Write a 500 words essay about this
The topics we covered last week (privacy) and this week (security and surveillance) are getting a lot of attention in the news. Edward Snowden's revelations revealed that the U.S. government is conducting surveillance of its citizens. New technologies like smart TVs and personal digital assistants (e.g., Google Home, Alexa) are passively listening at all times so they can respond if you engage their voice-activated features. CCTVs are increasingly common in public spaces. In addition, advances in mobile technology have empowered the public to take and share video of everything ranging from racist rants (Links to an external site.)
to police brutality (Links to an external site.)
and airplane passengers being dragged off a plane (Links to an external site.)
. Even today (Sunday, 16 April 2017), we are getting breaking news reports of a homicide video posted on Facebook (Links to an external site.)
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What are your concerns about the increased surveillance? Do you think it is justified because of increased threats to our national security? Do you think a lot of the concerns about rights being impinged are overblown? How do you think the role of the public in capturing activities will change the way companies and/or the police do business, if at all?
Then respond to this whether you agree or disagree
Privacy and security are very important in today's world of technology, but with the way things have been going, privacy and security seem to have gone out of the window. Most recently, the Senate voted to allow ISPs to sell your browsing history to advertisers. In a discussion I had in another class, my professor was mentioning how UMD is in a 100 mile radius of the NSA and D.C., and ~15 years ago, if you said a number of words such as: president, assassination, bomb, plane, fire, etc. your call would be flagged and would be monitored for terrorist activity. The USA Patriot Act was signed into law by George Bush back in 2001 after 9/11, which allowed for more surveillance and more investigations to protect our country. What the act essentially did though was make regular, innocent American citizens, suspect of being a terrorist. More and more surveillance cameras began appearing on streets and on the corners of government buildings. The Patriot Act received differing opinions from Americans, some believe that it was necessary to prevent any further terrorism, while others believed it was a huge, unconstitutional invasion of privacy. It is very interesting to me because I take personal security and privacy pretty important. On my computer I use ad-blockers and anti-tracking services just to make sure my information isn’t stored. I used to use a browser called Tor, which is an anonymizing browser that sends your internet traffic through a special network that encrypts your data, but it ended up being too slow for me. The Tor browser has been hailed for its anonymity and the possibilities with it. I also like to carefully read over terms and conditions for certain apps or products I purchase. Another thing that I recently researched was the active listening/microphone use component that certain apps are allowed to use. In particular, the Facebook app was claimed to be always using the microphone to tailor advertisements and what you see on your timeline to things that you had talked about. Facebook claimed that their app couldn’t do this, stating “Facebook does not use microphone audio to inform advertising or News Feed stories in any way,” but an experiment done by Kelli Burns, a mass communications professor at the University of South Florida, revealed that things Burns talked about on purpose would show up in advertisements or be shown on Facebook. This sparked controversy on whether other apps had been using your location data, camera and microphone to gather and sell information or to target certain advertisements to the phone owners. After reading many articles and discussions, I then removed certain apps that could be deemed as suspicious, and I use the browser/mobile version of the apps. I personally don't think that invading people's privacy is the best way to combat terrorism. I think that some people overreact regarding certain privacy infringements, but I can understand that some people are about the principle of freedom and privacy online. I think once people get together and take a stand for their privacy, companies and the government will listen.