Privacy

 In today's Media Law and Literacy Blog Post, we will be discussing Privacy and how it relates to me, my family and friends along with what the government should be doing about these issues raised along with some ideas on how to defend ourselves for invasions of privacy. 

How do Privacy issues affect me, my family and friends?

Photo Credit (avast)

Privacy issues are universal. They could be physical, emotional, or most commonly and recent over some type of technology. Just like anyone, these privacy issues have affected me, my family and my friends as much as another person! In fact, just recently, as my friends and I were playing the just released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, my neighbor, who lives 250-300 yards from me, was DDoS'd by a hacker on the game. DDoS is a way to remotely turn off all wifi and cut service to an entire home network. The reason why this occurred was because my neighbor was winning more games than the hacker, who got upset and took it out on my friend. My family has also been affect by these attacks, which seem to be at random, in relation to their email accounts. Their passwords and accounts were hacked and held for ransom, of course which was never paid. Attacks like the one my family suffered happen almost every second of every day in our country and around the world. 

What should the US Government be doing in relation to these issues + How do we defend ourselves?

Photo Credit (Fortune)

All in all and realistically, the government has very little control over what these issues of privacy mean to their civilians as well as themselves. In fact, The government itself has been accused of spying on its own people. This information was obtained by Edward Snowden, a dissident of the United States as well as former intelligence operative who worked for the CIA, NSA, as well as Booz Allen Hamilton. In June 2013, Snowden leaked thousands of classified documents which in the eyes of the government, violated the Espionage act of 1917.  Another question is how do users of technology protect themselves. There is no real answer to that question because users would have they would have to spend money to have some degree of "protection." If one was to spend money for protection, most people who need security use VPNs or secure servers that cannot be tracked.