Our sixth week in Social Media & Society has introduced us to the film Snowden, the consequences of leaks & hacks and the 5 Worst Data Hacks. The class discussion covered and contributed heavily on the paranoia surrounding technology and its implications on society.

The film, Snowden, stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Edward Snowden. Other members of the cast include Melissa Leo (Laura Polirtas), Zachary Quinto (Glenn Greenland) and Nicolas Cage as Hank Forereste! The thriller was directed by Oliver Stone in 2016 and covers the shadowy career of Edward Joseph Snowden.

In 2004, Edward Snowden was training to be in the Special Forces when he slipped & fractured his tibia. He then turns his attention to the Center Intelligence Agency (CIA) to find a new way to serve his country. His self-intellect (although mostly self-taught) is phenomenal and secures himself a spot at the CIA Training Center in Virginia, called “The Hill”. Snowden and his fellow colleagues are assigned to individual cities and each tasked with building a covert communications network. The instructor indicates the average time of 5 hours and no more than 8 hours. Snowden completed the entire process of building, destroying, and rebuilding his network in an impressive 38 minutes. His potential and intelligence lands him his first post in a foreign country. He brings his online-sweetheart, Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley), to join him. The movie then shortly fast forwards to 2013 in Hong Kong, where Snowden is explaining and handling sensitive information to journalists regarding the United States government. It then quickly jumps to one of Snowden’s earliest assignments in Geneva, Switzerland 2007. He was placed there to maintain the CIA’s security network and ends up aiding superiors with dirty methods of coercion. This pushes Snowden to resign and pick up several different positions in various countries. Senior Officer O’Brian reveals an operation in Hawaii that revolves around counterattacking Chinese hackers. With Snowden currently struggling with epilepsy, a move to Hawaii sounds promising and a fresh start with Lindsay. Snowden’s creation of projects such as the Epic Shelter and Heartbeat, were instrumental in the collection and extraction of terrorist threats. However, the CIA and NSA were abusing this power and collecting information on all citizens of the United States. Snowden ultimately becomes disillusioned with what he is a part of and smuggles all relevant data onto a micro disk. With the help of several journalists, the information was released to the public on June 5th, 2013. The story instantly went viral and had a major impact on the Obama administration. In the end, Snowden is granted asylum in Russia and awaits an equal and fair trial in the United States.

Is Edward Snowden a terrorist or national hero? Although his acts were considered treason, I believe he was providing information that should have been made available to the public. I do agree that it is important and the duty of the government to monitor certain people’s digital footprint. However, to record everyone’s voice and their online tendencies seems unnecessary.

Lastly, Marriot experienced a data breach affecting 500 million hotel guests. A hacker got into their system and gained access to people’s names, phone numbers, birthdates and even passport information. I found his breach particularly creepy as this leaking of information transpired over several years! Hackers are the new villain in a world surrounded by technology. I hope we find a happy medium with our consumption of technology and can hold scammers accountable.

Published by: Samuel Erickson

Weekly News Article: The USA today touches on several good tips to combat scamming.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/5042873002