Final Post Problem Statement PART 2

Explain the ethical and/or political goal(s) of your social action project. Explain its ethical and/or political significance as your collaborative considers what it hopes to achieve. (250 words)

• The first political goal our social action group hopes to achieve is the goal of getting 25,000 electronic signatures on a petition that our group creates to limit and restrict NSA spying.
•  If this is achieved then the petition we create will be sent to the government.
• The point of passing a petition like this is to inform the government of how the public feels about their initial constitutional rights violated by NSA spying. Overall if the government were to reject the petition the point would be to send a message
• Looking at the bigger picture, if our petition is passed, ultimately we will have achieved a much larger goal, that of actual initiating the start of a petition that puts restrictions on NSA spying.
• If our petition where to not reach 25,000 signatures the smaller goal to our Social Action project would simply be to raise awareness about NSA spying through both the effort our petition, and social media.
• We want to inform the public of how we feel about the government spying and persuade others to feel the same as us.
• The overall ethical goal of this project is to protect the individual’s privacy.The ethical significance to proceeding with this project is to protect our privacy rights that the constitution granted us that have been violated after George W Bush implemented the president surveillance program. It is against our rights for the government to target millions of innocent American’s privacy without a warrant. The whole point of living in America is to have your “Freedom”, which the government is specifically violating. This is why we want to limit NSA spying, we want to bring America back to it’s roots, to the great country it used to be.

NSA Spying

Since my Social Action Project Group Is petitioning against NSA spying I thought I would do some research and find out a little more about what this is.

I learned that our country uses major Mobil carriers such as AT&T and engages in surveillance of domestic communications of ordinary Americans. The first report of this by the press was not until 2005. The report revealed that the National Security Agency had been interrupting Americans phone calls and Internet communications. In 2006 it was revealed that NSA was also receiving wholesale copies of Americans telephone and communications. These surveillance activities are in violation of privacy safeguards that were established by congress in the U.S constitution. How does the government get away with this? The NSA's domestic spying program documented as the "President's Surveillance Program" was implemented by George W Bush shortly after the attacks of 9/11/2001. The program is considered by the government as classified. Unfortunately information that the government gets a hold of becomes revealed to the public. The NSA was initially authorized to conduct surveillance activities inside the united states to prevent terrorist attacks. Without warrants the NSA monitored 500-1000 people suspected to have connections to the Al Queda. The problem is  that the program targets millions of innocent Americans.

In my opinion, I think that the NSA needs to be more careful about whose information they hack. Security is important to keep our citizens safe, but its not fair to the innocent Americans who did nothing wrong to have there privacy violated.

October 11th Discussion Questions Consumerism, self-creation and prospects for a new ecological consciousness

Do you think that a production-based or construction-based society is better? How?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a production-based society?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a consumption-based society?

What social changes have shifted production-based to construction-based societies?

Do you think that the changes caused by the shift in society are negative or positive? How so?

As a consumer do you think you will ever have everything you want? Will you ever be satisfied?  Why/How?

How do you create your own personal identity?

What are your beliefs on power in direct relationship to consumption? Do you think the more you consume the more powerful you become?

How should we deal with growing piles of waste?

How could we limit consumption to save the environment?

What does the emergency of economical consciousness depend on?

What authority do you think that institutions have that is hidden?

Social Action Project Introduction

• Discuss the broader digital media and social justice topic, issue or cause that your social action project will respond to? What is the ethical, historical and/or political significance of this topic, issue or cause? (250 words)

My suggestion for a topic on the social action project is digital waste. I would like to inform the public about “recycling” and where our digital waste is really going. I’d like to inform them that most major recycling companies unsafely ship E-waste away for others to deal with instead of ensuring it is safely recycled in their own hands. I would like to show them what wastelands build up to become and show the unhealthy conditions undeveloped countries are forced to live in. I think the majority of society has no clue that recycling centers simply label digital waste as donations and then ship it all away overseas to undeveloped nations. I for one was shocked when I enrolled in this class and listened to the first speaker inform us of this issue. I became more disgusted as I learned more and more about it throughout the course and I would like to raise awareness.

