Project 04 – Movie Podcast
Reading 11: Automation
It does not seem to me explicitly clear whether automation is causing employment rates to go down. Sandy Ikeda of The Freeman (from mises.ca) points out how everybody thinks that automation causes people to lose jobs because they can only see the immediate affects of it. Looking at the big picture, however, in her example of the coat manufacturing company the introduction of automation frees up funds in the company and creates new opportunities in the marketplace. Hence, there are ultimately no jobs lost in this picture.
Then again, part of her argument falls back on how the majority of the lost jobs are made up for by the introduction of the automation market opportunity. This might not be the case though. In the tech world, some incredibly profitable companies are quite small. Andrew White of The Guardian, points out a great example for this. In his own words, “As an illustration of how the most innovative digital companies can generate huge wealth on the back of the toil of relatively small numbers of people, look at how Google’s market value, of $377bn, is supported by just 53,600 global employees. Contrast this with General Motors’ market value of $60bn, with 216,000 employees.” These numbers make it hard to believe that so many of the jobs lost to automation will be replaced by new job opportunities.
In order to really understand this big picture and see if the Luddites were right, however, far more than mere speculation is needed. No one will know, just from reading the articles, whether we have a real problem on our hands or not. In order to know this, an in-depth study would have to be undertaken bringing together field researchers, historians, and economists. In short, its a complicated answer and the best we can do here is speculate. But because we are speculating, I will give my opinion. I do not believe that , the Luddites were right, at least not yet. I think that the human element is always going to be necessary in some situations. Automation, could only be as real of a threat as people make it out to be if we launched a mass production of robots on the scale of what you would see in sci-fi movies. Today, automation can only exist for very specific tasks in specific environments. Humans have to be around to supervise or perform every other task. As is pointed out by Sandy Ikeda, “the best estimate is that the work week in the United States fell from about 70 hours in 1850 to about 40 hours today.” This says to me that things are getting better for us.
If it does come to be that automation is raising an employment issue though, I do not believe that a universal basic income would be the solution. It reminds me too much of a socialist society which has been proven in the past to not work out in the long run. How could a government generate enough revenue to be able to distribute it back to its people at that rate? A much more viable solution would be set restrictions on what we can use automation for. This would protect jobs from being stolen without putting economic strain on our already greatly indebted government.
I think that automation is helping our society. I’ll let Sandy Ikeda’s words echo here one last time, “First, while it’s true that machinery frequently substitutes for labor in the short term, automation tends to complement labor in the long term; and, second, the primary purpose of markets is not to create jobs per se, it is to create successful ventures by satisfying human wants and needs.” The people in the other camp all too often use extreme examples which just quite simply are no where near existence yet. Like Noah Smith’s example of the five dollar robot. He fears that the human element will be pushed out the picture by automation one day. In his own words, “Once human cognition is replaced, what else have we got? For the ultimate extreme example, imagine a robot that costs $5 to manufacture and can do everything you do, only better. You would be as obsolete as a horse.”
That being said, the introduction of automation is interesting. Imagine you just invented or discovered a new technology. If you go public with it though, you know that millions of jobs will be lost to its novelty and usefulness. Should you introduce it to the public and try to make a living off of it? If you do, people could lose their jobs, so obviously you shouldn’t, right? I don’t think so. Hopefully, your technology will ultimately lead to enhancing the quality of human life, like Sandy points out. Even if it didn’t though, its likely that somebody else would invent or discover this new technological trick and put the people out of a job anyway. At least if you did it yourself you would have a little more control of the situation. Perhaps you could even use the money you make to found a non-profit to help people (assuming it does really well).
Perhaps I am incredibly naive, but technology seems to be only enhancing our lives for now. This conversation can be put on the shelf for another day.
Reading 10: The H1-B Visa Program
There seem to be two issues surrounding the H1-B Visa program. On one hand, there is the issue on whether or not the visas are being properly utilized here in America. Also though, there is the issue of there being a large number of educated people on foreign soil who never have a chance to make it big in Silicon Valley just because they weren’t born here.
