Digital Story Proposal

The theme of my digital story is NSA spying.  The storyline of my digital story is going to initially show pictures of people doing everyday things using technology.  

I would include cartoons

·         Someone talking on the phone

·         Someone sending a text message

·         Someone sending a picture message

·         Someone sending an email

·         Someone skyping

·         Someone typing something into a google search bar

From there each link will take you to a different story or cartoon strip of the NSA getting a hold of that personal information and storing it some even making fun of it.

A typical person may think that they have nothing to hide from the government. Most Americans aren’t terrorists or criminals. The majority of our country may not even realize that the NSA may be hacking their personal information with no criminalistics reasoning at all? Why would the situation of the NSA spying on an innocent citizen even occur?  What is so private that individuals may not want the NSA to see? Why would innocent citizens have anything to hide from the NSA?

According to David Cole “the latest revelations make it clear that we all have something to fear when government officials are authorized to intercept our most private forms of communication without the safeguards of a judicial warrant based on individualized suspicion of wrongdoing.” You may ask yourself why would the government be interested in private forms of communication, which are not in suspicion of wrongdoing? The truth is, in fact, people working for the government are only human. Just because someone works for the NSA doesn’t mean, they are primarily worried about national security. Some of these works find a twisted humor in individual’s private lives. They hack into private conversations primarily for amusement.

Imagine the scenario of your significant other working for the International Red Cross. They have been overseas, away from home for a long period of time. You both remain faithful to each other, but soon gain strong sexual urges for the other. What do many people in these types of situations do? Communicate sexually through electronic forms of communication. Wouldn’t you be horrified if you were in this situation and realized that NSA spie’s were hacking into your conversations, listening, and making fun of something so personal, that you wouldn’t want to share with anyone but your significant other?

In July of 2008 Congress amended “FISA to authorize the NSA to conduct massive electronic surveillance with no individualized suspicion or warrant.” So long as the surveillance is “targeted at people or organizations believed to be located abroad” The purpose of this bill “is to gather foreign intelligence” The problem is “Gathering foreign intelligence” can be sickly twisted. The NSA can get around hacking basically any organization or person believed to be located abroad for any reason. The bill does not restrict the collection and sharing of private “pillow talk” by Americans overseas. It is perfectly lawful for a NSA member to hack into a private conversation for personal amusement. I believe there needs to be some sort of limitation implied when tagging and passing around conversations. If the call has nothing to do with endangering our country, it should be restricted from being tagged and passed along.

Until more restrictions are applied the NSA is able to hack into private conversations of American’s abroad. Major victims of this privacy violation are employers of the American Red cross and Doctors without borders. An anonymous linguist with the army reserves assigned to NSA told of “listening in on hundreds Americans abroad”. David Murfee Faulk, a former Arab linguist for the Navy, admits to having conversations with fellow army reserves assigned to NSA  such as; “Hey, check this out, there’s good phone sex…pull up this call, it’s really funny, go check it out.” They would then check it out and the phone call would consist of “some colonel making pillow talk” afterwards statements such as ‘Wow, this was crazy.’” Would be made, judging the private affairs of colonials. As you could imagine this would be very embarrassing to the American’s abroad that are being hacked. Situations like this are personal, and aren’t business of the government.

This doesn’t just happen on rare occasions either. A News story based on independent accounts of two former military intercept officers with the National Security Agency reported “that the NSA surveillance program routinely intercepted extremely private calls of Americans abroad having more to do with sex than security” This interaction gives information sharing a new meaning. The story tells how “officers would tag the conversations and pass them around to their fellow intelligence officers” It may be one thing for a NSA spy to accidently intercept a private call having nothing to do with terrorism, but the moral thing to do would be to immediately disconnect the call. As Cole says “Privacy is an invaluable aspect of our everyday lives, not just a tool for those committing or planning crimes.” Innocent rights should not be violated. “Pillow talk” becomes something that is no longer between lovers but also between whichever NSA members decide to get a laugh out of their private lives.

Vincent, Michael. "Phone Sex and National Security." Ed. Hayden. Nation. Electrical Contractors and Other Wiring Installation Contractors, 3 Nov. 2008. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.

 

Say that you aren’t communicating in a way that you feel should be private.  Do you still have nothing to hide? “A few months ago, the Guardian showed how NSA servers can archive ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet’” Take into consideration some people search for self-identity through the internet. Remember the speaker Joyce Dunce, the self-identification process of her life was very private. She mentioned how she attempted to commit suicide multiple times because she just hated who she was and had no support. If she knew that everything she did on the internet was monitored and stored in files, if she didn’t feel private and safe using the internet, she may have successfully committed suicide. To think that NSA spying could lead to death.

Do you have any embarrassing photos or videos stored on your computer? Just think, they have probably been transferred into a government database. These private videos and photos could have been viewed and shared by members of the NSA. More recently, the New York Times reported that the agency ‘has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their travelling companions, and other personal information’. Why does the government need all this information? Is it truly a necessity? It’s not

Engler, Mark. Editorial. New Internationalist Nov. 2013, 467th ed.: 33. Ebsco Host. Nov. 2013. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.