Digital Story

http://jgramling17.wix.com/digitalstorynsa

StoryBoard

NSA BlogPost

House intel bill adds $75 million to NSA budget to stop future Snowdens

"On Thursday, the House Intelligence Committeeapproved a spending bill to fund the National Security Agency and other intelligence organizations. Included in the bill is a provision that would set aside $75 million for the NSA to improve its internal security and mitigate insider threats to classified material. In other words, the bill seeks to prevent future Edward Snowdens.

Earlier this month, the Senate Intelligence Committeeadvanced its own bill authorizing funding for the NSA and its surveillance programs. The bill also provides additional money for countering insider threats, but it includes protections for "legitimate" whistle blowers, the Hill's Brendan Sasso reported.

The NSA had previously deployed security software that was intended to prevent insider threats, according to an October Reuters report. However, the software, purchased from Raytheon, was allegedly not installed at the Hawaii station Snowden worked at due to the limitations of the station's network connection back to the continental US."

I actually can't believe the government right now. Instead of listening to the majority of the people and reforming the NSA (which is what a democracy should be doing) they just try and patch up where they went wrong. This is basically a slap to the face towards the american public, obviously they don't believe their actions deserve ramifications. This is exactly why this issue needs way more press/attention.

SAP Project Petition Link

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-nsa-spying/yqqYgVLQ

Annotated bibliography

• Crowley, Michael. "Spy Vs. Spy." Time 182.20 (2013): 14. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Nov. 2013.
• This source talks about the NSA's foreign spying habits on oversees allies. This information is useful to my digital story because it shows how the NSA can't justify this type of spying with their original excuse of terrorism.

• Engler, Mark. "Even If You Have Nothing To Hide." New Internationalist 467 (2013): 33. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Nov. 2013.
• This source talks about the extent to which the NSA can spy and will spy on innocent citizens for no good reason. The final conclusive point revolves around that even if you have nothing to hide it's still wrong for the NSA to spy on you. This information is useful to my digital story because it shows why people should be mad about the NSA behavior and hopefully be able to understand that the NSA should have no right to do this.

• Jim, Michaels, Madhani Aamer, and TODAY USA. "Spying uproar could spark changes not seen since 1970s." USA Today n.d.: Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
• This article talks about exactly what the title makes it sound like and putting the impact of this revelation into perspective. This is a good source for my digital story because it shows how big of revelation this actually is and how much potential for change there is.

• Guarino, Alessandro. "The State Vs The People." Engineering & Technology (17509637) 8.10 (2013): 43-45. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
• The article reflects on issues regarding the surveillance actions by the governments of the U.S. and Great Britain to ensure national security which is directly affecting citizen's rights to privacy. It reflects on the strategies adopted by the NSA by tapping telephone conversations and telecommunication cables. It discusses the measures adopted by the Internet industry to prevent National Security Agent computer crimes and to ensure cyber security. This source is great for my digital story because it encompasses the issue along with solutions and precautionary measures taken to this issue.

Gender Representation in Video Games

Digital Story

My digital story revolves mostly around the same issue I chose as my SAP, NSA Spying. The story goes as follows. During my senior year of highschool I was fortunate enough to be invited by my friend to go on an all expenses payed vacation to Spain for a month during the summer. The morning after I graduated from high-school I jumped on a plane and left the great states, and also leaving behind all contact to the United States. I saw a lot of cool things and some not so cool things. I noticed a lot of things wrong with Spain's government system to which I always thought how great it was to live in such a great, free place known as the USA. When I got home to the United States I noticed not much had changed, which was expected. I get to my house, have some home cooking, and watch the news to see what America's been doing for the past month. A bunch of typical stories take up some airtime and then BAM, the news anchors start to give updates on the month-long headliner involving "Edward Snowden" and "NSA Spying." As I watched more and more about the story I couldn't believe what I was hearing, A huge organization of the government had been outed by a former employee about their spying on ALL United States Citizens. I expected there to be rioting and protests and huge public outcries, yet nothing. I thought back to how little had changed when I got back from Spain, America basically had no long-term reactions. My thoughts in Spain about how great America was were completely falsified. America had rolled over on it's side and accepted that to achieve freedom they must give up their privacy, which directly goes against what America was founded upon. "It's too bad a young man had to sacrifice everything, and become a fugitive who will likely spend the rest of his life unable to return to the U.S., to inspire this oversight." Now of course there are a great number of people who, like me, oppose how the government conducts their "surveillance." Those said people usually talk through blogs, YouTube videos, websites, and other technology based media platforms. Those are some great ways to describe my story through this project.

Works Cited

Crowley, Michael. "Spy Vs. Spy." Time 182.20 (2013): 14. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Nov. 2013.

Engler, Mark. "Even If You Have Nothing To Hide." New Internationalist 467 (2013): 33. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Nov. 2013.