The ethical significance this topic has is in my opinion, is that morally the whole concept is just not right. We have an advantage over these undeveloped nations. We are naturally born with more in a better living environment. They can’t choose the country that they were born into. We are born with privileges they don’t have. We should be helping them to live a better life and have better amenities; technology medication and clean water. Instead we trick them by telling them that we are donating electronics to help advance their nations technologically. We should genuinely be making donations that can help them advance, instead of donating garbage to them that make their living conditions worse. This would be the ethical thing to do. On top of it all, even though they are the ones suffering now in the long run we all live on the same earth and our great-great grandchildren will be dealing with even a bigger issue right alongside of theirs. We need to fix the issue now, invest in research and come up with a better solution before its too late instead of taking the easy way out.

• Describe the type of social action project that you have identified.  Offer examples of how it has been used in the past. Why does this type of project form an appropriate response to the specific topic, issue or cause introduced above? (250 words) 

Produce a documentary, I saw the documentary supersize me and immediately knew that this would be a good way to get a message across to the public. I was forced to watch the video three times throughout school years and it really put an impact on my food choices and how I viewed fast food. I next related to the Kony 2012 video. I was reminded about in class Wednesday, and this is when I initially began to realize that producing a documentary would be very affective. Kony 2012 was very informative and influential. I think that producing a YouTube video that could possibly go viral is one of the easiest ways for a class such as ours to get a message across to a wider public.

Getting the message out about where our digital waste is going would be easy to incorporate in a video format. In the background we could have a catchy sound playing to keep the listeners attention. We could create animations to over-exaggerate waste dumping and transport. We can animate young boys burning toxic materials and even younger boys walking around with magnets to pick up scrap metals left behind.  Another thing we can animate is the health affects. We can show people living in that environment getting sick. At the end we should show real pictures of actual digital wastelands to get the message thickly across the viewer’s heads.

After the Video is created we could share the link on every social network everyone in the class has. We can message our friends and ask them to do the same. We can then publicly post the video to popular pages and blogs. In comment sections we can comment the link to this video. I think if the video is posted by everyone in the class it will get more views and raise more awareness then we even realize.

 

Phthalates

1.       Where and how is it mined?

a.       There are many different types of phthalates found and mined in different places, but they can be released from a product by heat agitation.

 

2.       What is the environmental impact of the mining? Is it regulated?  If so, by whom?

a.       Phthalates Dangers are so well-documented that action is being taken against them.

b.       They are being phased out by many products in the United States, Canada and the European Union.

c.       Health concerns due to legal provisions and growing environmental awareness, producers are increasingly forced to use non-phthalate plasticizers.

 

3.        What are the human health concerns when used to manufacture consumer electronics?

a.       Interfere with the production of male reproductive hormones

b.       Lower testosterone levels

c.       Decreased sperm counts

d.       Lowers sperm quality

e.       Malfunctions in the male reproduction tract

f.        Hormone changes

g.       Birth Defects

h.       Breast Cancer

i.         Prostate/ Testicular Cancer

 

4.       What documented health impacts are associated with its de-manufacturing?

a.       Phthalates are easily released into the environment because there is no covalent bond between the phthalates and plastics in which they are mixed. As plastics age and break down, the release of phthalates accelerates.

b.       Because phthalate plasticizers are not chemically bound to PVC, they can easily leach and evaporate into food or the atmosphere. Phthalate exposure can be through direct use or by indirect means through leaching and general environmental contamination.

c.       Because phthalates are not chemically bound to products, they easily migrate or off-gas, especially with heat.

 

5.       What purpose does this compound serve in digital electronics?

a.       Phthalates are esters of phthalic acid they are mainly used as a substance that are added to plastic to increase flexibility, transparency, durability and longevity. Phthalates are used in computers to make the plastics, more specifically cables, used in them more flexible softer and durable.

