision of an environment and society where individuals, families or whÄ nau, and communities are supported to eat healthy, live physically active, and to attain as well as to maintain a healthy body† in simpler terms it concentrate on the growing problems such as poor eating lifestyle, lack of exercise, and obesity. The Health department has specially made a group of researchers to evaluate this said Strategy for the reason that the HEHA Strategy explicitly identifies the significance of the evaluation. The Strategy is lively and it may be influenced by altering political and communal contexts. The complication of the environment, the program and the problem is reflected in the complexity of the assessment. The Strategys structure also recognises the importance of reducing the inequalities in health and it involves the treaty which the Crown and MÄ ori signed in 1840 which is considered to be New Zealands founding document, the â€Å"Treaty of Waitangi†. The viewpoint of this treaty is about partnership, participation and protection which is enshrined so much in the health legislation of New Zealand. Particular challenges have an effect on the assessment of the HEHA Strategy and other similar strategies. It is also a complicated intervention that is stirring in a complex condition and that encloses many not related aspects possibly to influence nutrition and physical activity. Moreover, this strategy’s aim of improving health, increasing physical activity and reducing obesity are long term goals and it may not be accomplished within the estimated time. The extent of nutritional behaviour is to be aware of the achievement of this said Strategy. The result that may be related to the HEHA strategy will be commencing, which is a Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey (NPAS). It is of course a survey and its plan is a continuing quarterly survey that set up four panels of respondents, each of them will be interviewed annually in three years. All of the chosen country representatives exist to have datasets which comprise info on nutrition, physical activity patterns and body size. It will later be analysed and used to make criterion to be compared to the estimates of the NPAS. A number of six thousand four hundred people which are all fifteen years old and above will be recruited to take part in the said activity. The partakers will be recruited from over six hundred random mesh blocks. Maori, Pacific Islander plus a list of deprivation have been sampled to help the estimates of the groups to be calculated. The trial reviews have looked at the past model for Ministry of Health nationwide surveys using the same group sampling met hods. This involves the certainty of a selected populace level rate that can be estimated by how old they are and where they came from, to make it possible into a precision of the estimates for observing the people changes in nourishment, the annual Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) survey will also be used for three years. This instrument for survey is made up of tons of questions from other state surveys and also some fresh questions. The question includes something about socio-demographic factors, physical activities and consumption of foods that has high fat, salt, sugar and MSG. The tactics of HEHA on creating a helpful setting also include questions regarding societal and environmental factors. The population’s estimate value will be copied for evaluating the multistage cluster sample by the standard methods. An examination will also be done to know the changes in health. In relation with the previous baseline, there will be a prepared national representative datasets. There are also programmes in schools that involve the HEHA strategy. An example of this is â€Å"The Fruit in Schools programme†. Its plan is to target lowest income decile schools. The students at the schools are supplied with a free quantity of fruit during school days. The schools that joined the programme are to carry out an entire school or society approach to make a supporting environment and should also supports healthy consumption, physical activities and smoke alcohol free. The schools should work in clusters to sustain itself in fruit provision in over three years. Here are some info’s of the programme; term four of 2005 phase one of Fruit in Schools programme was introduced to Sixty required schools in six District Health Boards (DHB), in term two of 2006 phase two went to fifty four schools more than a total of thirteen DHBs, in term four of 2006 phase three was rolled out to just about one hundred fifty six schools joined, covering all the twenty one DHBs. The entire number of schools that joined in all the phases is about two hundred seventy, and the total number of the children participating is approximately fifty six thousand. The New