I will talk about the second of those issues first. Jon Evans of Tech Crunch has the following to say about this, “I happen to be very happy with my employers, but how many startups go unfounded, how many careers stagnate, because those same talented people who flock to the Valley–and the tech industry writ large–find themselves forced to languish in the the same jobs that brought them, because of the accident of their faraway births?” He essentially argues that the people born on foreign soil are deprived of the chance the American Dream. I’m afraid my answer here is unsympathetic. Do they deserve this chance in the first place? I don’t mean to say anything of their character or prowess, when I pose that question. I am simply pointing out that Silicon Valley is in America. If they want to make it big in America, they should not be using these visas, they should by applying for citizenship. If this immigration is your concern, then the discussion should be about the immigration process, not the H1-B Visa program.
Secondly there is the issue on whether or not American companies are abusing this system. This is harder to make a judgement on. Bourree Lam of the Atlantic points out, “One report from the Economic Policy Institute shows that the companies are abusing the H1-B visa program to help U.S. companies cut labor costs. Brookings, however, found that H1-B workers make more than their American counterparts.” In other words, studies seem to be split on whether the companies are actually saving money this way. It seems to me that it is being abused, but only some companies are. There are reports that Google and Facebook pay their employees with visas over $100,000 while consulting firms like Tata pay just over $60,000, the legal minimum.
Julia Preston of the New York Times points out, “Together the top five outsourcing companies had prepared as many as 55,000 H-1B applications. TCS, the company that had prepared applications for at least 14,000 visas, won 5,650 of them.” Smaller companies aren’t getting their visas approved simply because larger companies can apply for way more visas than they actually need to guarantee that they get a large number approved (the approval is a random draw). It seems apparent to me that the need for reform is evident.
Indiana University students of the Kelley Business School seem to think that giving more visas to recent college grads would help, but I think this would actually exacerbate the problems with H1-B visas. We don’t need more visas, we just need better approval criteria to make sure that people essential to their businesses like Theo Negri from the New York Times article by Julia Preston don’t get pushed out by one of the thousands of money-saving Tata visa workers.
I would recommend that two things happen. One – For the visa workers who are already here and are providing crucial services to their businesses, there should be a system in place to either favor them in the selection process for visas or to grant them permanent citizenship. I think that if the purpose of the visa program is to stimulate innovation here, then granting them citizenship would help to achieve that goal. Extensive investigations would be necessary for this though, as granting citizenship should not be taken lightly. In addition to this, very strict limits should be placed on how many of these visas can be applied for by large companies. This would help solve the issue that Tata Consulting Services is inflicting on the program.
Having these limits on larger companies will also help to alleviate the problem of foreign employees taking US citizen jobs. IF it is happening, then this will force employers in the US to offer greater incentive to the people opting for non-technology jobs mentioned in the Atlantic’s article when Jordan Weissman points out, “Roughly twice as many American undergraduates earn degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines than go on to work in those fields.” This will help to alleviate the technology gap which companies claim exists in the US.
Project 03: Response
Here is a link to our letter: letter.
I do not believe that encryption is necessarily a fundamental right. Privacy, however, is a fundamental human right. We should not have to share our home or family photo albums with every person that wants to walk into our houses and look around. That is why have locks and keys for our doors. So that only the people we trust can get into them. This analogy can be used to understand encryption. We have sensitive information on our phones. It could possibly be just as dangerous to allow someone access to your phone than your home since you also could have your online passwords and credit card information on there. This is why we need encryption. It protects our fundamental right of privacy in the virtual realm.
As I said above, however, I do not believe that encryption is a fundamental right. If someone such as the San Bernardino shooter deserves this right. He broke the law and was caught, and therefore should be investigated. Just like in any other investigation, his privacy is then forfeited in exchange for the protection of the masses. So we should be able to break the encryption and get into his phone then, right? Not exactly. The reason that we want to break into his phone is that we believe that the information there would protect US citizens, but as we discussed in our letter, creating a program that can break this encryption would actually be putting people into greater danger. Thus, US citizens must be allowed this technology to keep them safe, not because the government should not be allowed to investigate the information that we want kept secret, but because allowing the government the access to investigate us (which I do thing would be a good thing) would also put the millions of innocent law-abiding citizens at risk.
