Week 9
3/6/17
The threat of terrorism has been forefront of discussion
since 9/11. After 9/11 happened there were extra security measures put into
place for the country such as the creation of the Department of Homeland
Security and the U.S Patriot Act.
In 2013 national security became a hot topic again with talk
of Edward Snowden. The document leak by Snowden highlighted that non-criminal
citizens were been watched/recorded to an extent they did not know of. He also
made it clear that the government was keeping an eye on other countries as
well. The question he raised was, “what are the surveillance capabilities of
the U.S government and what should they be?”
The blog post of the week was about if Edward Snowden should
be pardoned, the class was divided, just like the nation was. Edward Snowden
was officially charged with three different crimes:
1
Theft of government property
2
Unauthorized communication of national defense
information
3
Willful communication of classified info to an
unauthorized party
Yes, he did do these things and admits that’s why he fled
the country, but is he in the same category as MLK, Nelson Mandela, or Ghandi?
One reason that was brought up in class was that he did flee
the country to protect himself unlike those other people. He did not accept the
consequences of his actions.
At the end of class
we were asked to put ourselves in the shoes of the President, with one month
left in office. Would we: 1.) Grant Snowden a Pardon? 2.) Tell him he must
plead guilty and spend one year in jail but be able to come back to the U.S or
3.) Make Snowden stand trial with whistleblower protections?
3/8/17
Current Events:
New WikiLeaks documents released. About 7,800 CIA documents were
released showing that the CIA has become a worldwide hacking organization with
thousands of hacking tools. They can hack into wifi, T.V’s, and phones, before
normal encryption processes take place. This is the first of a series of
documents that WikiLeaks will publish. They redacted the codes of the hacking
tools from the documents. They also revealed that the CIA has tried to hide their
actions and blame it on other people like Russia. Both CIA and the White House
declined to comment. The CIA by law is prohibited by operating in the U.S. The
NSA is the agency that acts domestically. These are all expensive technology
that shouldn’t be used in the U.S by the CIA and because of the legal risk
associated (4th amendment) would only be used on high risk people.
We talked about which of the 4 options for Edward Snowden
the class agreed with. The majority of the class thinks that Snowden should
have to stand trial with whistleblower protections. Trials allow the public to
feel involved and gain closure. It would also shed light on Snowden’s motives
and set an example that no-one is above some type of consequences.
Here are the full results:
1
Pardon (3
people)
2
Commute Sentence (3 people)
3
Plead guilty to single count: one year in jail (1 person)
4
Stand Trial with whistleblower protections (10 people)
Question of the Week
Should
Congress enact a statute that requires any smartphone or tablet sold in
the United States to have a "backdoor" to insure that data on such
devices is accessible to the government pursuant to a search warrant?
Yes…..1
No…..15
Three main reasons people said ‘No’
-A backdoor increases vulnerability to hacking
-Government can abuse its access to the backdoor
-A Backdoor is not effective because people would just
encrypt device contents
Other Alternatives
1.) Enact a law requiring an individual to obey an order to unlock their phone or disclose encryption keys.
2.) Authorize law enforcement which has seized a cell phone to retain the phone and attempt to hack into it by any means.
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