First. Part One of Frontline. Introduction to Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, and how they met secretly with Edward Snowden in Hong Kong. It's pretty riveting, and I'll show this in class to give you a taste.
Second. "CitizenFour" (HBO Documentary, link to preview). This documentary shows the full accounting of how the movie was made and how it was kept secret. It won an Oscar for best documentary. Below are some snippets from the movie (from 4-7 minutes).
Third. Below, I include a snagged video from the UA stream to get you thinking about this issue. I really encourage to watch it, you can move through it, but Noam Chomsky is brilliant, as are the other speakers. Again, here is the link to the streamed event.
The moderator, Nuala O’Connor, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, says early in the discussion, "There is no privacy ensconced in the U.S. Constitution,…so what is privacy?" Glenn Greenwald begins by questioning that assumption.
Fourth. Noam Chomsky worked on this documentary, "Requiem for the American Dream, for over four years. The movie is no longer playing at the Loft, however, here is a link to the 10 principles of oligarchy, which he went over in great detail in the movie.
Chomsky explains how concentrated wealth creates concentrated power, which legislates further concentration of wealth, which then concentrates more power in a vicious cycle. He lists and elaborates on 10 principles of the concentration of wealth and power -- principles that the wealthy of the United States have acted intensely on for 40 years or more.You can discuss any of the principles, and there is further writing about this, if you want to Google Chomsky and 10 principles. The link I provided above here is from Alternet.org, providing Alternative News and Information. (It is a good source of progressive news, which is usually where you'll find writings from Chomsky.)
Optional. And then there is John Oliver's irreverent interview with Edward Snowden in April, 2015 (explicit, 33min).
Use the Tech 3 Musing to post about:
- Your thoughts on what was said and your take on it. Consider examples of your own behavior or others that changed as a result, OR
- Post a relatively recent article related to this topic and write about that and provide a link.
- The articles you are posting on Facebook, are good examples to blog about here, as they are related to the general topic of privacy and security.
- You can also comment on other posts based on articles you read or videos you saw.
Tech Musing #3
ReplyDeleteResponse to Option 1
As big of a topic as it is, I will attempt to provide a valuable point of view regarding the situation of the Patriot Act and what Edward Snowden uncovered from the NSA.
On the one hand, it is important to think about the potential risks of having sensitive and private information available to any agency, like surveillance, unwanted disclosure, denigration, leakage, etc... On the other hand, it is just as important to think about the many benefits we receive as a community and individuals when we share information freely with others, such as faster learning, more collaboration, convenient customization of platforms, and having an answer to almost any question we ask Google.
Although the Patriot Act problem here seems very specific, it could potentially scale to one that interferes with the benefits of using technology and capturing personal data.
As we have discussed and read in this class, our generation has adopted a new culture of collective action and information sharing more freely than any other generation before. This has allowed us to become smarter and more productive as a collective group. The benefits of the internet opened up opportunities that were unthinkable 15 years ago. However, this kind of progress could slow down at a significant rate if people fear having their information being spied on by their own government. This could have a significant impact in the economical health of companies that rely on people trusting them with their data. If the government is able to ask any major software company to reveal all of their information, people will start acting on fear rather than trust. This, I believe, is one of the major problems with Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
Ah, but section 215 of the Patriot Act did not pass, as it normally did. There was tremendous debate about it, and because of the revelations from Snowden, section 215 did NOT pass. However, even though it provided the broadest interpretation of the law never intended, it does not stop surveillance. Good discussion of the pros of the internet, but without a secure, encrypted Internet, don't for a minute think you're not being watched. Apps are probably the least secure of all. Well, that and healthcare devices.
ReplyDeleteFor future posts on this topic, can you please submit a NEW POST. You have to sign in to do that, but you did it before, so should not be a problem. You can certainly comment on others' posts, though.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone wanted to watch a the whole documentary of CitizenFour here is a link to it. http://documentaryheaven.com/citizenfour/
ReplyDeleteThis link to Citizen Four is broken (now). There are other "related" documents to Citizen Four that you can watch on that link, but you can't watch THAT movie. Didn't know about http://documentaryheaven.com/, so very happy to have this link!! Go to this link and then search on citizen four and you'll see other documentaries.
ReplyDeleteThis one works (not all do): Science of Surveillance
DeleteAnother good documentary on Snowden is called Terminal F-Chasing Edward Snowden. The entire documentary is on YouTube for anyone interested.
DeleteThank you, Mounica! Here is one link from youtube. It's good. Terminal F is about Snowden leaving Hong Kong and how he ended up in Russia. Great espionage for a guy that thought he was going to jail. https://youtu.be/Nd6qN167wKo
DeleteI hate you told me about this. I have no time to watch this and I can't stop watching. I'll listen while I do other work. :)
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