This issue is as personally important to me as it should be to anyone. Encryption protects us from attacks on our financial and personal identity and it absolutely does influence who I support politically and financially. On the political front, I feel that anyone who does not understand why encryption is so important is not seeing the totality of the issue. And if they fail to see the whole picture on something like this, I do not think that I could trust them to see the bigger picture in other much more complicated issues. So I would be inclined to not vote for somebody who thinks that Apple should have granted the FBI’s wish. And financially I want to buy products that I know will protect my information. I do not think that I would like a person any less for disagreeing with me on this though, so I don’t think it would affect me on the social front.
If people believe that unlocking the phone is in the better interest of national security, then I would say that these people still don’t understand the issue at hand. As I said above, encryption is protected the masses. Apple just unveiled that over one billion of their devices are in use around the world today. Apple devices are everywhere, and a large portion of them contain sensitive personal information such as credit card credentials, names, birthdays, relationships, passwords, and the list goes on. In short, there is a good reason that people lock their phones behind pass codes. If Apple were to unlock that iPhone, then the security of all of our iPhones will be weakened. With all of these Apple devices out there, this is a very large security breach and could very well effect the security of American citizens on a national scale (as well as affect people around the world). This seems to me to be the bigger threat than unlocking an iPhone to investigate as single case. Especially since the evidence could only be used in this isolated incident, while the effects of the decryption could be detrimental forever. That form of encryption used by Apple would forever be weakened. So personal privacy is in the best interest of national security and should be fought for by everybody.
Project 03: Letter to the Observer
To the Editor,
Year after year encryption grows in both implementation and importance in the lives of Americans young and old. From protecting password transmission to securing online banking transactions, encryption is a mathematical triumph that keeps your information secret to all but those whom you explicitly name. Unfortunately, encryption does not distinguish between good and bad intentions. It protects criminals the same as anyone else, but there are those who believe that such protection should be revoked. Syed Farook, the man responsible for the tragic San Bernardino shootings, has an iPhone with encrypted information inside that federal investigators wish to access. The FBI currently cannot circumvent Apple’s latest security measures and has requested that the West Coast tech giant write software to grant access to the phone. Apple has fought the request on the grounds of immense security risk, the precedent that would be set, and the implications that would necessarily result. The issue has piqued the interest of several global superpowers, and the outcome will shape the future of encryption entirely, and for the sake of American privacy and security, we hope that Apple will stand firm and hold out against the FBI.
One point that many people in favor of the unlock argue is that Apple should unlock just this one phone and then throw away the key. Others believe that only Apple or the FBI should be allowed to possess this key. As Apple CEO, Tim Cook’s letter to customers states, “Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices.” Those in favor of the unlock overlook the fact that a one-time fix would be nearly impossible. There is no way that Apple or the FBI could fully ensure the safety of the key. In fact, most experts on the issue agree that it would not be possible to keep the key safe. In Tim Cook’s words, “While the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.”
Not only can the key not be fully secured, but use of the key on a single iPhone would create a precedent. The FBI and other government agencies could point at the San Bernardino case and say, “If we did it for that phone, why can’t we do it for this phone?” This is in no way a single, one-time-only case being looked at, but rather a dangerous and slippery slope. The Manhattan DA said that he already has 175 more phones that he wants to be unlocked with this key if it is built. That is just in Manhattan, so who knows how many other thousands of phones are in line to be unlocked if the FBI forces Apple to build this key. Are we ready to say that the government should be granted access to all iPhones? Because if we allow it in this one case, we are sending a message that it is ethical, and can be done for many cases.
This message has the potential to expand even beyond the iPhone. Encryption is present in most websites that users access on the Internet. If the government is given access to iPhones, who is to say that they also will not request access to other devices, databases, or websites? To say that this key actually would be only for this one case, or that the key would never be used for another device is ludicrous. Yet, let’s say that Apple allows the FBI to have this encryption key and the FBI never gives key access to anyone else. This is still a fatal security flaw. There are two possibilities if the government keeps control of this key, and potentially many other keys in the future. An enemy of the state could either hack the FBI and retrieve these keys, or more likely, they hack into a company’s data because their encryption security is now weakened by giving encryption access to the government. Such a hacker could have access to data from hundreds of companies on thousands to millions of people. There is the potential for incredible amounts of damage to the United States’s national security.
