Reading & Activity #5

To me, privacy means being able to live my life in peace without fear of intervention from the government unless I am doing something that would potentially harm others.  I believe that a person should not have to worry about the government or private organizations being able to look at their personal belongings (including email, and cyber information) unless that person is doing something illegal.  I believe that many policies that are currently enforced by the government are outdated, and they do not cover many of the new technologies that are integrated into today’s society.  This makes it easier for the government to look at people’s personal information legally.  I believe that privacy of private personal information is very important, and that many governmental policies should be reevaluated and updated with our quickly changing society.  The article, “Facebook & your privacy” talks about this “privacy.”  It reveals how truly available all our personal information is when we don’t limit what we put on different social media.  The article ranges from talking about keeping social media limited to people over the age of thirteen, all the way to employers viewing people’s Facebook pages when making job decisions.  The article goes through how to work Facebook’s privacy settings to show users how to better protect their information.  This is helpful because the article also talks about how there were numerous instances were users did not have their posts protected, and they said where they were going for the day, and their houses were robbed.  When describing my views of privacy, I talked about a very quickly changing world and how policies have to be updated in order to compensate for all the new technology.  This article is a perfect example of this due to the new problems that these new changing technologies have given rise to, such as cyber-bullying, false identities, and having access to too much data about people.  These are problems that are not addressed in today’s policies, so we must make changes in order to protect citizens privacy and livelihood.

News Report #5

Title: “Google: 'Government surveillance is on the rise'”

Author: Heather Kelly, CNN

Date: Wednesday, November 14, 2012

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/13/tech/web/google-transparency-report/index.html

After the David Petraeus-Paula Broadwell scandal that has been the highlight of the new for the past few weeks, it has become increasingly obvious to the American people how easy it is for the U.S. government to have access to emails and personal information.  The FBI requested access to Paula Broadwell’s personal g-mail account earlier this year, and this request was only one of 7,969 similar requests from the government just in the first half of 2012.  Google released the statement that they provided access to the government for approximately 90% of the requests.  Google also informed the American people that the count of requests was 18,257 in 2011, and has increased to 20,938 in 2012 and counting.  Little do many people realize, but Google doesn’t only have access to your email, but also they can tap into your IP address to obtain your location, as well as personal information like credit card numbers.  It is widely accepted that the law that went into affect in 1986, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act protects these types of privacy breeches, but unfortunately this act is so outdated that there are many loopholes that the government uses to access the information without warrants.  For example, in the 1986 draft of this act, e-mails, cellphones, and information stored on the “cloud” were not included 26 years ago.  Clearly, there needs to be some sort of update to this act to make the guidelines for accessing citizens personal information, but the United States Department of Justice has made it clear that they are opposed to any further updates to the process of obtaining warrants for these types of things.

News Report #4

Bionic Boomers: New Advances In High-Tech Medical Devices

Author: Mark Baard

The Huffington Post

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/09/medical-devices-new-advances_n_1659319.html

Great advances in medical technology are being made for multiple different sectors of the human body.  These advances include areas dealing with sight, joints, and hearing.   Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is a disease that affects approximately 1.6 million Americans over the age of 50 years old.  AMD steadily deteriorates a person’s sight until they are unable to do every-day tasks such as read and write.  Until recently, there was no cure for AMD, but at Wills Eye Institute in Philadelphia, they are now implanting tiny telescopes in patient’s eyes with AMD.  Ed Nungesser, one of the recipients of the surgery has claimed that the size of his vision is now doubled, and he has been able to see his granddaughter for the first time.  For those who need any joint replacement, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed a microchip that operates off radio frequency identification with an antenna to be implanted in orthopedic implants.  These microchips monitor the temperature, and the bacteria levels within the replacements so they can catch infections before they become detrimental.  Not only do the microchips aid in preventing infection, but they also can hold data about the patients’ medical progress or problems.  For patients with hearing loss, there are also new medical technology improvements.  These new discoveries are called cochlear implants.  Unlike hearing aids, which can be large and bulky, the only think about the cochlear implant that is noticeable is a small disk and cable attached to the skull behind the patient’s ear.