GOF: Chapter 2: Protecting Privacy

The Privacy acts are becoming more strict, the best way to say on top of these things is to stay educated and informed about all of the up coming changes in privacy acts and government laws. The Patriot act, these are new acts that allows the government to basically survaillence just about any and every thing they want. With the new technology being invented there will always be something new that is not an included communication innvotation to help people be watched by the government. There has been many time that the media has informed it viewers to be aware of the changes to privacy acts that the government are slowly changing that will continue to limit the privacy given to citizens. How will this information from the media that help to inform more people of the changes happening in their states and country if it is already hard to believe the media?

GOF: Chapter 2: More Privacy

The United States has been one of the countries that have done a lot in comparison to other countries in protecting their citizens privacy. They have implemented many acts to ensure their citizens privacy is ensured. One of first things was the creation of social security numbers, passports and identification cards. If you think about this many of these things are not to protect privacy it just helps them keep track of its citizens. Social security numbers are basically bar codes on humans. They keep track of where you work, bank, and where your money is spent even medical record. These records can also be sometimes considered to be public records because they are in government databases. What is the next step in government surveillance?

GOF: Chapter 2: Credit Bureaus

The idea of ultimate information are credit agencies. These companies have basically unlimited use of personal information of consumers most financial records. The three major companies have the consumers futures in their hands. Credit reports are sought after by jobs, credit card companies, car dealer, and most importantly banks. With these records they have the power of employment careers, the kind of cars you drive and even where you live. With all this power they still choose to sell personal information to the highest bidding companies for their mailing list. This just stopped happening in 2001, the question now is how are they making their extra cash off consumers now?

GOF: Is Big Brother Watching?

The government has always found ways to track and "spies" on its own citizens and even citizens of other countries. This was even before the technological era occurred. Before computers there were still ways for the government to find out confidential information that citizen thought they have one idea about. With the invention of computers and Internet it just made their jobs easier. This in some cases make people citizens mostly think... How do they get a hold of such valuable information without their knowledge? There are way too many disclaimers and privacy acts for them just too have easy access to these thing. Which makes you wonder... When these privacy laws and acts are passed in congress do they create some kind of loop whole for themselves for later access?

CiS Article17: From Virtual Communites to Smart Mobs

The thoughts considered from Mann and Rheingold have a direct relation to the upcoming times in technology. Throughout the article there was much mention of smart computers and how the technological advances in the world have made life easier but does need to be monitored by the citizens that use it. With new inventions such as wireless cell phones and P2P (peer-to-peer) computing. Some of the main focus is on peer to peer computing this was thought to be a problem because this can have a negative impact on peers which have no control over the other end of the connection, hackers can be saving some of their stolen documents on you shared hard drive without your knowledge. Have you ever though to consider by having music downloading programs and sharing files that it is as easy for them to access your music as well as your other personal files on you computer?

Chapter 7: Computer Crimes

With the creation of the Internet many positive things came... e-mail, blogging, online shopping, video conversations and many more things. This also opened the door for criminals as well. Since the creation and the overwhelming Internet use the growth of computer online crimes has increased. Being in discussion about Internet banking and shopping there is a HUGE number of identity theft cases that have came about. This later opened the door to hacking. This is basically can allow very intelligent people to in some cases to pretend to be a investment bankers, credit card company or other organizations that some consider to be a convenience to access their checking accounts and with draw payments. While this was occurring the government realized that this was and still is a huge business for criminals, their main focus it to find a way to catch and stop this from happening. Do you think that the convenience that the Internet brings is worth the headache of worrying if your identity may be stolen?

Hate Sites

While doing a project on hate sites and pro sites there where many questions I had to ask myself. The first was can these hate sites be considered to be encouraged because of our rights of free speech. These hates site are expressing their right of freedom of speech but at the cost of a person or business. There were more hate sites than sites supporting them. The project asked to find a hate site and then find a pro site opposing the hate site. There is no reason why there are more hate sites on the Internet than sites informing or supporting people. There can be debates about the reasoning and purpose of these site but the question is; Can these sites be constituted to be an expression of free speech?