Regardless of if you own an iPhone or not, the outcome of this case will drastically effect the technology you use every day. Ultimately back doors are not secure, the request sets a dangerous precedent, and compliance with the FBI in this case could easily extend to technologies outside of Apple’s jurisdiction. Weakening the defense of millions of Americans to salvage six week’s worth of information on a deceased shooter is hardly a price the FBI should be willing to pay, and we ought to be more than grateful that some intelligent leadership recognized that within Apple. Fighting the government is never an easy battle, though it is rooted in American history, and we must show our support and let the government know that security is a freedom whose integrity is paramount.
Sincerely,
Christian Clark, Thomas Deranek, Jesse Hamilton, and Neal Sheehan
Reading 08: DMCA
This blog post is mainly about section 1201(a) of the DMCA. It states that , “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.” This essentially means that if a company puts a lock on their software to prevent users from changing it or duplicating it, then it is illegal to try and bypass this lock. This means that people can’t legally do things like “jailbreak” their iPads or copy DVDs. It also means that people who own equipment with software in it cannot fix the machine (if it involves getting into the software) without the express permission of the company that sold it to them.
A lot of people have a big problem with this. Kyle Wiens from WIRED magazine takes issue with this, arguing that, “If you bought it, you should own it—simple as that.” He thinks it is unfair that a farmer can buy a piece of John Deere software equipment, but not be able to fix it because the fix would require circumventing the lock on the machine’s software. I believe that he is ignoring the big picture of this though. The company doesn’t want people getting into their equipment’s software, which I believe they have every right to want. There are several legitimizing reasons for this.
First of all, hacking into their computer code could further damage the system and make it more dangerous in some cases. In the case of automobiles, what if you accidentally change something that affects the cars steering. A lot of cars have self-driving features for simple things like parking or automatic brakes. We wouldn’t want those being randomly activated because some person thought he could improve his car.
Another good reason is that companies want to protect their image. Every instance of a product is representative of the company that makes it. If every Toyota car that you get into has some type of DIY enhancement made to it, then you’re probably going to think that Toyota makes cars that are rough around the edges and need fixing up. If I were running Toyota, I’d much rather have people thinking that my cars are exactly what consumers need.
Finally, it’s also worth noting that the code could be stolen. If people are allowed to hack into a car or tractor’s software, what’s stopping them from stealing the ideas from the code and applying them to their own products. Sure the average user won’t do this, but other large competing companies certainly could try to. As John Deere says (according to Kyle himself), “allowing people to alter the software—even for the purpose of repair—would ‘make it possible for pirates, third-party developers, and less innovative competitors to free-ride off the creativity, unique expression and ingenuity of vehicle software.'”
Kyle from WIRED magazine might not agree with this. Expanding on his earlier mentioned statement, he also points out, “Because computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors, farmers receive ‘an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.’ It’s John Deere’s tractor, folks. You’re just driving it.” My response to Kyle is very simple, welcome to the digital age. Yes, it’s John Deere’s tractor your driving, and they want to be the ones who are responsible for their image. So if they don’t want farmers tampering with and messing up their machines (thereby potentially ruining their reputation), they have every right to say that. Software is a complicated beast. Everyone who has worked with it knows how easy it is to mess it up. If I were John Deere, I would want to be in charge of the fixes too.
Here is my take on this issue, we should all be real about what we want to be legal. Let’s look at iPad jailbreaking for instance. First of all, it’s called jailbreaking! Take a hint people, you know you’re up to something wrong. Secondly, most of the time people “tinker” with their iPad by doing this, it is to illegally download apps that would otherwise cost money. And then there are DVDs. Some people think that there needs to be an exception made to the DMCA so that DVDs can be copied. How can you not see why this is bad?! Even if you aren’t selling the DVDs for profit, you could easily distribute copies to family and friends so they don’t have to buy it. Just because it’s limited to your friends doesn’t mean what you’re doing isn’t piracy. Let’s be real folks.
