Individual Part of Digital Media Project

Our event is a series of events which are around the Edward Snowden NSA leaks about the NSA spying on the online activities of people in the United States. The main point about our project is around the idea should we keep our privacy or should we give it up for safety. This revolves around the idea of digital media and social justice because it is our privacy that is being invaded and it isn’t a thing that most people in America want. Most people think that what happens on a persons people computer is totally private and only for their eyes. More recently, there is the issue of the NSA tapping Google and Yahoo databases, and the overseas fiber lines. All of these leaks have come as startling news to people and come back to the ideas of social justice and digital media, which is the protection of our privacy and rights online.

There are two articles I have found revolving around the NSA.

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-spying-phones-20131029,0,3235295.story#axzz2j4iPs543 - This article is from the LA Times about how the US is spying on its allies by collecting data of online activity in other countries outside the US.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents-say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html This article is about the NSA collecting data on Yahoo and Google for the protection of US Citizens.

This creates a debate on is less privacy good for more safety or is it the other way around

Blog Post

This weeks post continues on the N.S.A. and all of the digital surveillance. This time the controversy is over the NSA and the surveillance of data overseas. This is according to the documents leaked by Snowden that the government is able to look at things over google fiber and yahoo's browsers from overseas. This is possible if the wires that go through the ocean are tapped and are accessed from an outside source. The fact that the government is able to do this is strange because it isnt just dealing with what is a domestic thing. This is just happening outside of the borders of the United States which is crazy because the government is dealing with data that isnt even inside the United States. Personally I dont believe that this data should not be collected because it is not on domestic soil and is outside the country, where we shouldnt even be monitoring the data. I believe if there is any data collecting it shouldnt be outside of our country. This goes back to the idea though that there should not be any spying on the personal data of a person, because we are entitled to our privacy.

The article that I used is: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/technology/nsa-is-mining-google-and-yahoo-abroad.html?_r=0

Questions based off Prosperity Without Growth

1. Do you believe a capitalist economy can be self sustaining forever?
2. If so how do you believe this is possible?
3. How much do you think government should be involved in the economy?
4. How do you think social structure affects economics?
5. Do you believe a less materialistic society would be happier?

Social Action project Introduction Part 2

The way that I want to go about my social action project is to use guerrilla art. There are a lot of different ways of using it, like sidewalk chalk, posters or even the balloon idea which seems pretty cool to me. I kind of want to involve social media in the project because I believe if we get a famous person to tweet about it or retweet the tweet it could really spread because they have tens of thousands of followers. This was done last year with the Kony 2012 campaign which literally caught fire with how popular it got in the united states because of twitter and facebook. That is why I want social media to be involved because it could really get the word out about what we want to spread around and the cause. The main challenge would be combing guerrilla art with social media because we really have to find a hybrid to make these two really mix together and get our ideas out.

Social Action Project Intoduction

Part 1.) There are numerous different ideas for using social media to promote justice. These causes could be domestic violence, internet privacy, and e waste.

-Domestic violence has been going on for as long as time itself. It is a terrible tragedy that has plagued society for too long. Domestic violence can take many forms including physical, sexual and emotional abuse in the house. It is a terrible thing that needs to be stopped in our society because it is a terrible thing that goes on.

-Internet Privacy has become a subject thats become an issue in the 2000s. It is such a big problem because almost everyone in America today has some sort of social network medium, whether it is facebook, twitter, instagram, or even myspace. The issue that comes up with it is that there is an issue of abusing someones information whether it is credit card information, personal information, or photographs. Most people do not want this information being shared or abused, but it still happens anyway despite what they try do about it.

-The e waste issue is a more recent one that revolves around the idea of "what happens to our electronics after we get rid of them?"Most of these parts are sent to recycling centers or shipped to Africa and being disassembled in harmful ways. They are not being disposed of properly and it is hurting the environment and all those recycling the parts.

Discussion questions

1. What do you think about all of this toxic e waste being a problem back home in the US?

2. Do you think we have the right to know everything a company does with its waste?

3. If companies could decide if we have the right to know whats harmful, how do they judge whats harmful?

I have decided to revisit the topic of e waste in this weeks blog. This isn't about the how or why around e waste, its about the solutions. In my last blog I visited some solutions, so I decided to find some more for the long term fixing of the e waste problem. One of the options in the article was to donate used electronics to Goodwill because there is always someone in need of electronics somewhere in the united states who cant afford them. Because these items are being donated they are being re-used and they are not being shipped off to Africa to be processed. There are also services that can fix our broken electronics so that we do not have to throw them all away and are not being wasteful. We can also re purpose the parts and sell them to computer stores where the old parts can be taken out and put into new things so that when the old computers are thrown away we are not being wasteful. These are a bunch of different ways to get rid of the e waste problem and definitely help reduce the problem in third world countries.

Here is the article I used: http://www.ocgoodwill.org/business-services/e-waste