Zealand Council for Educational Research and Health Outcomes International is consistently evaluating the Fruit in Schools programme. The evaluation includes formative process and outcome components, Ministry of Health (2008). In conclusion, the HEHA strategy targets the communal and environmental factors, it supports healthy eating, living active or simply living healthy. It also has a lot of plans to promote health like the â€Å"NPAS† to know what the people want so the MOH can take action and â€Å"the fruit in school programme† which targets the children to take care of their health. REFERENCES Capital and Coast District Health Board. (2008). HEALTHY EATING HEALTHY ACTION: ORANGA KAI ORANGA PUMAU (MINISTRY APPROVED PLAN 2) from http://www.ccdhb.org.nz/initiatives/Heha/CCDHB%20HeHa%20PLan%2008_09Final.pdf Ministry of Health. (2004) TRACKING THE OBESITY EPIDEMIC: New Zealand 1977–2003. Wellington: Ministry of Health Ministry of Health. (2008). HEALTHY EATING – HEALTHY ACTION ORANGA KAI – ORANGA PUMAU: PROGRESS ON IMPLEMENTING THE HEHA STRATEGY 2008. Wellington: Ministry of Health. Ministry of Health. (2003). HEALTHY EATING – HEALTHY ACTION ORANGA KAI – ORANGA PUMAU:A STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK 2003 Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Health. Ministry of Health. (2008). A PORTRAIT OF HEALTH. KEY RESULTS OF THE 2006/07 NEW ZEALAND HEALTH SURVEY. Wellington: Ministry of Health OBESITY retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity OBESITY BY AGE 25 LINKED TO SEVERE LATE-LIFE OBESITY (2014) retrieved from http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/276413.php Rachael M McLean, Janet A Hoek, Sue Buckley, Bronwyn Croxson, Jacqueline Cumming, Terry H Ehau, Ausaga Faasalele Tanuvasa, Margaret Johnston, Jim I Mann and Grant Schofield. (2009) BMC PUBLIC HEALTH, BioMed Central Ltd, New Zealand THE 2012/13 NEW ZEALAND HEALTH SURVEY retrieved from http://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/obesity TRACKING THE OBESITY OF EPIDEMIC (2004) retrived from http://www.health.govt.nz/publication/tracking-obesity-epidemic

Russia :: essays research papers fc

Comparative Politics Gerard Chretien RUSSIA: POLITICAL STRUCTURE: Summary: Why the democratic structure in Russia is proving to be unsuccessful. INTRODUCTION: The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, disintegrating into thirteen different states. Ever since the political structure of Russia has been viable and lacks stability. Many reasons can be cited for this instability out of which the bearish economy and a shaky democratic system are the main causes. ANALYSIS: The reforms taken after Russia’s disintegration have yet to be proved fruitful. The economy is in no better shape then before and politically Russia has great set backs in the name of the ongoing war with Muslim freedom fighters in Chechnya. â€Å"The most important factor that needs to be established is economic growth. Successful economic development will ease the transition and enable violence and dissention among the races very avoidable. If resources are abundant and properly distributed then multiple markets can grow. However, when resources run scarce and competition arises for limited assets then violence and animosity become the only plausible alternatives. If two industries fiercely compete for limited resources then one is likely to be forced out of the market. A sound and developing economy is essential for the happiness and orderly conduct of the people (Barner-Barry & Hody, 1995)(1). Another problem cited in the progress is the difficulty of transition from communism to democracy when the government officials are trained in the old system. The process of privatization requires lengths of time and willingness of the people to take upon the businesses for which they require full governmental protection, easy paper work and full rights over their property. â€Å"If Russia is to make the transition, it must rediscover civil society (the informal network of family, church, service organization and the like). Strong civil society provides the political culture that supports liberal institutions, but the Communist Party deliberately destroyed many elements of civil society to ensure party dominance. Russia faces moral, economic, and legal gaps in its civil society. Hence Russia has a difficult road to achieve democracy.†(2) It was a widely held belief that with the fall of the Soviet Union Russia would make a rapid transition into democracy and free markets. â€Å"This overlooks the crucial role of political culture in shaping and supporting political and economic institutions. Russia did not have the political culture appropriate to western-style institutions and so became chaotic and lawless. For Russians, democracy became a dirty word, as it symbolized Russia’s troubles.