Reading 08: Patents
Patents exist to protect inventors and to encourage innovation in our society. The World Intellectual Property Organization justifies this by saying that, “First, the progress and well-being of humanity rest on its capacity to create and invent new works in the areas of technology and culture. Second, the legal protection of new creations encourages the commitment of additional resources for further innovation. Third, the promotion and protection of intellectual property spurs economic growth, creates new jobs and industries, and enhances the quality and enjoyment of life.” While it is good that we are trying to achieve these things, it may not be the case that patents are accomplishing them all.
The first part is just a statement about human progress, establishing its focus in this mantra. The second though, claims that patents are a safety net to those working to establish a new product, which does make sense. Finally, it wraps up by saying that the first two statements go hand-in-hand, and allowing inventors to make this commitment speeds up innovation. I do not believe this last part. Patents can only inhibit the furthering of innovation. In a world with patents, when a single inventor comes up with a new idea and successfully gets it patented, the world’s progress in regards to that idea will only move as fast as he or she moves. As the Ars Technica article by Timothy B. Lee points out. Software companies like Microsoft can just patent everything they do, and sooner or later, no one will be allowed to program anything without their permission. If there were no patents, however, then the entire world is free to further research the idea and hence we can have a much greater rate of innovation in this new area. In regards to innovation, it is that simple. I will wrap up this segment with a quote from Elon Musk, “Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal.”
With this in mind, it would seem that patents are terrible for society, right? Wrong. Perhaps they do inhibit innovation, but is innovation what we need? Technology is already evolving faster than most people can handle. Perhaps the most beneficial thing for society then, is the protection of an individuals right to make a profit on a product, rather than innovation’s progress. I do believe that patents should be granted. They exist to protect the smaller companies and new inventors, and without them, these groups would almost never have a chance in the market. For an example, consider the television show Silicon Valley. In this show, a new inventor comes up with a brilliant new compression algorithm. Another much larger company, then copies this algorithm and devotes a much larger team to creating a far better product than the original inventor, which pushes him out of the market. In this case, its a TV show, and he comes up with a new, better algorithm which people thought was impossible. In real life though, this probably wouldn’t happen. The person who came up with the algorithm would get no credit and would only have wasted his time coming up with a way for someone else to become even more wealthy. Does this seem right?
It is difficult for me to think of a general rule to protect the rights of software makers. We obviously don’t want large corporation like Microsoft to get all the patents and make it impossible for anyone else to create an application. However, we do want to protect the people like the inventor from Silicon Valley. Perhaps it should be the case that only small companies can get patents, or that only a very specific idea for a very specific type of software can be patented. A better system than the current one is definitely needed though. The fact that patent trolls exist in today’s world shows that the current system is broken. I mean, we are calling them trolls, which suggests to me the answer of the question on what their existence means. But it would be worth it to find a better system.
Elon Musk’s blog post presents a valid reason for Tesla Motors not wanting patents. Elon Musk was also already wealthy before even going into the automotive field though. He does runner a smaller company, but he also isn’t making the resource commitment that a younger entrepreneur would be making. Patents should be kept for the sake of these people. Not for innovation, but for the livelihood of the next great inventors.
Reading 07: Ads and Data Mining
Unlike I believe most people feel, I don’t really have any problem with online advertising. Yes, they do collect data and try to determine our personal information so that they can target us with specific ads, but that’s what advertising has been trying to do for years. It’s only now talked about more because it can be done so much more accurately with all of the information out there. But first, a digression to describe the advertisements we are talking about. Online advertising can be implemented in several ways. The specific type that we seem to be talking about here though is the pedigree that you would find on Facebook. On Facebook, as well as on some other major sites, you are not just getting the same advertisements that everyone else is getting. You are getting ads that are specifically tailored to you. They do this by looking at the types of things that you like on Facebook. For example, if you like a piece of tech-related news, you are more likely to see tech-related advertisements on Facebook.