Pbworks website: http://stopnsaspying.pbworks.com/w/page/70431947/FrontPage

3x Problem Statement (What Now? / Why Now?)  (Due week 9)  (Group)

•  What is the historically specific event at the intersection of digital media and social justice that your social action project will respond to? Introduce historical, political, cultural, social and/or economic explanations related to the broader topic accounting for this specific event. (250 words)
• Ethan
• Catie

•  Explain the ethical and/or political goal(s) of your social action project. Explain its ethical and/or political significance as your collaborative considers what it hopes to achieve. (250 words)
• Joel
• Ashley

•  Please include in your proposal answers to the practical questions of your proposed social action project including: who, what, where, when and how. (250 words)
• Matt
• Jason

3x Literature Review  (Due week 9) 

Conceptually, situate your social action project AND the event(s) that it responds to at the intersection of digital media and social justice. Accomplish this in two steps by surveying the literature about:

A. (Individual) The historically specific event including the varying issues, perspectives and debates within and/or forming its conceptual boundaries; (250 words) 

B. (Group) The form of the social action project that you have selected and how to produce and stage such a project (500 words)

• Joel

Introduction part 1

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -Ben Franklin. In the society we live in today everyone has a voice because of the interconnected devices such as phones and computers. Recently, everyone found out that it's now more a double sword than anything with NSA collecting all of our information. As quoted by the one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, Ben Franklin refers to the whole reason we seceded from Great Britain, to have freedom. The present state of the America is not what I would call "free" anymore. Obama claims that our country cannot have 100% freedom and 100% security. Well, apparently the NSA is catching terrorists left and right? Maybe we are and the government isn't telling us, but what about Sandy Hook or even more importantly the Boston Bombers? The so-called full proof system should have set off some alerts for 2 suspicious guys going to Chechnya and buying all the ingredients to make pressure cooker bombs. We sacrifice a lot for a system that doesn't even work. With all the big protests we were able to create like occupy wall street, why is America just rolling over and accepting defeat in this case. We have voices why stop now? The government, the establishment built to protect our civil liberties, is violating the exact thing it vowed to protect. This isn't right for the government to have all of our personal information, it isn't freedom, it isn't America.

Introduction part 2

"We the People is a section of the whitehouse.gov website, launched September 22, 2011, for petitioning the current administration's policy experts. Petitions that meet a certain threshold of signatures will be reviewed by officials in the Administration and an official response will be issued.On August 23, 2012, the White House Director of Digital Strategy Macon Phillips released the source code for the platform.The source code is available on GitHub, and lists both public domain status as a work of the U.S. federal government and licensing under the GPL v2." As described above "We the people" is a government created site that makes it possible for anyone to make a petition that could be sent to congress. The petition that you make needs to reach 25,000 digital signatures with 30 days or the petition is killed. Now even after the petition gets 25,000 votes the government reviews it and obviously can reject the petition, but the point is sending a message more than anything. 25,000 people supporting a single cause definitely sends a message and lets the government know the people's opinions. I think this is a very appropriate approach in trying and get some change or even some noticeable attention from the government for this majorly opposed privacy issue. This social action is simple and applies to the audience who is opposed to the NSA spying. Anyone who has access to the internet can share this idea via social media and have it go "viral". I think anyone who uses social media is opposed to the NSA spying because it affects them most of all. I also think this social action is great because it's easy, private (among peers), and can be done on your own time. 

Viral Videos and Social Action

            I chose to blog about how much change can come out of video supporting a cause that goes "viral". Viral is a term used on the internet to describe some sort of media that gets insanely popular in a short amount of time, most of the time this "media" is a video. One example of this was "Kony 2012", which was a video depicting an ongoing issue in Uganda consisting of a militia overlord that recruits kids into his army by terrible means. The video then goes on to tell you how you can make a difference by contacting govt. officials about the issue and donating money. The video correctly used pathos, logos, ethos which is one of the many reasons the video got so popular. The main reason it got so popular was because it evoked emotion, at first in a sad way but then towards the end the viewer feels empowered and obligated to do something. This video alone got 98.5 million views, raked in millions of donations, was on just about everyone's Facebook, and ultimately pressured the international govt. to get involved. The campaign took a turn for the worse when the spokesperson of the video was arrested for "masturbating in public", but that's besides the point. This campaign did so much from a social action standpoint by just posting a 30 minute video. That's all it takes in this day and age to get millions informed and to act on an issue. The internet is pretty crazy.

Discussion Questions

1. How has the Internet affected your views on politics?

2. Which party do you think the Internet as a whole is more supportive of? Why and how-so?

3. Referring to the table above from the reading, which of the 4 digital democracy opinions do you think you most resemble? Why? Examples?

