2/24/2017 1 Comment Blog Post #5Within recent times, the US government has been trying to get more of the American people’s information as it deems it necessary for national security. It is weird how they need to get every American Citizen’s information, even information from other citizens in other countries, especially when it comes to wanting access to their text messages. Even though I do agree to some extent, that the government should be aware of what its people are doing, I don’t think it should be to the extent that they are trying to do to. Especially when it comes to wanting access to people’s messages. Messages that are shared between two people should only be known by them, unless they decide to share it with their friends. When it comes to government wanting to also be aware of what the “chisme” is about, then that is something completely different. First, I think it is because the government doesn’t have any reason to want to know what those people are talking about as it is non of their business. In the situation that they do want/need permission, they should ask the user(s) whether they can access this information and what information they are only able to access. After all, you can’t just let the government know everything that you are doing because there are such things that you wouldn’t even let nobody know about, maybe not even family members. This type of social pact should be used in order to make sure that the lines are finely drawn as to what the government is able to access and what it is not able to. These attempt at getting user specific information is something I came across when reading the article “Tech Companies like Gmail, WhatsApp…” as it talks about how the government is now trying to creates rules to include in Section 67C of the Information Technology Act that “will spell out what type of data has to be stored, in which format, and for how long, according to three members of the newly-formed committee. All this is so that law-enforcement agencies can access the information if they need it.” Companies in the United States, such as Google, Facebook, Snapchat, etc., would have to abide by these rules given the fact that they must abide by the laws of the United States. Even though the government will require such a thing, it doesn’t mean that the tech industry will want to follow by their rules, especially since they want to make sure to keep their user’s data private. For instance, WhatsApp promises their user end-to-end encryptions of messages to their clients, which already makes the messages hard to access if you are not the person sending or receiving them. Although there are ways to get around such issues, these protocols were set up in place to make sure that the user’s privacy was kept safe from everyone, including the government. When it comes to something like this, I don’t think that the government has the right to access people’s information, without their consent. At that point, it becomes invasion of privacy which is something that is protected under the government itself. Even if the user’s were to give the government permission to access their data, I don’t agree that government should be aware of what people are doing. Even if it deals with the invasion of privacy or not, it is not a valid reason to invade people’s privacy. Sources: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/tech-companies-like-gmail-whatsapp-may-be-asked-to-store-user-information/articleshow/54839888.cms
1 Comment
Karina Pizano
3/8/2017 06:57:34 pm
I totally agree with you there should be a fine line of what information is accessible to the government, however, if we really think about it our information is already out there. When I say this I mean, FaceBook uses our information to target us with targeted ads. In fact, Facebook has games or links, that when clicked on, get accessed to our information. I guess what I am trying to say is how do you know most of our data is not already in the hands of the government. I think what we should really think about is be able to control our data. First we should know what the internet knows about us, be able to monitor and control it, and be able to decide if we really want to share it with different platforms or people.
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AuthorHi, my name is Jose Sanchez, but many of my friends tend to call me Pepe. I am a Computer Science major at CSUMB and this is my blog post. Enjoy! :) Archives
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