American Corporations and Internet Pornography Essay -- Exploratory Es

American Corporations and Internet Porn      Ã‚   In this essay, we shall consider the so-called "reputable" mainstream American companies that are reaping huge profits from Internet porn, as well as related considerations.    Marriott, Westin, and Hilton are known for their pornographic video deliveries to paying rooms, a practice which Omni Hotels discontinued when confronted by the American Family Association. On the other hand, Internet porn companies like Yahoo! In its x-rated Geocities sites, was not intimidated by AFA's threats. Instead, it took US Attorney General Ashcroft's strong action to intimidate Yahoo! into only a partial-withdrawal from Internet porn. However, Yahoo! Still retains marginally pornographic material on websites.    AT&T is the biggest American company that has accommodated itself to the pornography boom. Its cable division, AT&T Broadband, distributes to subscribers the explicit porn channel, The Hot Network; and this has unfortunate repercussions in the world of Internet pornography. In the spring of 2001, an interfaith coalition of relig...

Analysis of My Big Fat Greek Wedding

During the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, there was a lot of positive and negative communication that influenced the main character’s life decisions. The story is about a young woman, named Toula, that is of Greek decent who is fearful of being stuck in the life she is now living. She is a frumpy girl that works in her family’s restaurant because she has not been able to find a Greek man to marry, and because of this, her family claims that she is old and has failed in life. She is allowed to attend college, which in turn, gives her new confidence and she is able to fall in love with a non-Greek man that is named, Ian.During the movie she struggles to get her family to accept him as the man she loves, and she also finally comes to terms with her heritage and cultural identity. At the end of the movie, Ian is accepted into the family, he becomes a baptized Greek, agrees to marry in the Greek Orthodox Church and participate in the Greek culture. Despite the happy ending of the movie, Toula struggled to follow the rules and values of her culture, practiced nonverbal communication with Ian, and received empathy from her mother while Ian had to deal with a language barrier of English and Greek.Toula has a hard time accepting the culture of her family. From the movie, it seems as though the Greek culture is a high context culture. High context cultures have a strong sense of tradition and history, and they do not change much over time. In the beginning of the movie, Toula states that her family expects her to â€Å"marry a Greek boy, make Greek babies, and feed everyone in the family till the day she dies. † Since she has not been married she is stuck working in the family restaurant until she does. She breaks tradition when she starts dating and then marries, Ian, because he is not a â€Å"Greek boy, and not from a Greek family. She also does the unthinkable since she marryed Ian and changes the history and tradition of the culture, as high c ontext cultures do not change over time. It is also a tradition for the Greeks to have big families; Toula explains to Ian that she has twenty-seven first cousins and Ian seems to be very interested in what she is telling him because he only has two cousins. Ian’s family is American and they are the opposite of Toula’s family, they are part of the low context culture, like many other American families.One of the biggest differences is that Toula’s family is loud, big and always together and Ian’s family is small, quite, and only see each other on special occasions. Toula and Ian practiced different forms of nonverbal communication during the movie. Nonverbal communication means messages expressed by nonlinguistic means. Ian and Toula have both used face and eyes as a form of nonverbal communication. When Toula was still working as a waitress in her family restaurant, the dancing Zorba’s, she was caught staring at Ian by Ian and his friend.Her stari ng suggests that she was very interested in Ian and thought that he was handsome but Ian’s friend assumed that she was crazy because of how she was staring at Ian. Toula also caught Ian staring at her in the window of the travel agency that her aunt owns. Ian’s staring at Toula suggested that he was interested in her and thought that she was pretty. Ian used substituting, a form of nonverbal communication, to say hi to Toula in the window of the travel agency by waving and smiling at her. There were no words spoken to each other during this scene.Toula used body orientation to hide from Ian in her family’s restaurant behind the counter as he was leaving. She did this because she may have been embarrassed for getting caught staring at him and she may have also been shy. The same thing also happened in the travel agency when Toula hid behind the water dispenser when Ian turned his back to her to talk with his friend. When he turned back around he could not find he r and he walked off. Before Ian ran into the older lady on the street in front of the travel agency, he was using the gesture of possibly a duck, to