New communication technologies, privacy and free speech

My research in New Communication Technologies this week led me to discover the very interesting site Deletionpedia which houses an archive of pages deleted from Wikipedia. Initially, I wondered how long the battle had been ragging between PR firms and online trolls to correct the information about the celebrities and products on the ‘edited 200times or more’ page. However, I soon realised that other edited pages contained information notably of a political or religious nature. I do not know if the information in any of the deleted posts I read is true, that would require much more research, but I appreciate the work of Deletionpedia in fighting against internet censorship and protecting free speech.

The course this week also asked me to consider what new communication technologies are important to me. Unlike a lot of my peers, Facebook and similar social networking sites such as Twitter don’t play a very big role in my life. For me, the only benefit of Facebook is that it allows me to stay connected with friends I met travelling overseas because I cannot afford to call them or visit regularly. I admit that as a self-centered 18 year old, posting on the free site was a daily routine, but over recent years I have come to appreciate more intimate communication with my friends and family. When I first created Facebook, I was clueless to the true invasion of my privacy I was consenting too and I became disillusioned with the site very quickly when I learnt it is able sell my data to advertisers. I started to wonder who else might have access to my information when I was only intending to share it with my friends.

Well, Edward Snowden has confirmed the NSA has access to not only Facebook, but anything I do online through the Digital Network Intelligence system, XKeyscore."I, sitting at my desk, could wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email," said Snowden (Greenwald, 2013). However, it is not only the invasions of my privacy that concerns me about XKeyscore, but also the ability of governments to use the technology to control online exchanges of information by oppressing people who share unlawfully obtained or controversial content that is still in the public interest. It puts an unrealistic trust in governments to act in the public interest when history says they probably won’t.

While identifying as an atheist, I find my beliefs about free speech also sit comfortably with the Swedish philosophy Copism, which teaches that all knowledge belongs equally to everyone and should be copied because the ownership of information is a sin, and will only make all humanity stupider than it needs to be(Copism, 2013). Consequently, I am slightly addicted to Reddit, a networking site driven by user based content, as it provides a platform for these exchanges of knowledge to occur, whilst also offering a daily dose of cat pictures. Sadly, one of the founders of Reddit, Aaron Swartz, died in January this year before facing federal prosecution on computer fraud charges. Here is the link to an interview by The Project with Simon Sheikh which gives an interesting perspective on the anticensorship campaigner’s death.

Ms Virtue

Reference list

Copism- the free sharing of idea’s and data, viewed 2/8/2012 < http://www.copyism.org/>
Greenwald, G 2013, XKeyscore: NSA tool collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet,' viewed 2/8/2013, <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data>.