My unit
two project was a controversial discussion on whether or not the government has
been infringing and taking advantage of the public’s digital information. I
chose this topic because I felt it will become an increasingly diverse and
important discussion in the world. I feel very passionate about this issue as I
have grown up in the technological boom and have always been interested in the
direction it will take us as a country and world. With a major focus on preventing violent
attacks and making sure the general population is protected, privacy rights can
be overlooked and it is important to keep tabs on the collection and methods of
data usage.
I choose to pitch this information to general public
and private companies that are involved in the information and technology
world. One specific company that was targeted was Apple. This was because they
have seen an increase in media coverage regarding their legal battle with the
United States government over unlocking a phone and giving the government power
to unlock more in the future. They have become to set a precedent as to how
private companies will respond to government demands in terms of personal data.
A second source I felt would provide a diverse opinion on the issue would be Reddit.
This online community has been on the forefront of the internet and would
provide to be a great resource due to its large and diverse user base.
Pitching this
information was difficult due to the immense amount of research needed to make
an informed decision about what is happening behind the scenes in many of the
areas of technology and privacy. In my original pitch posted to my blog, it was
difficult to draw my reader’s in according to their comments left on my blog.
Since this can be a very in-depth discussion, it was not easy to portray the exact
direction I wanted my project to go in such short paragraphs. My primary
research consisted of a Reddit post asking the users how they felt the
government was doing in terms of protecting personal privacy but at the same time
ensuring there is data to be used to benefit society. It is very easy for this
conversation to take a political tone and as a result many of the responses
were political in nature and would not be appropriate for the scholarly theme I
wanted to be present in discussion. I also reached out to Apple regarding their
views on privacy. I received a response but it seemed to be a generated
automatic reply that directed me back to their updated privacy page.
In order to make my
discussion more appealing to both sides of the argument I choose to try and
take a more factual approach to my presentation. However after reviewing my
work, I can see hints of my personal bias as well as potential bias from my
sources. I tried to choose sources that provided a non-biased argument to the
direction privacy rights are going. One thing I noticed in choosing online
sources about this type of discussion is that many of the websites are pro
personal privacy. I found myself wary of
many sites and took more time than I thought attempting to locate quality
sources. I found the best quotes to be directly off the websites of many
private companies and their privacy policies. The information was not easy to
analyze. Privacy policies and many of the surrounding legislature that is
presented is lengthy and in depth. I
spent most of the time attempting to decipher what changes have taken place in
terms legislature regarding privacy policies within the United States since the
major leak from Edward Snowden.
One of the most
difficult parts of this project was taking different events that occurred and
led to changes in privacy policies and presenting them in a non-political way. Unfortunately, many privacy discussions only
arose after terrorist attacks or other controversial subjects.
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