get Toula’s attention and to make her laugh.This gesture made her laugh and smile and it was able to help her loosen up and feel a little more comfortable. Ian had to deal with the language barrier a few times in the movie, but there were two scenes that were quite comical. Ian asked Nick, how do you say â€Å"thank you† in Greek and he also asked Angelo, Toula’s cousin, how to say â€Å"everyone let’s go in the house,† and both times he was told something entirely different. This is similar to the â€Å"English-speaking representative of a U. S. soft drink manufacturer naively drew laughs from Mexican customers when she offered free samples of Fresca soda pop.In Mexican slang, the word fresca means ‘lesbian’(Adler). † In both of these cases, Ian and the representative thought they were saying one thing but it meant something else in the other language. Empathy was shown in the movie when Toula was turned down by her father for wanting to go to college for computer classes. When this happened her mother, Maria, showed empathy. Empathy means being able to experience the world form the other person’s point of view. Maria explained to Toula that Toula was just like her when she was her age.Maria stated that she knew how she felt and she would talk to Toula’s father about the computer classes. Maria showed the emotional dimension that helped her to get closer to Toula’s feelings. She also showed genuine concern for the welfare her daughter Toula. I can relate to people being interested in my culture just as Ian was very interested in Toula’s culture because it is different, but unlike Toula, I enjoy my culture and I embrace it. I have found that having a different culture, because most of my family is not from America, as a good thing.E ven though it makes you a little different, it also makes you unique and it adds to your identity as a person. If I were in the situations that Toula was in, I would have done some things different. If I were her, I would have told my parents before anything got serious, because it was shown in the movie that lies only lead to more problems. Telling them early that she found someone non-Greek would have also cause problems but because they wanted her to get married so bad, I think they would have became welcoming sooner.It is important to be proud of your culture and not ashamed because your culture and the people that raise you make you who you are. Also, many facial expressions can be perceived as in ways that you would not want or expect, like Toula getting caught staring at Ian and his friend, thinking that she was a little crazy. So sometimes when communicating nonverbally, it may be best to use words to communicate your actual feelings. ? Works Cited Page(s): 187, Looking Out, Looking In, 13th Edition by Ronald B. Adler, Cengage Learning

A Review of Terry Eagleton’s The Meaning of Life Essay

Yet another non-fiction attempt at explaining the intricacies of life as we know it is in the offing, and the uninformed would most likely lump this particular one with the rest of mediocrity’s spawns. However, the less ignorant would recognize the prestige that is synonymous with the author’s name, which echoes loudly of literary theory and Marxism, in the most acceptable and understandable terms. Terry Eagleton’s discourse on one of the most profound yet unanswerable questions ever to be posed in actual form could have gone two disparate ways: the academic, which would call on the powers of scholarly influence and intervention; and the sardonic, which would debunk all trite and contrived notions about the subject and introduce a new concept that may border between reality and fantasy—or at least within the contexts of Eagleton’s philosophy. But the great theorist, without presenting his work as the millennium’s definitive answer to life and all its meanings, does what he is good at—analysis, study, and intellectualism. The big question in focus is quite applicable, as Eagleton begins, to the different persuasions available, from language to philosophy to civilization. Here is where the Eagleton style of in-depth probing takes place, and readers new and old will always find the author’s signature wit and humour refreshing against the backdrop of the subject’s utter seriousness and complexity. Eagleton builds his argument by citing some of the differences among people, based on their particular eras. He discussed how the issues thrown against faith and organized religion figured prominently in the late nineteenth century, and this brought on the question about life’s meaning in bigger, more insistent ways. Then we see how the great mind forms his own theory, but only after seeing how he provides a comparison between his thinking and those that came before him. The first, most obvious and easiest target would be Christianity and its various interpretations, that declares God as the all-powerful, all-knowing source of the world’s meaning and its corresponding effect on life itself, and the tenet that deems the world chaotic and meaningless without God. Eagleton quickly forges to disprove this established belief, by invoking the theories and discoveries alluded to by science, and how, even without the concept of God, the universe would continue to be an entity independent