Rhetorical Analysis Of Equifax

The Equifax disaster points to a much bigger problem. -Rhetorical Analysis This is a rhetorical analysis of the article “The Equifax disaster points to a much bigger problem” written by Herbert Lin. Let us start with the writer himself; he is a senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and Hank J. Holland fellow in Cyber policy and Security at the Hoover Institution both of which are located at Stanford University. Some of the research he has conducted relates to cyber security and the policies associated with them. Most recently he has served on former President Barack Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity. He also received his doctorate in physics …show more content…
This author himself is a highly educated, college professor. Even with that perspective of being a scholar in this field of study for more than 5 years, Herb does not frame this article to be viewed by other highly educated university professors in his similar field of study. As I mentioned before he aims this article at a more general population. The actual audience of this piece would be subscribers to the Washington Post where this article was published. In addition to the subscribers, the ideal audience would include individuals in care about the Equifax hack or cyber space policy and security. The implied audience would be people on the internet who were affected by the Equifax data breach. The audience that the author has centered his argument towards would most likely be moderately educated, young to middle aged adults who have either begun to build credit or have already established credit. The reason for this distinction is because those who have not tried to raise their credit score would not be aware of how vital their consumer history actually is. Nor would they be aware of just how impactful this data breach is. The writing in this article uses clear transitions in order to moves the reader from one argument to the next in a smooth manner so as to not disconnect the reader along the way. The author does not shape his argument in such a way …show more content…
In the beginning of this article, the author not only tells about himself, but provides many details that the readers will recognize such as Stanford which we attribute to being a noteworthy institution and thus a reliable place for information to come from. The author also state that he has worked for former President Barack Obama in something directly related to his area of expertise. By stating these things in the beginning of his article before the author even begins to layout his argument he is already trying to establish ethos with the readers. By doing this in the beginning the author hopes that he will ideally gain the readers trust and the readers will finish the article and look at things from his perspective. Herb makes the claim that “under current law, consumers have essentially no rights regarding this stored personal data”. This claim is strong because Herb supports this claim by highlighting on the fact that consumers did not choose to be a part of this process they are actually the produce for banks, credit card companies, and whoever else needs your credit information to figure out if you qualify for a loan, service or item. The evidence that Herb used to support this claim is the fact that last year Equifax racked in $3.1 billion in revenue in 2016. Herb then presents a counter argument to his original claim that we have no rights under the current legislation by stating the positives of our information being