After watching United States of Secrets I believe I now have more questions than answers. I was overwhelmed by how many companies/products I use everyday that are gathering my personal information including: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple. I was also stunned by how few people spoke out about this privacy breach. Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower, was the first to speak out about the government “spying” on its own citizens. I believe that Snowden did the right thing even though it came with high risks. This documentary really opened my eyes to the deceitful and dishonest behaviors committed by our own government. It is discouraging that our own government is spying on us, when it is the government that is supposed to help and protect us. I understand the argument that by spying on the citizens the government believes that they can better protect the people from terrorist but I still do not agree with it. I do not understand why companies like Google have the write to read/scan our emails. When Google created Gmail they read/scanned participants emails in order to provide advertisements that would be directed specifically to an individual. Not only do I think that this is a violation of personal privacy, I think that it is scary and creepy. Google claims that they were not storing that information but how do I know for sure and even if they were not it is not like it matters because they already read it anyway. However, Google is one company that has taken extra precautions and massive changes to their inscriptions in order to prevent the NSA to freely collect their data abroad. A sentence that someone said in the documentary that stuck out to me was about how no CEO’s of these companies participating in warrantless wire taping are losing any sleep at night. This I find to be very frightening. Why do these CEO’s not care about the United States government listening in, recording, and watching what its citizens are doing? It seems crazy to me that more people are not upset about this and are not trying to do more to end it. Even if you are not doing anything wrong you are still being watched and recorded and that is not something I am okay with.
If this is illegal and unconstitutional then why is it still occurring?
What can we do to stop it?
Why aren’t more people concerned about their privacy being violated?
If this is illegal and unconstitutional then why is it still occurring?
What can we do to stop it?
Why aren’t more people concerned about their privacy being violated?