Last Friday, user Flyjack posted an entry on the topic of the recently leaked PRISM program. In that post, Flyjack brought into discussion the differences between private and public. As we discussed in class, these two words have very different meanings and vary among individuals themselves. This original post covers the very brief history behind the NSA surveillance leak itself and will aim to spark a discussion on what it all may mean.
Earlier this afternoon, much of my online news feed was fixed on a former undercover CIA employee by the name of Edward Snowden. Having worked in the past as an NSA system administrator, Snowden reveals that after having reached a threshold for staying silent about the PRISM program, he has come forth to tell the public which parts of their online lives are being recorded and potentially tapped into. (For the complete Edward Snowden interview, visit http://m.guardiannews.com/
This may hit us all by surprise, particularly since President Obama, before taking office in 2008, spoke publicly about his promise to end warrantless government surveillance, wiretapping, and other types breaches in privacy. While I may be speaking for myself, when I voted for Obama, it was because I didn't want the equivalent of a Bush Jr. -- the guy whose administration passed the patriot Act of 2001 and the Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Take a minute and watch Obama's short speech on the issue of privacy from 2007 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?
How ever you may see the past, it is certainly not what current Obama thinks about privacy. Quoting his speech given this past friday, Obama commands "you can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience." (http://www.reuters.com/
On the topic of convenience, how convenient that the government can base these changes in privacy law on the premise of public safety. How convenient that many of these laws, including PRISM, the Patriot Act, and the Terrorism Prevention Act can be traced back to the post-911 terrorism scare. We need to look back to events like the Boston Bombing, or Sandy Hook and Aurora shootings and think why the government's surveillance program has failed. If the intention of PRISM is to have, as President Obama earlier stated, "100 percent security", why then have we accepted these tragedies as an unfortunate and tragic norm of twenty-first century society. Give me 100 percent security and hell, I might even buy into this whole PRISM stuff.
Alright. So now we know the government stores our private information six years into the past (http://gizmodo.com/what-is-
P.S. Bernie Sanders thinks so too
Here are some questions to spark the discussion:
How do you view your online information/Is it important to you?
How do you react to friends breaching your privacy?
Should we worry about PRISM?
While PRISM may come as a shock to some people, I don't even think my facial expression changed when I read about it. It sounds like a story I've heard over and over again--surveillance done by corporations and the government using our devices that connect to the internet. Of course we're being watched. Remember for that month span where Google asked everyone to read their new privacy policy? I actually read it through. They openly admitted to tapping into our smartphones-- they listen in to our conversations even when the phone is off. Every few seconds, a picture from your front camera is taken and sent to a server. PRISM is not news. PRISM is olds.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't to say that we're living in a closing society where everyone is on the terrorist list, but we can no longer combine the words "private" and "internet" together in the same sentence. The oath of the armed forces includes a part about protecting the Constitution from all enemies, foreign or domestic. Nowadays, our government has to have policies such as the Patriot Act or PRISM to scan through all people living on American soil to find the bad guys because they are living among us, completely camouflage. So it should come to no surprise that the government is listening and watching our every move- they don't know who the bad guys are!