Question

Read the article Surveillance Nation (Parts 1 & 2) and view the video "Battle for Power on the Internet." Based on your reading and viewing, address the following questions.

Part 1 http://charlesmann.org/articles/surv-nation.pdf

Part 2 http://www.charlesmann.org/articles/surv-nation2.pdf

"Battle for Power on the Internet" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0d_QDgl3gI

1. As an average consumer or average citizen, are you concerned about the control of your data? (Be sure to explain your answer drawing on evidence from article and/or video.)

2. Generally speaking, what do you think are the ethical responsibilities of those with "institutional power" (as discussed in the video) towards control of data?

3. Generally speaking, what (if any) legal responsibilities should be required of those with "institutional power" (as discussed in the video) towards control of data?

Answer 1

1. Every citizen or consumer is now concerned with the control of their data and so am I. Our data is not present on the cloud platforms, servers of major companies like Google, Amazon and not in our control. They can see our data any time and can do anything with that data. and we are also concerned the devices which we are using to access that data, android phones, pads made by these third-party vendors also have the excess to our data and we are losing control on our data. Major tech companies are having access to phone photo libraries using mobile applications, we have google and other party keyboards on our devices which stores our data.

2. Institutional powers are the government and major corporates who are now having a good control of internet data as security agencies are better able to surveillance user'she users data, the flow of information and can protect from cyber crimes as well. But with control of data, these powers must have some ethical responsibilities as well. they need to tell the citizens as to why this level of surveillance is done by the government. Up to what level a citizen can have its privacy. These powers have the responsibility to have transparency in their approach and only because of it there will be a true sense of democracy, where citizens know why their data is being searched. Similarly, big corporations do have this responsibility to protect the data from hackers, criminals because of lots of misuses can be done with this private data. They should use best security measures to protect the user's data and also do not sell these data for some small profits.

3. Institutional powers do have some legal responsibilities as well, they have to make laws to maintain the data control in corporate power as market dynamics will not let them do so and their the institutional power must bring laws which better understand technology, strict punishment for data breaching and implementing these laws with full power. This will bring trust in terms of accountability and transparency of citizens in these institutional powers to curb the bad part of the distributed power.