In my personal opinion, I think Snowden did the right thing for
guarding the country and people’s freedom. He has revealed the existence and
extent of the surveillance, the U.S government devotes electronic
communications worldwide in a heroic effort at great personal cost. Although he
betrayed state secrets and against the profession morality. He thought that
individuals can stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms. I totally agree
with that. It is necessary to protect your personal privacy, even we are not
doing anything we need to hide, we still have to care about our privacy.
I watched the presentation “Why Privacy Matters”, which were
presented by Glenn Greenwald.
Greenwald said there are very common sentiment that “there is no real
harm that comes from this large-scale invasion because only people who are
engaged in bad acts have a reason to want to hide and to care about their
privacy.” However, as a matter of fact, every care about their privacy. They setup
the password for all of their account. People don’t want other to read their messages or see their personal pictures. People would change their behavior dramatically
if they notice that they are been monitored or watched.
Nowadays, more and more people care about their privacy. Even
some companies like apple and Microsoft are pushing back against government
surveillance in the courts, arguing that federal authorities have gone too far
in obtaining chats, emails and other private information from phones and online
services. I think those companies are brave to against government is because they
more care about their customers. By doing those actions, those companies want to
tell their customer that their information is safe from government snooping. I through
that the privacy is become to a serious issue, it likes an economic good that
can influence people’s thought of the product or company image. In other words, if
apple happily agree to help the FBI unlock the iPhone, other users may consider
about their personal information easy to leak and do not trust Apple anymore. Those
companies successfully built their company trustworthiness by protecting user’s
privacy.
I found this TED talk extremely interesting. For a while I was one of those who thought why does privacy matter when I have nothing to hide? Then Greenwald brought up the example that he uses in his debates around the world. He asks his opponents to send him an email with passwords to all of their email and social media accounts if they truly have nothing to hide. This really got me thinking. While a majority of Americans can be categorized as "good" and don't use the internet for malicious intent, there are still aspects of everyday communication that people have the right to keep private-- or should at least. For example, a man emailing his wife about their kids or plans for dinner that night. Exposing small, innocent conversations such as this gives those people who aren't so "good" an opportunity to gain information that can be detrimental. Therefore, privacy isn't just about protecting the nation from the mal intent of some people, it is about protecting people from the mal intent of others.
ReplyDeleteOn a larger and more national scaled view of privacy, companies (like you mentioned) are having to make decisions whether or not to comply with government agencies who would like to gain access to users to more closely monitor their activities. I found Greenwald's comparison of this to the prison tower extremely interesting. The prison tower was unable to be seen through, so inmates had to assume that someone was always watching them. With the fear of entities peeking into people's social media and email accounts, many Americans are now living with the notion that although someone in reality may not be, there could always be someone.
I really liked this video, too. Glad you posted it on Facebook, too. I used it in the third test. :)
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