Tech Musing #3: Snowden, the NSA, Privacy, and Other Related Topics

Regardless of how you feel about what Ed Snowden did, you should understand what he revealed, and what it means as citizens of the U.S. and globally.  You now have an amazing (although not unbiased) ability to stream this amazing event that took place on our campus at https://web.sbs.arizona.edu/privacy.   I'm going to offer some previews to get you started.  You can watch in any order, or you can listen to the entire stream, watch the entire movie, or learn how it all happened after 9/11 by watching the two-part Frontline series, "United States of Secrets." 

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.