Blog Post Friday 10-11

E-Waste; Ghana: Hard Drives

In Last week’s blog I brought up the topic of the digital dumping ground in Ghana, my post was basically focused on the effects the waste had on the citizens. I brought up how the developed nations sort of trick the Ghanaians into accepting their waste. In one sense we are taking advantage of them, but in this post I’m going to focus how they are sort of getting back at us.

Ghana is listed by the U.S state department as one of the top sources of cyber-crime in the world. All of our waste that is sent to Ghana is sorted through, hard-drives are major items that are salvaged and sold. Ghanaians even admit that organized criminals comb through these hard-drives and find personal information that can be used in scams.

You may not even realize it but if anyone ever gets a hold of your old hard drive no matter where your personal information is hidden, or even if it’s been deleted, it can be easily retrieved. The only way to completely keep your information safe is to destroy your hard-drive physically, for example smashing it with a hammer.

No matter whom it is, anyone’s files can be seen through their hard drive, even the U.S government. Information on a twenty-two million dollar contract was retrieved by a hard-drive purchased from Ghana. It was later found out that this drive had come from Northrop Grumman, one of America’s largest military contractors. Specifically, the drive “contains details about sensitive, multi-million dollar U.S. government contracts.” Drives have also been found with contracts with NASA and the defense intelligent agency even homeland security.

On a more personal level, hard-drives that you have “recycled” could be being displayed right now in an open-air market in Ghana. Anyone can purchase it for a low price and find out intimate personal details about your life. Anything from private pictures and videos can be retrieved to financial data information, credit card numbers and online transaction. Ghanaians can get your bank numbers and then retrieve all your money in your account, they simply log into your atm card and have access to all the information they need.

Reading this and finding this information may be appalling at first. You may think of Ghanaians doing this as bad people. But think about it, this is how they’ve been raised. They’ve grown up in waste. When the U.S ships our E-waste to their dumping grounds we are giving them our old electronics as donations.  If someone donates something to you there are no restrictions on what you can do with it.  In our country incidents like this may be illegal but in theirs it’s how they survive. Yes, it may be morally wrong but they aren’t raised to think that way. It relates to the in-class discussion that we had a few weeks ago about how in the undeveloped country jelly was helping the young boy to hack into peoples bank accounts. The majority of the class didn’t see this as wrong in their situation. It is almost the same thing.

 

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/video/video_index.html

Friday Blogpost 10-4-2013

E- Waste in Ghana

Due to the fact that this class is specifically focusing on Digital Waste for a two-week period I decided to do more research. When you type a broad subject such as Digital Waste into a navigation bar you expect to get lots of results with a wide variety of information. To make my research easier I decided to specifically narrow my research to dumping grounds in Ghana. Part of the reason I specifically chose Ghana is because right on the outskirts of the country the most polluted body of water on earth Is located, The Korle Lagoon. Inside of Ghana there is an area called Agbogbloshie, this area is known as one of the world’s major digital dumping grounds.

What sort of disgusts me the most is that developed countries in some ways trick Ghana’s citizens into allowing their homes to transform into digital waste-lands.  What major exporters will do is label digital waste junk as donations. Ghanaians will then welcome these donations because they think that they are to help bridge the digital divide. About 50 percent of the junk received is salvaged into some sort of use. For example; Boys will burn old foam on the tops of computers to melt away plastic, which leaves them with scraps of iron and copper that they are able to sell. The remains of what is not used and the 50 percent of imported complete junk are dumped in a burn-site right out of town.

                Young Boys are forced to work in these burn-sites to earn a living. They are surrounded by toxic waste and do not even realize the health implications from working there, their bodies are still growing and toxic fumes are always inhaled into their lungs.  Boys that are not even old enough to help burn waste at the burn cite are given magnets to attract metals that are left behind and can be sold. The entire community is effected by our waste and they don’t have a say on whether they want their bodies to be polluted let alone do they know that they are endangered.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/video/video_index.html