This weeks viewing Snowden, was very interesting to watch and with no Black Mirror episode this week was a let down because they very interesting and entertaining to watch. Snowden is about the consequences of leaks and hacks, and if Edward Snowden’s actions were justified or not. During our class time we went over a lot on how technology impacts society in a negative way
In this film Edward Snowden is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who I recognized immediately from other great movies he has been in. The film starts in the year 2004 where Edward Snowden has been training to join Special Forces until he his injured with a fractured tibia. With this new problem he thinks of a way where he still can help, protect, and serve the country as he goes to work for the CIA. He gets a spot on the CIA Training Center which is located in Virginia. His first task was for him and the other trainees to go to different cities and setting up a covert communications network. With Snowden’s intelligence he was able to accomplish this task in as little as 38 minutes, instead of the average time which was anywhere from 5 to 8 hours. Because of this accomplishment he secures a job in a foreign country, where he also brings an online girl with him. After seeing him move out to foreign country the film skips ahead to 2013 where is in Honk Kong and this is where we see him talking to journalists about the US government. Right after this it rewinds to 2007 where he is posted in Switzerland and it is about one of the first assignment he receives, which was to mainly to take care of the CIA’s security network. He is forced to resign this assignment because of using wrong methods of coercion with a superior. There is then a position that opens up in Hawaii that is dealing with Chinese hackers, which may be a great opportunity for Snowden because he has been struggling lately with epilepsy. Snowden creates multiple programs which proved to be critical in collecting terrorist threats, the only problem with these programs was that they were being abused by the CIA and NSA where they would collect data on any US citizen. Snowden does not like the fact that he is apart of something so intruding and violating others so he decides to take all data collected and transfer it to a micro disk and by talking to journalists all this information was out in the open for everyone to see what the CIA and NSA were doing.
With the release of this story it blew up and went viral and had a great affect on the Obama administration, but Snowden is in Russia awaiting a fair trial in the US. With Edward Snowden’s actions it is possible to debate if he did a great thing by letting the people know or how he turned on the government in the form of treason. It is tough to give a definitive answers because I do think that people should know this information, but at the same I can see why the government has to monitor stuff that is happening online, although they do abuse this and go to far in my opinion.
Weekly News Article: 7 Ways to Prevent a Hacking or Phishing Attack on Your Company
This article shows us a couple of different ways we can protect ourselves from being scammed and to reduce the chances of being in those situations.
SOCIAL MEDIA & SOCIETY 