Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Be Aware of What You Post

Found on my Facebook Profile
In my Information Systems class this semester, we covered cyber security. Our assignment was to choose a partner in class and go onto every social media website you could to find every possible piece of information of their lives. Things such as Name, Age, Birthday, Hobbies.

Just from my pictures found on facebook what can you infer? I graduated highschool, I studied at BYU, I served a LDS mission and I am now married.

Our Society

Our culture today is to spend just as much time in reality as a virtual reality. We store all of our information online. We text our friends, we skype our family, we scan the web. Technology and digital communication is a part of who we are today.

In the past..
With all of this information online, who gets access to it? Your natural response would be the owner or those who put the information in. However the rights to privacy bend when there is a threat to society.

Chernobyl was a nuclear power plant that exploded in the USSR in April 26, 1986. The devastating accident poured harmful radiation into the air. The radiation killed hundred and left other affected for the rest of their lives. The effects of the accident was not published to the public until after the damage to locals were done. Was keeping this information hidden from the public part of the right of privacy to information for the company? Even if it is at the risk of others?

Another example..
The terrorist attack of 9/11 threw the American society in panic. The only way to protect America was preventing any future attempts to terrorism. This terror gave permission to the NSA (National Security Agency) to secretly take any information found through the use of technology in attempts to prevent any future attacks.

Edward Snowden worked for the NSA in Hawaii. He found the NSA secretly running programs to record phone calls and extract information from everyone in the United States. Not just those suspected for terrorism. Edward Snowden posted the NSA's secret plans on the internet and fled to Russia to escape.

During a TED conference, Edward Snowden appeared as a speaker through skype to tell his story. He explained his reasoning behind his actions and how he was only thinking of basic human rights to privacy. You can watch the TEDtalk here.

Whether Edward's motivation was ethical or not he did however bring the Congress to react to the problem. According to the article "Reigning in the NSA" by The New York Review, the technique the NSA used never really worked to bring down terrorist attacks and so in consequence, Congress revoked the NSA's privilege of scanning and collecting data.

Conclusion
Edward Snowden was trying to protect our rights to privacy through technology. Unfortunately there are hundreds of ways that people can gain information online to extort, exploit and to harm. My partner from my information systems class was able to find enough that could potentially harm me if used with bad intentions.

 Our information online should be protected from anyone who is not authorized to see it. However we must fight for the right to have this privilege taken away when the safety of our country is in danger.

7 comments:

  1. We may have "sibling topics"! I love the historical aspect you brought to this issue.

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  2. I really liked your intro! It made me think about what people could easily find out about me. I know that I always "stalk" people online before or right after meeting them to get a feel for what they are all about. Like Katelyn said, I too liked the historical aspect you brought into your post. The only critique I have would be to better tie it all together so it states a really clear claim/opinion that you have on this issue.

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  3. In addition to this, I've found it very interesting that big corporations make their employees commit to not post anything on social media about vacations that they will be taking or divulge any information about when they will not be at the office. Apparently hackers and impersonators love to know when employees will be gone and where they will be going.

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  4. Create personal angle! It made your project that much more interesting. The fact that you are taking a class on the subject even builds your ethos (or at least I felt that way while reading your intro). Your husband seems like a great guy by the way :)

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  5. Wow I really liked this article. I feel that the writing was very interesting. You were able to make me really interested in cyber security, something that if presented in a lesser way might have made me uninterested in reading more. excellent presentation

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  6. This is exactly why I haven't posted on Facebook in the past six months. And also why I only post on Instagram once every few weeks. And also why I deleted all of my tweets. And also why my Pinterest has mostly all private boards. And also why I don't have Snapchat.

    Even though we are rightfully signing over information to our social media accounts by using them, I personally believe too many people are sharing too much. I use my platforms for sharing messages. I still try to keep my life completely private. (Up to a point where everybody got mad at me at work and school because I cancelled any birthday celebration last year haha.)

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  7. This is exactly why I haven't posted on Facebook in the past six months. And also why I only post on Instagram once every few weeks. And also why I deleted all of my tweets. And also why my Pinterest has mostly all private boards. And also why I don't have Snapchat.

    Even though we are rightfully signing over information to our social media accounts by using them, I personally believe too many people are sharing too much. I use my platforms for sharing messages. I still try to keep my life completely private. (Up to a point where everybody got mad at me at work and school because I cancelled any birthday celebration last year haha.)

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