of anything, with a symmetry and logic that defies any claim on source and end. Eagleton did not agree with the free-flowing, opinion-respecting parameters of post-modernism, either. He found the standard allusions to individualism and realms and contexts of varying interpretations as contrary to the search for meaning; because meaning can only be discovered through dialogue with the world, and any pre-tense of an individual of finding the same unto himself or herself does not operate logically within Eagleton’s study. One must validate his or her particular life meanings with what the world has already set, out of respect and value for a construct that is no longer such, but is really a defined and proven reality that can mix both beauty and logic on the same level. Upon presenting his own personal cause towards providing an answer to the stated question, Eagleton now invokes Aristotelian philosophy to concretise an aspect of the meaning. According to Aristotle, human life’s significance lies within happiness—yet not just mere pleasure. Eagleton agress with this idea, and confirms the classic philosopher’s opinion that happiness may only be received through virtue, wherein virtue is, more than anything, a social practice and not a way of thinking. Therefore, happiness, which is the purpose of life, is also its practical and realisable version. However, all is not completely nice and happy in the Eagleton-Aristotle team-up—the author, after the initial meeting of great minds regarding the ideal integration of politics, ethics and happiness in one ideal society, admonishes the classicist’s expressed elements of a society necessary to attain happiness. That Aristotle defined this as one complete with women and slaves earmarked to carry out any dirty work while man goes forth to traverse the levels of happiness, is an ideal best left in history books and pageant presentations. Eagleton, being the trouper he is, tries to make up for Aristotle’s slip by taking the latter’s happiness concept and raising it one—to centre on the ultimate idea of love. Not erotic love, no, but that among fellow men, and even enemies. As with Aristotle’s original happiness idea, Eagleton’s love construct is a lifestyle, a practical way of giving meaning to life. He goes further by adding the presence of another individual in the equation, with whom love may be realized through mutual support. This refers to space for growth, a means to being one’s best. And, being one of Marx’s greatest disciples, Eagleton qualifies this concept by requiring the individuals be equals for real reciprocity, for the absence of such will render this adjudged purpose and meaning of life futile. The book ends with Eagleton’s inspired way of comparing life with jazz music, where improvisation is key, yet function as a whole. Thus, the author promises the answers to be found in this precise situation—happiness being individual and collective, which can only be realised through love. If any other writer tried to use the same words and the same concepts to give his or her own interpretation, everything would sound fake, and probably even absurd. But Terry Eagleton’s lucid writing and light touch prove that these often-lambasted elements may actually still be understood for what they are, and that love and life are indeed connected—all to provide the meaning we have long wanted to find.

Toefl Treating Pets Like Family Members

The issue of treating pets like family members is a debatable one. On the one hand, pets are charming creatures that mean a lot for their owners. But on the other hand, people should not forget that pets are animals which have specific instincts and habits differ from those of human beings and, as a result, able to do harm to people. However, in the final analysis, I think that pets are good friends of people and shall be treated accordingly. One reason in support of my thinking is that pets like real family members spend together with their families a great amount of time. Pets and their owners do a lot of things together from ordinary home stuff such as playing games, walking and watching TV to going shopping, visiting friends and traveling. When there is a child in a family pets become his little friends that everywhere follow him while parents are busy with their house work. So pets are always near their owners, ready to share owners’ joy and troubles, bringing a lot of fun for the whole family and making family members smile and feel pleased and happy. One would never feel lonely with them. Another reason for my thinking is that some pets are good caretakers. They see to the house, secure their owners and protect them from danger, help to take care of children. Maybe one of the best examples of pets care is dogs that help blind people survive in their everyday life. Pets would never leave their owners alone in a difficult situation. Perhaps, the best reason is that treating pets as family members has a good influence on children’s education. Looking after the pet, children will learn not to be selfish and to think and take care about the others. For the above reasons, I therefore conclude that having pets is an advantage for people and pets owners can really benefit from treating pets like family members.

