News and commentary about the intersection of information technology, politics, and policy presented by the members of Digital Politics, a course at Hamilton College.
This piece reflected several of my own views regarding technology and government, especially the paragraph about public policy. The author argues that "Rules for telecommunications, intellectual property and even immigration need to be updated for today's technologies" in order to allow for new, presumably better technology to thrive in the future. I think we reached a similar conclusion when considering the music industry's problems with pirated music in class.
In light of what we have been reading in No Place to Hide, I also agree with the author's ideas about national safety. Last semester in APP I read a book called System Under Stress, which argued that 9/11 was the result of federal and state agencies failing to "connect the dots" before the attacks. Although I am still unsure of exactly where I stand in the civil liberties vs. national security debate, learning about the technology that exists in No Place to Hide leads me to believe that the intrusive technologies being used at corporations like Acxiom and Seisint truly have the potential to prevent another attack. It was so frustrating to read a book like System Under Stress because it made 9/11 seem like a disaster that could have easily been avoided, had the sophisticated technology of direct marketers been available to government agencies. I understand that it is important to take authors' biases into account, but if the writer of this piece is correct and "national security now depends on how well information dots about threats are gathered and connected," I think the idea about the importance of having technology that enables government agencies to connect the dots must factor into how we think about the issue. If we knew for sure that it was a lack of this kind of technology that enabled the terrorists to get away with the attacks on 9/11, should we really be so opposed to making this technology available to the government?
Part of me feels that this issue is, in some sense, similar to our debate about the music industry. I believe (and I think our class in general decided) that the music industry needs to keep up with the times. This requires a change in policy that will certainly affect the way we get our music. Obviously national security is much more important than getting music, but perhaps making certain technologies available to the government is just something we have to do to keep up with the times and the kinds of threats we face today. Maybe the founding fathers would not have wanted anything to get in the way of any of our civil liberties, but they also were not faced with threats of this magnitude.
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This piece reflected several of my own views regarding technology and government, especially the paragraph about public policy. The author argues that "Rules for telecommunications, intellectual property and even immigration need to be updated for today's technologies" in order to allow for new, presumably better technology to thrive in the future. I think we reached a similar conclusion when considering the music industry's problems with pirated music in class.
In light of what we have been reading in No Place to Hide, I also agree with the author's ideas about national safety. Last semester in APP I read a book called System Under Stress, which argued that 9/11 was the result of federal and state agencies failing to "connect the dots" before the attacks. Although I am still unsure of exactly where I stand in the civil liberties vs. national security debate, learning about the technology that exists in No Place to Hide leads me to believe that the intrusive technologies being used at corporations like Acxiom and Seisint truly have the potential to prevent another attack. It was so frustrating to read a book like System Under Stress because it made 9/11 seem like a disaster that could have easily been avoided, had the sophisticated technology of direct marketers been available to government agencies. I understand that it is important to take authors' biases into account, but if the writer of this piece is correct and "national security now depends on how well information dots about threats are gathered and connected," I think the idea about the importance of having technology that enables government agencies to connect the dots must factor into how we think about the issue. If we knew for sure that it was a lack of this kind of technology that enabled the terrorists to get away with the attacks on 9/11, should we really be so opposed to making this technology available to the government?
Part of me feels that this issue is, in some sense, similar to our debate about the music industry. I believe (and I think our class in general decided) that the music industry needs to keep up with the times. This requires a change in policy that will certainly affect the way we get our music. Obviously national security is much more important than getting music, but perhaps making certain technologies available to the government is just something we have to do to keep up with the times and the kinds of threats we face today. Maybe the founding fathers would not have wanted anything to get in the way of any of our civil liberties, but they also were not faced with threats of this magnitude.
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