After watching both Citizenfour and The Internet’s Own Boy, I became interested in the idea of the U.S. government using the Internet to maintain a sense of power over its citizens. The two documentaries gave different perspectives regarding this broad topic. In Citizenfour, it expanded on the idea of mass surveillance and how the government justified mass digital surveillance with the Patriot Act, which was passed by the Bush administration after the events of 9/11 in an attempt to combat terrorism. What stood out to me about Edward Snowden’s situation was that the government charged him for violating the Espionage Act, which was an act created during World War I as a way to target foreign spies. When I saw this part of Citizenfour, it was explained how the government seemed to adjust the purpose of the Espionage Act just to punish Snowden for exposing confidential information about the NSA’s surveillance methods to the entire nation. From this documentary, we can see the government trying to use the Internet to maintain control to an extent by keeping watch of what people are doing on the Internet and considering someone like Snowden as a criminal, even though his actions were done in the interest of the American people and not for another nation. Based on what interested me about Citizenfour, I can discuss mass surveillance after the Snowden incident or I can use the legislative examples to show how the government can be inconsistent with their own laws for the sake of maintaining their own best interest.

          The Internet’s Own Boy had a similar idea regarding the government’s power when it comes to the Internet, but their use of the Internet in this documentary was different from Citizenfour. In The Internet’s Own Boy, Aaron Swartz wanted to combat the government’s subtle decision to prevent scholarly information from being shared publicly. From this documentary, we can see that gatekeeping information is another way the government uses the Internet to maintain control, going along with the phrase “knowledge is power,” and their reluctance to give the American people the resources to attain this knowledge. From a legislative standpoint, I saw once again that the government made charges that were inconsistent with the typical uses of specific laws. Specifically, Aaron Swartz downloaded a large number of academic articles from MIT using JSTOR, and yet the government sued him for wire fraud and violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to make an example out of Swartz, despite the fact that he did not use his hacking abilities to commit the harmful crimes, such as credit card fraud, which is typical the average Computer Fraud and Abuse violator. 

          Overall, these concepts help me have a better understanding of how I can approach my research essay. I plan to write about how the government uses the Internet to maintain power as well as how they use the laws to their own advantage in Internet related cases such as the Snowden and Swartz incidents. Eventually, I might hone in on a specific topic in order to effectively write an in-depth essay (mass surveillance, gatekeeping of information, legislative advantages of the government, etc.).