Privacy

 

    After watching the four videos my initial reaction was that my electronics aren't tapped and nobody has ever listened to any of my phone calls. But the more I think about it, how would I know? I was thinking about what I was going to write about and I could relate this to how it impacts me. The first thing that came to my mind was the fact that I get ads on instagram that are oddly the same thing I could have been talking about earlier with friends. The other day I was talking on the phone with my friend about possibly going to the Yankees playoff game over October break. After I hang up the phone I get an add on instagram of ticketmaster advertising the the Yankees games. Social media platforms will eavesdrop on us and then put ads of what we were talking about on our social media feeds.

    Issues like these affect us and our family, friends, etc. more than we think. The second video talked about how phone companies or governments listens to our phone calls and texts/emails everyday. This is definitely an invasion of privacy because of how often we send texts and go on our phones. Nothing is private and anything we send is stored and saved somewhere out in the world. It affects me personally because I'm sure there are texts and emails that I have sent that I regret sending that our somewhere out there and there is nothing that I can do about it. 

    I feel like the government knows what is going on but refuses to do anything about it, instead they are doing more of it. The first video talks about the police getting scanners that scans our license plate and then information about us pops up. This is an example of how the government will keep doing things like this to improve our safety but also giving up our privacy. The question asked should be: Is it worth it? 

    We could to several things to protect ourselves but the biggest one is knowing what you are doing and what you are putting out there. Before I post something or send a text I always think about what could happen if I were to post or send the text, because no matter what it will be out there somewhere. 

What I Learned

 

    One thing I learned from the majority of the presentations was how much the government looks and retains our information. We know the majority of this information thanks too whistleblowers. The government has all our information stored on computers as well as more information than we would like to. We were given this information because of a whistleblower named Edward Snowden. Snowden leaked information about texts, emails, and a lot more private information being stored by the government. Snowden released information and is now wanted by the US government. I have seen in the news that Russia has offered him citizenship to protect him from the American courts/prisons, because what he did is clearly against government protocol. 

    I found the idea of whistleblowers interesting because I would love be inside the mind of somebody who makes that choice and how they are going to sacrifice their career in order to leak information. We would never of known that the government keeps our messages stored away without the leak from Snowden. When I was younger my friends and I used to make jokes saying the government was watching us, now it is a reality that the government is really storing our stuff. At what point do they snap and make that choice that could potentially bring riots to the country? There have been many whistleblowers over the years in the US and with the current way the US is going I predict that there will be more that will come forward with classified information that could divide or split this country even more from where it is currently. 

    The idea of whistleblowers falls under five eyes and how they monitor citizens and I learned a lot from about how the government takes our "private" information and stores it. Even the joke about an FBI agent in the laptop camera being a joke maybe a reality, the truth for the public is, we will never know when or if the government is watching and/or listening. 

 

Diffusion Theory

 

    The Diffusion Theory is based on technology and how quickly people adapt to it and use it throughout their everyday life. For an example, back in 2019 tiktok was just starting to get popular and not everybody had it at the beginning of the school year. But by the end of the school year maybe 85% of the school had tiktok downloaded and was using it. The tiktok trend started (at least at my school) in the fall of 2019. At the time only one of my friends had the app downloaded. I wouldn't consider him an innovator because it had been around that summer but was definitely an early adaptor. In maybe November my friends and I finally listened and downloaded the app, similarly a decent amount of people which at the time was the early majority. Almost everybody had it by the spring of 2020, mainly because of COVID and tiktok was a good social media platform to be on for up to hours at a time. 

    This example has its positives and negatives. The positives being it was a social media app and it gave people a place for entertainment and be social with others especially since the COVID pandemic started in the spring and people needed a place for entertainment because of the lockdown. The negatives of social media go hand in hand as bullying, cyberbullying, and countless hours spent on the app aren't good for your mental and physical health. 

    Overall, I feel like the positive would outweigh the negative in getting a social media app. In the fall of 2019, I would've had no idea that I would go on tiktok everyday. Even for a company like facebook that is declining, it would still be a good idea to download the app and be connected because everything is on social media nowadays. 

False Flag

False Flags  

                                                                                  

    There have been many wars throughout humanity that have been started because of false flags. Some of these wars have shaped the world into what it is today. False Flags have been around since the early 1500s when pirates would put a "false flag" or the flag of a merchant ships ally so the ship would come closer to the pirates and they could easily raid it. Most recently false flag attacks were used by Russia to justify their invasion of Ukraine. Leading up to the Ukraine invasion there have been tons of false flag attacks by countries trying to justify attacks, one of the most famous attacks occurred in 1939 which started WWII. 

    Germany in 1939 was attempting to expand their empire, but in order to justify their attacks they used false flag attacks to justify their invasion. Germany's invasion of Poland we all know started WWII and caused on of the greatest conflicts in human history. The night before the invasion of Poland, 7 Nazi soldiers dressed up as Polish troops and attacked the Gleiwitz Radio Tower. The tower was on Germany's side of the border and the soldiers sent a broadcast throughout the country that the Polish had taken control of the tower. The next day, Hitler presented a speech saying how it was an act of war, therefore justifying his invasion of Poland. After the invasion of Poland, WWII broke out across Europe and the world. 

    Another instance in which a false flag was used was actually used by the United States. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was what started the Vietnam War for the United States. On August 5th, 1964 two unprovoked attacks by North Vietnam caused the US to be more militarily involved in Vietnam. After a second attack the US government believed that the North Vietnamese were targeting their vessels and decided to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution  this allowed the US and Johnson at the time to take all the measures they needed to repel the North Vietnamese and "further aggression."

    Following the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the US was involved in the Vietnam War for more than a decade, which killed millions of people. All of this resulted from a false flag attack. This isn't the first time this has happened for the US. Back in 1898 the US tried to rally support for a war against Spain when The Maine blew up. This was debunked later as a false flag attack as the US claimed that a Spanish torpedo off the coast of Cuba hit the Maine causing the death of over 300 Americans. 

    False Flag attacks continue to plague our world today as Russia and Ukraine use false flag attacks everyday and then report it to mainstream media which broadcasts it to the world. We will never truly know who or what is going on in that war because of what each side is telling their reporters. Each side wants to gain supporters to justify their side of the war. False Flag attacks have only continued to go up and with the world on the brink of nuclear war, it is only a matter of time until the next big false flag attack.