Government Archeologists

  Given the recent scandal with former CIA Director David Petraeus and his supposed affair many questions about the effectiveness and oversight of certain government organizations have risen. But this article raises questions more pertanent to the average citizen.
  For example, the article claims that after an email is 180 days past sent the US government can look at it without a warrant. Is this true? Have they looked at my email? Can it be stopped? These are the questions being asked in the wake of the affair and some of the answers may scare you.

Steve Greenberg

  According to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 a government agency can look through your private electronic communications once they have been read and stored for a significant amount of time, 180 days being the precedent, but not while in transit. However, this piece of legislation coupled with other legislation allows government agencies to do a number of things like track your cellphone in real time, remotely track you using a GPS on your car, and has asked several agencies like Facebook and Twitter for back doors to track information.
  Now not all of this is as scary as it might sound. A lot of these examples and others have been overturned once they are taken to the Supreme Court. Also, many of these are only allowed through special executive orders like the USA PATRIOT Act and the NDAA which focus primarily on combating domestic and foreign terrorism.
  But as one Computer Science Major at Kennesaw State University, Cody Skinner eloquently put it:

Freedom House

"If the government went through my phone right now, I wouldn't be arrested, I wouldn't be suspected of terrorism... but I would feel violated. There's no reason I should have to bend over and let the government go through all of my personal stuff."

  And how true? Do we really want the government to be allowed to dig through our electronic wallets? Many are concerned that this will begin to turn the US government into a much more controlling government in the way Iran, Russia, and China try to. In fact, SOPA and PIPA were recent pieces of US legislation and the ITU just started it's most recent conference in Dubai today. All of these things have been moves by governing bodies attempting to limit the freedom and privacy of the internet.

Internaltional Telecommunications Union

  If you have read a few of my posts you may have realized I am an active supporter of internet freedoms domestically and abroad.  I was excited to see the failure of SOPA and PIPA in the US.  These pieces of regulation would have begun a downhill slide towards the fracturing of the World Wide Web.
  The internet; it has spawned societies entirely encased in digital form, brought down governments (read my last post), forged international relationships, created cultures, all on it's own.
  But all this could be thrown to an abrupt stop if we, the internet users are not careful.  I believe that a free and democratic society depends upon the free exchange of ideas and information. Without that we are limited by whatever ruling power controls the flow and distribution of information.

Thanks to New World Order War

   Right now the next threatening piece of regulation that could overburden the Internet information highway is the ITU and the next international conference.
  The ITUwas founded in 1865 and became a part of the United Nations in 1947.  It's main goal has been to regulate and develop international communications world wide.  It has proved many great communication resources to third world and developing nations and has done some excellent things to further the progress of international communication networks.
  But the problem is that it is not a democratic community.  Only certain countries in the UN have voting power on the ITU and many of those countries have horrible track records with internet freedoms (Russia and China are both voting members).
  I'm not sure what can be done to battle this encroaching regulation of internet freedoms, but I recognize the necessity for a free and open exchange of ideas in today's world.

 

Property of Fight For The Future and AccessNow.org

In The Spirit of The Season...

  Hello folks, yet another week has passed us by and in doing so has reminded me that it is time again for another post about social media.  Unlike my past two posts I'd like to dedicate this post to the concept of big brother.
  In this fashion I discovered this article.  If you don't care to read it I will certainly summarize.  In short a team from Compass Labs conducted a study of Facebook pages to analyze the difference between Republican and Democrat voters.  Now this idea is not new, studies have been done and published since the publishing of The American Voter in 1960.  However, it is one of the recent studies that has used social media as a primary source for data.
  But the question still remains "what did they find out?"
  Well for one, both Democrats and Republicans think 'The Hangover' was a great movie.  But on perhaps a more influential level, the study illustrated a breakdown of voters beyond their personal habits.  For example: Obama is flying high with over 28.3 million likes on his Facebook fan-page, while Romney is struggling to maintain just 6.4 million.  While at the same time Compass Labs found that the engagement ration for both were 52% for Romney and just 11% for Obama.
  Now I can agree that this use of social media to collect social data is an intelligent idea.  This issue I have with it is how reliable of a source it is.  First of all it is wonderful that I know that Republicans typically like to shop at Walmart and Democrats enjoy playing video games.  Secondly, I can glean that the most effective way to reach my voter base may not be through Facebook or in Walmart.  However, most importantly this tell me that the American citizen is now publicly offering their personal information that 40 years ago I would have to go door to door, or cold call, to discover.
  If Compass Labs can use Facebook to find all this information... what could Google do with it?