Now back on point, online advertisements are often under fire for the level that they are able to identify what is going on in someone’s personal life even though that person has not disclosed it to them. Adrianne LaFrance of The Atlantic mentioned that there was once a survey taken where people described this type of data mining. He says, “many of those surveyed said data tracking made them uneasy—the words ‘creepy,’ ‘Big Brother,’ and ‘stalking’ came up often.” It is exactly this image that America has wrong. We feel weird when we hear about the wild, but correct inferences that can be made about us from our digital footprint, but should we be? The companies that target us consumers are not personally looking into our lives and following our lives. Rather, it is a very impersonal, statistical analysis that Target performs.
Here is a summary of Target’s data analysis from Charles Duhigg’s New York Times Magazine article, “Whenever possible, Target assigns each shopper a unique code — known internally as the Guest ID number — that keeps tabs on everything they buy. “If you use a credit card or a coupon, or fill out a survey, or mail in a refund, or call the customer help line, or open an e-mail we’ve sent you or visit our Web site, we’ll record it and link it to your Guest ID,” Pole said. “We want to know everything we can.” The person being followed is just an ID code in the target system. Yes, they can figure out personal details, but it isn’t like they’re trying to write a biography of your life with the data they have. It’s just for marketing purposes.
The level of data protection that a company which analyzes data like this provides should vary according to what the company does. I see no harm in Target selling the information on what I purchase, but places such as medical facilities obviously would have to have much greater data security. The reason that I think that the company has the right to the data, is because they are collecting it through their own efforts. The data that Target gets from your surveys and what you purchase was not recorded by you (though you may have helped them if you took a survey), so you shouldn’t have any say in what they do with it. You freely purchased your items or took their survey, and I believe that this gives them the right to do what they want with that information. Now some information shouldn’t be spread around freely of course. If they did not, then they would lose the consumer’s trust. For example, when we get advertisements about products for our child on the way, it can be a little unsettling that they know that, similar to the way we feel when a new person we meet already knows our name. In the case where Target sent the girl an advertisement for newborn baby products and revealed to her father she was pregnant, perhaps they jumped the gun and send that out too early. On the other hand, if it were a happy couple who was eager to start raising their first child, this advertisement would have been really nice. It is not exactly black and white. The company has the responsibility of determining whether the information should be used or distributed.
For example, companies assigning loans and hiring new employees should be using their collected or bought data is used. As it was said by Kate Kochetkova in Kaspersky Daily, “Such programs are advertised as free of human biases; but humans set them up. Humans, who are quite prejudiced and can make mistakes. There had already been a case with the same program when it rejected every good applicant for a job because of the wrong instruction.”
Online advertising is annoying, but it makes sense to me. Websites that don’t sell a product have few other ways to make money, which is why I understand them. When I have to wait 30 seconds to watch a YouTube video though, it can be a huge buzzkill.As such I use Adblock to get rid of most of that interference, and I do not believe this to be unethical. If Adblock is considered unethical, then so should be skipping the commercials for a recorded TV show. It’s just silly to me that people consider it so wrong sometimes. Yes, it does make web advertising spaces less valuable, but that’s just the way it is. If websites don’t like it, then they should find ways of beating the Adblock, which many sites already have done.
*** End of Official Blog Post ***
*** Start of Unofficial Ending to the Blog Post ***
To end this blog, I would like to make one last point about Josh Halliday’s article in The Guardian, I just didn’t know where to fit it into the questions given. Josh is disgusted with how Facebook can figure out so much about us from only the topics that we like. My message to Josh is this: don’t use Facebook, or else tough luck. Facebook is a site where you voluntarily go online to share your personal thoughts and express your interests via “liking” things publicly. The entire point of a person liking a subject matter is to broadcast to the people that can see their profile, “I like this thing”. As he points out in the statistics he cites, it isn’t a perfect correlation, sometimes it guesses a wrong personality trait. So the things that Facebook is observing are probably not that difficult to infer without the help of a mathematical analysis. Facebook exists to share information about yourself. I understand when people feel uncomfortable that organizations gather data on them, but I think that we can go a little overboard sometimes. In this case, if you are against this type of data mining, be rational and realize that you’re basically giving your enemy the keys to the castle and getting mad when he/she uses them.
