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BriannaCummingsFirstEssay 5 - 01 Feb 2016 - Main.JianingLiu
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META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
| | ourselves to FreedomBox, for the moment, let's ask about the legal
and political contributions that the society can expect for dealing
with the issues you've identified. | |
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Jianing: Hi Brianna, you have raised a good question which also confuses me a lot when I think about the situation. Take your essay and Natalie's together, the two essays have almost depicted a full picture of the challenge we are facing--which is, companies across different industries are constantly recording the biometric data we give out through our interaction with them and, we simply can't avoid it when we do not have a choice, for example, when taking health care services or depositing money in commercial banks (Natalie), and we aren't willing to sacrifice the magic convenience of modern times for our freedom when we do have a choice, for example, giving up Facebook or Instagram (Brianna).
Yet I totally agree with you in saying that all hope for freedom is not lost. Free software would, of course, be the ultimate solution--everyone would be able to see, detect and fix it if the software code includes the possibility of facilitating misuse of user information. But free software is not simply a technical issue: in order for free software to win the final war, we have to expect a civil society educated and awakened enough to fight for their own privacy and a democratic government not so obsessed with controlling its citizens and not so dependent on giant interest groups--both of which will hardly be achieved in a very near future. Then I come to think about some more moderate ways to cope with the issue while we move slowly towards the final destination of free software. The Supreme Court may extend the Fourth Amendment's protection to the metadata generated from our activity, which is presently denied the protection of "reasonable expectation of privacy" by the Court (Juan,second essay). This may prove a judicial approach to prevent government and companies from surveilling us or infringing on our pirvacy. From a political perspective, an Information Management Bureau may be established to oversee government officials and companies to make sure that user information, biometric data and metadata are being protected. This Bureau should be subject to the scrutiny of the legislatures and the public, as any administrative agency in a democratic political system do.
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