The Necessity Of Computer Security

When the first electronic computers emerged from university and military laboratories in the late 1940s and early 1950s, visionaries proclaimed them the harbingers of a second industrial revolution that would transform business, government and industry. But few laymen, even if they were aware of the machines, could see the connection. Experts too, were sceptical. Not only were computers huge, expensive, one-of-a-kind devices designed for performing abstruse scientific and military calculations, such as cracking codes and calculations missile trajectories, they were also extremely difficult to handle. Now, it is clear that computers are not only here to stay, but they have a profound effect on society as well. As John McCarthy, Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, speculated in 1966: â€Å"The computer gives signs of becoming the contemporary counterpart of the steam engine that brought on the industrial revolution – one that is still gathering momentum and whose true nature had yet to be seen. † Today’s applications of computers are vast. They are used to run ordinary household appliances such as televisions and microwaves, to being tools in the workplaces through word processing, spreadsheets, and graphics software, to unning monumental tasks such as being the heart and soul of the nations tax processing department, and managing the project timetables of the Space Shuttle. It is obvious that the computer is now and always will be inexorably linked to our lives, and we have no choice but to accept this technology and learn how to harness its total potential. With any progressing technology, an unauthorized application can almost be found for it. A computer could and has been used for theft and fraud – for example, as a database and manager of illegal activities such as drug trafficking and pornography. However, we must not just consider the harmful applications of the computer, but also take into account the good that they have caused. When society embraced the computer technology, we have to treat this as an extension of what we already have at hand. This means that some problems that we had before the computer era may also arise now, in the form where computers are an accessory to a crime. One of the problems that society has faced ever since the dawn of civilization is privacy. The issue of privacy on the Internet has risen many arguments for and against having it. The issue of privacy has gotten to the oint where the government of the United States has placed a bill promoting a single chip to encrypt all private material on the Internet. Why is privacy so important? Hiding confidential material from intruders does not necessarily mean that what we keep secret it illegal. Since ancient times, people have trusted couriers to carry their messages. We seal out messages in a envelope when sending mail through the postal service. Using computer and encrypting programs to transfer electronic messages securely is not different from sending a letter the old-fashioned way. This paper will examine he modern methods of encrypting messages and analyse why Phil Zimmerman created an extremely powerful civilian encipherment program, called the PGP, for â€Å"Pretty Good Privacy. In particular, by focusing on cryptography, which was originally intended for military use, this paper will examine just how easy it is to conclude why giving civilians a military-grade encrypting program such as the PGP may be dangerous to national security. Therefore, with any type of new technology, this paper will argue that the application of cryptography for civilian purposes is not just a right, but is also a necessity. Increasingly in today’s era of computer technology, not only banks but also businesses and government agencies are turning to encryption. Computer security experts consider it best and most practical way to protect computer data from unauthorized disclosure when transmitted and even when stored on a disk, tape, of the magnetic strip of a credit card. Two encryption systems have led the way in the modern era. One is the single-key system, in which data is both encrypted and decrypted with the same key, a sequence of eight numbers, each between 0 and 127. The other is a 2-key ystem; in this approach to cryptography, a pair of mathematically complementary keys, each containing as many as 200 digits, are used for encryptions and decryption. In contrast with ciphers of earlier generations, where security depended in part on concealing the algorithm, confidentiality of a computer encrypted message hinges solely on the secrecy of the keys. Each system is thought to encrypt a message so inscrutably that the step-by-step mathematical algorithms can be made public without compromising security. The single key system, named the Data Encryption Standard – DES for short — as designed in 1977 as the official method for protecting unclassified computer data in agencies of the American Federal government. Its evolution began in 1973 when the US National Bureau of Standards, responding to public concern about the confidentiality of computerized information outside military and diplomatic channels, invited the submission of data-encryption techniques as the first step towards an encryption scheme intended for public use. The method selected by the bureau as the DES was developed by IBM researchers. During encryption, the DES algorithm divides a message into blocks f eight characters, then enciphers them one