As Much As They Give

A thesis statement of Jim Harpers essay, Web Users Get as Much as They Give, is Although the World Wide Web uses consumer data to function, some can argue that without that data, the internet would not be as useful as it is today.

What have you ‘Googled’ recently? According to Lori Andrews, the leading expert on bioethics and emerging technology, data aggregators can make their own rules when it comes to collecting your data. Three important essays have been written using rhetorical appeals in order to construct a convincing argument that make us consider what we do on the Web and how it could impact us. Content that we search for on the Web often leads advertising companies to making judgments about us that could affect many things in our day to day lives—wrongly so. A person’s search history could be the one thing that makes or breaks their chance of getting a bank loan or be unfairly categorized just because of their demographics.

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The purpose of this essay is to analyze whether the article I have chosen is based on the writer’s opinion or facts. I will provide details about the article and provide a summary on whether the article is fact based, opinion oriented or both. Bruce Schneier is the author of “The Internet Is a Surveillance State,” an article that appeared on cnn.com on March 16, 2013. Schneier also the author of “Liars and Outliers”: Enabling Society Needs to Survive (2012).

As a growing topic of discussion, privacy in our society has stirred quite some concern. With the increase of technology and social networking our standards for privacy have been altered and the boundary between privacy and government has been blurred. In the article, Visible Man: Ethics in a World Without Secrets, Peter Singer addresses the different aspects of privacy that are being affected through the use of technology. The role of privacy in a democratic society is a tricky endeavor, however, each individual has a right to privacy. In our society, surveillance undermines privacy and without privacy there can be no democracy.

From the beginning of eighth grade till now I have grown toward proficiency in five different skills from my Eportfolio. Within a year, I have grown when determining the theme, identifying and interpreting figurative language, writing an argumentative paper, finding not only credible but reliable sources to provide evidence for my ideas, and citing text to support my ideas when writing in response to a reading selection. When this year started, I was not sure about theme but, since then I have learned how to properly determine the correct theme of a passage. When we read the book, "And Then There Were None," I grew with my knowledge on themes because I was taught that there are types of themes. I now know that the types of themes are justice, class, guilt and death.

In 1870, nonphysician Samuel Williams, had proposed the idea of using morphine and anesthetics to end a patient’s life, and to even lessen their pain when dying. As ether (a burning substance used in medicine) had been developed, physicians had begun to use anesthetic to relieve a patient's death, and in 1846, the first person to use ether anesthetics in an operation would be John Warren (Emanuel 793). During the Civil War, many physicians have been using hypodermic morphine to lessen the pain of soldiers, which had tremendously helped the physicians in gaining more experience with using the hypodermic morphine.

The advanced technology makes it possible that our government can have access to any individuals’ private information, including their daily schedules, emails, friend cycles, social network accounts, eating habits, buying behaviors, and the places they frequently visit. Solove finds that the government often uses the way of surveillance to imperceptibly control people’s lives (345). It means that the government has deprived individuals of their freedom in a way that monitors their every move. For instance, people may avoid talking about ISIS on the phone with others under the surveillance because they are afraid of whether their conversation will be taken out of context and misinterpreted by the authorities. Being watched by the government, people may choose to change their behaviors to adapt to the government’s value and interest. Living in a democratic society, people should freely choose what they want to share and what they need to hide. Thus, the government’s surveillance deprives people of their right to live their lives and share their opinions at will, keeping them being controlled by those in power.

During the past decade, an issue has arisen from the minds of people, on which is more important? Privacy or national security? The problem with the privacy is that people do not feel they have enough of it and national security is increasing causing the government to be less worried about the people. National security is growing out of control which has led to the decrease in people’s privacy and has created fear in the eyes of U.S. citizens. “Twelve years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and amid a summer of revelations about the extent of the surveillance state built up to prevent others, leaders, experts and average Americans alike are searching for the right balance between security and privacy” (Noble). Americans should be able to live their daily lives without fear of an overpowered government or a “big brother” figure taking over. “According to a CBS News poll released Tuesday evening, nearly 6 in 10 Americans said they disapproved of the federal government’s collecting phone records of ordinary Americans in order to reduce terrorism” (Gonchar). While it is good to keep our country safe with security, American’s privacy should be more important because there is a substantial amount of national security, the people 's rights should matter first.

Sergey Brin noted, “Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines, unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine.” Nicholas Carr’s essay challenges this assertion. Nicholas Carr believes even though there are multiple search engines, “the faster we surf across the Web-the more links we click and pages we view-the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements.” This topic elicits such strong responses because technology is a part of our everyday lives. Technology is only becoming more advanced and will continue to be a source of debate for all who use it.

In Glenn Greenwald’s TED talk “Why privacy matters”, he argues that the issue of privacy effects more than just individuals hiding a wrong. He argues the importance of privacy and how government has turned the internet into “an unprecedented zone of mass, indiscriminate surveillance. The main point that Greenwald uses, is that only bad people have a reason to protect their privacy. In this world they are two types of people, good people and bad people. Good people are those people who uses the internet for good purposes such as work and for family, and bad people are those who uses the internet for the wrong reasons such as planning violent crimes. With that, we are able to differentiate the difference between people and their privacy.

The media have always had a huge influence on everything in society both negatively and positively. There is no telling that everything said in the media is true, because the media can often be biased. The media becomes biased when it emphasizes one specific point of view in a way that breaches the ethics of journalism professionally. For instance, in a case study by two scientists, Michaels & Knappenberger (2013), they stated:

The concern about privacy on the Internet is increasingly becoming an issue of international dispute. ?Citizens are becoming concerned that the most intimate details of their daily lives are being monitored, searched and recorded.? (www.britannica.com) 81% of Net users are concerned about threats to their privacy while online. The greatest threat to privacy comes from the construction of e-commerce alone, and not from state agents. E-commerce is structured on the copy and trade of intimate personal information and therefore, a threat to privacy on the Internet.

The feel of the brush and the smoothness of the stroke when paint meets the canvas. This feeling is what I strive for. Art to me is an escape and simply to put it in terms is my way of life. It's not just my hobby, interest, or talent it is so much more to me.

Thesis Statement: “Citizens of this country should value the national security more than their privacy since it is concerned with a much larger group of people in order to protect our country from invaders, to maintain the survival of our country and to prevent airing of criticism of government.”