HIST 2850 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Laura Poitras, Edward Snowden, Citizenfour
10 Sep 2019
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Document Summary
Social media once used for friendly interactions among friends is now a powerful tool the government can use against us. Platforms such as facebook, twitter, youtube etcetera are. "inevitably automated systems that engineer and manipulate connections" (dijck 12) they track users" online activity, collect their data from conversations and online forums to make a profit. This "commoditization" of social network sites inevitably raises ethics and online privacy problems (dijck 16). While some people are aware that everything they share or post on the internet can be accessed by anyone at any time, data collectors don"t ask for consent. A documentary film "citizenfour" takes this problem on a much deeper level. It reveals that our government keeps close surveillance on us under the pretext of safety. Just like a "big brother" from a famous novel nineteen eighty-four written by george orwell, intelligence agencies such as the us national security agency (nsa) watch and dominate us without our knowledge.