after another. Under control of the key, the letters and numbers of each block are scrambled no fewer than 16 times, resulting in eight characters of ciphertext. As good as the DES is, obsolescence will almost certainly overtake it. The life span of encryption systems tends to be short; the older and more widely used a cipher is, the higher the potential payoff if it is cracked, and the greater the likelihood that someone has succeeded. An entirely different approach to encryption, called the 2-key or public- key system, simplifies the problem of key distribution and management. The approach to cryptography eliminates the need for subscribers to share keys that must be kept confidential. In a public-key system, each subscriber has a pair of keys. One of them is the so-called public key, which is freely available to anyone who wishes to communicate with its owner. The other is a secret key, known only to its owner. Though either key can be used to encipher or to decipher data encrypted with its mate, in most instances, the public key is employed for encoding, and the private key for decoding. Thus, anyone can send a secret message to anyone else by using the addressee’s public key to encrypt ts contents. But only the recipient of the message can make sense of it, since only that person has the private key. A public key cryptosystem is called the PGP, for Pretty Good Privacy. Designed by Phil Zimmerman, this program is freely distributed for the purpose of giving the public the knowledge that whatever communications they pass, they can be sure that it is practically unbreakable. PGP generates a public and private key for the user using the RSA technique. The data is then encrypted and decrypted with the IDEA algorithm – which is similar to the DES, but the work factor to decode the encrypted message by brute orce is much higher than what the DES could provide. The reason why the RSA is used only when generating the keys is that the RSA takes a very long time to encrypt an entire document, where using the RSA on the keys takes a mere fraction of the time. At this time, Zimmerman is bing charged by the US government for his effort in developing the PGP. The government considers encryption as a weapon, and they have established regulations controlling or prohibiting the export of munitions. Since the PGP is a powerful encryption program, it is considered and can be used as a powerful weapon and may be a threat to national security. On the Internet, it is clear that many people all over the world are against the US government’s effort on limiting the PGP’s encryption capabilities, and their reason is that the ban infringes on the people’s right to privacy. The PGP must not be treated only as a weapon, for it contains analogies that are not used in wartime. One of them is authentication. The two-key cryptosystem is designed with authentication in mind: Using someone’s public key to encrypt enables only the owner of the private key to decrypt the same message. In the real world, we use our own signature to prove out identity in signing heques or contracts. There exists retina scanners that check the blood vessels in out eyes, as well as fingerprint analysis devices. These use our physical characteristics to prove our identity. A digital signature generated by a public key cryptosystem is much harder to counterfeit because of the mathematics of factoring – which is an advantage over conventional methods of tests for out identity. Another analogy the PGP has with the real world is the need for security. Banks and corporations employ a trusted courier – in the form of an armoured truck or a guard – to transfer sensitive documents or valuables. However, this is expensive for civilian purposes, and the PGP provides the same or better security when securing civilian information. While many argue that limiting the PGP’s abilities are against the people’s right to privacy, the PGP must also be seen as a necessity as we enter the Information Age. There is currently little or no practical and inexpensive way to secure digital information for civilians, and the PGP is an answer to this problem. Computer privacy must not be treated differently than any other method to make private any documents. Rather, we must consider the computer as a tool and se it as an extension of society’s evolution. Clearly the techniques we employ for computer privacy such as encryption, secure transfers and authentication closely mirrors past efforts at privacy and non-criminal efforts. The government is putting more pressure against the distribution of PGP outside of the United States. One of their main reasons was that since it is freely distributed and thus can be modified in such a way that even the vast computational resources of the US government cannot break the PGP’s secured message. The government could now reason that the PGP can provide criminal rganizations a means of secure communications and storage of their activities, and thus make the law enforcement’s job much harder in tracking criminals down and proving them guilty. Also, we must never forget one of out basic human rights – one that many laid their lives for, is freedom. We have the freedom to do anything we wish that is within the law. The government is now attempting to pass a bill promoting a single algorithm to encrypt and decrypt all data that belongs to its citizens. A multitude of people around the world are opposed to this concept, arguing that it is against their freedom and their privacy.