Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Who Controls the Network? Privacy and the Internet.



This week’s discussion question asked who controls the network. In my presentation, I claimed that while a great many people control the network, users actually have a large part in controlling what kind of information is out there in cyberspace.

The latter half of my presentation focused more on the government side of the network, particularly the NSA and their interests in collecting information from both domestic and foreign sources. As a result of this data collection, citizens have begun to be more careful about their internet habits and information that they release. This, in a way, is how the NSA controls the network. This was made known to the world by a political whistleblower by the name of Edward Snowden, who exposed the looming powers of the NSA as well as openly declares doctrines like the Patriot Act to be harmful the American common good.



My final point of my presentation was that since we, as internet users, dictate what sort of information about ourselves is “out there” on the internet, we possess the capability to control the network as well as the information that agencies like the NSA have access to. So be careful what you put on the internet, because once it’s out there, it’s ALWAYS out there.


These are the sources I used in my presentation, and I would encourage everyone to check them out:

Silverman, J. (2017). Privacy under Surveillance Capitalism. Social Research, 84(1), 147.

Minkkinen, M., Auffermann, B., & Heinonen, S. (2017). Framing the future of privacy: citizens' metaphors for privacy in the coming digital society. European Journal Of Futures Research, 5(1), 1-13. doi:10.1007/s40309-017-0115-7

Nolan, C. (2017). The Edward Snowden Case and the Morality of Secrecy. Catholic Social Science Review, 22291-310.

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