I’ve been knowing that the government has been tracking us, seeing our emails, call logs, and text messages. After watching Citizenfour, it really opened up my eyes to a new way of looking at our freedom and what it actually means. With the Patriot Act after the 9/11 Attack, the government would look at our data in order to prevent any more terrorists attacks but without Snowden leaking this information, we wouldn’t know what the NSA are doing with access to all our information. A big question that was posed was, “is privacy the new freedom?”
That question really messed with my brain because we’ve been knowing that freedom is the allowance to express yourself in any way that you can. However, with the development of the NSA and technology, our freedoms started to become limited without knowing it. Whatever I look up on the internet and if I clear my search history, there will always be a database with all my information even though it’s not on my computer. The NSA is looking and do I feel comfortable with this, no. The freedom of looking up anything, calling people, or even messaging people is not a freedom anymore, it’s all about privacy. Privacy is what people want now, privacy of doing whatever it may be on the internet. We, as US citizens, have already gave up our freedom of the internet, but we are fighting for privacy. The definition of freedom is “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint” and the definition of privacy is “the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people.” Both are very similar because of the word free and being able to do anything without restraint. I just want to find out whether people strive for freedom or are they trying to get their privacy back, or is it the same thing?
March 16, 2022 at 12:34 pm
I really like the idea of focusing on privacy as a freedom and trying to uncover what people associate it with as they fight against the government’s ability to keep every citizen’s information on the internet in their own databases. With a topic like this, I think mentioning the NSA’s mass surveillance could be useful information to get started and then you could look for articles that explain people’s opinions on whether privacy is considered as a freedom or something else entirely. I think this essay will be very interesting since a lot can be done with this topic.
March 16, 2022 at 12:38 pm
I would argue that privacy and freedom are not the same thing, but it’s entirely true that they have gotten grouped together. You bring up a very valid point of how that line between the two concepts has been blurred by past historical events and passed government acts. Our perception of freedom has skewed throughout history, and it seems to always base itself on what the current issue towards us is. In other words, freedom takes on different roles depending on what aspect of it is targeted. This is a very interesting development of the relations between privacy and freedom.