Reading 06: Snowden
I think it is a bit extreme to refer to Edward Snowden as either a hero or a traitor. Those words are both at such far ends of the spectrum. If he was a hero we wouldn’t be debating whether he was wrong or right to such an extent, and if he was a traitor there wouldn’t be so many people who support what he did. Rather, I believe that he was a brave citizen of our country who was trying to do what he perceived was the best thing for us. It took bravery because he knew it would shatter his current life, which it did, and he probably even thought he could get killed for it. He did it anyway though, because he saw what he considered basic human rights being violated and, rather than be passive about it, he acted on his belief that it was wrong. Now just because he was acting for what he thought of as the human good, should he be pardoned for his actions? To be quite frank, I don’t know. I don’t think any of us know. In order to determine that, his case should be investigated by and trialed in a court of law. They could decide if he was right and the NSA was in the wrong. This would also be the correct stage to determine if there was a better course of action for him to go about bringing the change he sought.
The contents of his leaks are an interesting matter to discuss. Some of the information we learned from his leaks are how the NSA was spying on entire nations, including ours, and that the NSA was also planning on implementing a piece of software called MonsterMind which would automatically attack cyber-based terrorism threats without human intervention. Now this information could be considered by some (though not all) worthy of public transparency. There was also, however, an unknown number of documents that he did not even know the contents of when he released it to The Guardian and The Washington Post. As Zachary Keck of The Diplomat points out, “Had Snowden been a whistleblower interested in protecting the American constitution, he would have carefully collected information documenting NSA overreach in spying on Americans. Only that would have been given to the journalists and newspapers Snowden contacted.” Reports of the incident say that he probably took the documents he has by using something similar to a web crawler. So he gathered a potentially massive number of documents through this (though he says there were some documents he only touched, and didn’t copy). He then handed all or some of the documents over to those two news outlets and let them decide what to do with the information, because he considered himself too biased to decide which ones were worth of release to the public.
While I do think that he was trying to act under what he thinks is good morality, this seems a little bit irresponsible. There could have been a lot of damaging information in those files which put people’s lives in danger (though to my knowledge this was not the case with anything released). Now his actions may not have been legal, and they were certainly a bit reckless, but from what I can tell of the situation, he seems like he is trying to have a positive impact on the world. There are people that claim that he is a narcissist and just wanted to cause a disruption, but let’s not forget that his life was uprooted by this incident. I don’t think someone would do something this extreme for personal fame. Was it ethical or moral to do this though? It’s difficult to say. Though I’m leaning towards believing that Snowden, having been in the NSA for years and knowing how the organization works, knew something that we didn’t and knew that the best way to put a stop to the surveillance he disagreed with was by releasing the information.
It is difficult to measure the impact of what he did for the U.S. Some people think that he only helped our enemies, observing that he left our countries to go hide away in rival nations. Others say that he didn’t show us anything that he didn’t know. According to his own opinion piece in the New York Times, he believes that since his 2013 leak, the citizens of the U.S. have begun to realize the importance of protecting their rights. In his own words, we are now starting to realize that, “the value of a right is not in what it hides, but in what it protects.” In my experience the average frame of mind today is that any secret personal surveillance is bad (though I personally don’t mind if the government spies on me). Whether or not this is because of him, it is hard for me to say.
The readings here did not really affect my views on government surveillance. I don’t really agree with Snowden. I would let the government spy on me all that they wanted to if it meant the protection of my country. I’m not doing anything that would get me into trouble (I think). I let airport security check my bags for the same reason. One thing I will take away from this though, is the need to stay mindful of what is going on around me. We can disagree on whether what Edward Snowden did was ethical or not, but he was trying to make a difference. He knew what he believed, saw a violation, and did something about it. I hope I never get put into a situation where I have to do something as drastic as he did, but after reading these articles I have further realized the importance of using your voice to defend what you believe is right.
Thomas Deranek's CSE 40175 Blog 