"Google has awarded a $5 million grant to the World Wildlife Fund to use and adapt new technologies to combat animal poaching around the world. The group has grand plans for the money, which will be used for everything from camera-equipped drones to next-generation animal tags that send text messages with critical information to rangers." Google is going out of it's way to donate a very generous amount of money. I think this is yet another good thing that Google has done on top of the already cool things it does as a company everyday. I think that this is going to a good cause because the article states "Poacher operations have grown in scale and sophistication, despite efforts to curb them. Rhinos used to be poached at a rate of 15 or 20 per year in Africa — but now, because of high demand for rhino horn coming primarily from Asia, over 600 have been killed this year alone. Statistics for elephants and tigers are equally disturbing". This is obviously an issue and Google is doing a very good job to contribute to this cause. This technology that they are implementing with the funding money can be used for a number of things ranging from tracking African militia's to animal migrating habits. There is a lot of good that comes out of this technology

scroll right to see the rest of the comic

Social Media After Effects

            I chose to blog about the potential effects of social media in the near future. So like most everyone here at John Carroll, you have a social media profile on some platform whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Etc. Having that profile comes with a huge responsibility. For example, In the midst of Senior year I was filling out college applications left and right. I was also constantly doing things like Joining clubs, getting good grades, etc. to look good for colleges. One of the things I made sure not to forget was to disable/block all my social media profiles so colleges could not find me. Why? Because almost every single college will look you up on most social platforms to get more information. And let's face it, nothing good could have come out of a college finding my Facebook or my Twitter. I had to actually take hours off of my day to make sure I was completely off the grid. You don't realize how much actual risk and responsibility you take on once you join social media platforms until you give it a second thought. And It doesn't stop at colleges, oh no. Next time you put in application for an internship or a job, guess what one of the first things they do is? You guessed it, run your name through the social media database. To think that the one factor that determines if you land that dream job that pays well or you end up waiting tables could end up depending on what you posted on Facebook up to 5 years ago. That's mind boggling.

Digital Media and Social Justice weekly BlogPost #1

              I chose to blog about this Video depicting Edward Snowden being interviewed about his decisions, intentions, and motives. The interviewer goes on to asks Snowden what his initial intentions were when getting into the government, Snowden replies that he had no intention of becoming someone who would leak information. Snowden Also goes on to say that after joining the government he payed attention to the information about Iraq in the media with contrast to the actual information only to realize that the two were very different from each other. The government had interfered with the information that was broadcast through the media in an attempt to "create a certain mindset in the global consciousness." He believed to be a victim of this because he believed in the nobility of the US's intentions of freeing the oppressed people of Iraq only to find out that there was little nobility actually based on the US's involvement. After the interviewer changes the subject; Snowden starts to talk about how much the government is actually involved in the internet as a whole. Everything you do on the internet is monitored, processed, analyzed even down to the littlest "happy birthday" wish you post on someones wall. He talks about how big internet based companies you have learned to depend on, support and trust are really not as confidential with your information as you may have thought. Companies such as Google, Verizon, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook give direct backdoor access to your information, searches, interests, and habits. So essentially you can't use the internet without all information being relayed to the NSA. The rest of the video talks about other accounts of the government using abusing their power to wrongfully eavesdrop on not only the american public but a number of international groups, communities, and companies.
             Personally I don't view Edward Snowden as a "Traitor" because in essence he worked to keep the general population correctly informed, which was supposed to be the government's job in the first place. Now don't get me wrong, I believe what Snowden did was highly Illegal and he should't have leaked some of the that compromise our national security. So to reiterate I don't view Snowden as a hero because he's not, he chose a lesser of two evils to benefit the american public's knowledge and freedom.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/jul/08/edward-snowden-video-interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_qdnyEqCPk

Meaningful Discussion Questions: Internet Access Is Not a Human Right

 Meaningful Discussion Questions:

 

1. Seeing as though France and Estonia have made internet access a human right, would you want the U.S. to do the same? Why or Why not?
 
2. What do you consider necessary requisites to becoming a human right?
 
3. How would you react if the Governmet banned access to the Internet? How would your life change?

Blog Assignment #1

Joseph Joel Gramling, Peters Township PA, jgramling17@jcu.edu.

I prefer to go by my middle name "Joel", that's why I mentioned it in the line above.

In terms of sports I like to Hunt, Snowboard, Wake-board, Skim-board and casually like to play lacrosse (surprisingly not skateboarding haha). I'm actually Joseph Joel Gramling the 5th and that's why I go by my middle name seeing as though all the previous Joseph's went by their middle name Joel. I went to Spain for a month this summer and ran with a bull in a bullfighting ring. I'm 50% Sicilian (my mom is 100%). I have a golden retriever named "Nahla" and I love dogs.

For me to feel comfortable enough to take intellectual and creative risks I would need to be in an open comfortable environment where the discussion topics won't make anyone think less of anyone because of someone's opinion.

I think the most important technological invention was the computer because computers are in everything today and we come in contact with something computer related everyday. The internet was also a huge invention but it only came to be because of computers.

I rely on many technologies in my day to day activities but the main two are my phone and my computer.

 In high school I learned 2 programming languages (qbasic and java) and took a gaming computer programming course. I also built my own computer and I've always been the IT guy of my family. I've worked with adobe Flash, Photoshop, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver. I use Twitter, Instagram, Vine, and Reddit (I don't go on Facebook much but I have one). I would Rate my Technology Proficiency at about a 6 or 7 because there are others who are much more advanced than me.

(Assuming you weren't involuntarily picked) Why did you want to teach this class?