English
Persuasive Speech
Big brother is watching you
Today I come to you as a fellow cellphone addict not to tell you what is right or wrong but to provoke thoughtful thinking. Today I will be introducing a major issue that most of us are not even aware of. But first, everyone is aware how much of a role our cell phones are in our teenage lives. We text, send pictures, or take photos every day. But do we ever think about what happens do those photos? Who actually sees your private photos?
This opens up the big topic of surveillance, how every screen is being watched and is watching us. We don’t really think about surveillance except when from time to time we see a scandal about illegal and inappropriate spying on the news, but do we really know how much it impacts us?
The FISA Court is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They are responsible for all the surveillance and spying that happens every day. If you are an American citizen, you have the right to privacy due to the Fourth Amendment, but there are certain ways the government can legally spy on you without interfering with your right to privacy. The Fourth Amendment states that the government can not just tap into any calls of American citizen.
This is where Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is a conflict. Section 702 states that if you are a non-American citizen outside the United States and you are considered a threat in any way, then the government is legally allowed to surveil you for the sake of the national security of the United States. But how is the government being able to spy on people outside of the US that have to do with an American citizen? The government is not able to spy and listen to every call that that person is in contact with, including Americans. The government now has access to all information of all affected Americans that they could use any time. This information can be anything from private messages to pictures. Due to the connection to a possible threat, the government can now technically monitor every screen in your possession and around you.
Section 702 can be used as a crucial counterterrorism tool including to help find terrorists before they even attack. It reduces and aids with national security threats and protects innocent Americans. For example, due to the conclusions of the panel’s reports, “We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted…”(Obama). Other examples are: the stopping of terrorists with warrantless wiretapping to stop illegal shipments, hearing phone calls to stop attacks and tracking to find where there locations is to get there and stop them.
Looking at it like this, why should you worry? Because the government is abusing this law. The government is able to spy on any person outside of the US if they consider them as a threat. Whoever is considered a threat on the outside, the government is able to spy on, but not just on them but also on their connection in the US. The thick line that is open for interpretation by the government can be its own threat to citizen. Sources, for example Washington Post writers, show how a lot of people think the government is abusing this law on the regular collecting over hundreds of millions of data on American citizen.
Without revisions section 702 of the FISA has a huge potential for abuse. This is also known as the “loophole”. The government is tapping into innocent americans calls and information that are in contact with foreign targets just to watch over them, hurting Americans’ right to privacy. This includes information that is confidential, sometimes even leaking the names of advisors and associates. The section is offering poor protection of American’s privacy as soon as they are in contact with any kind of person that the government is seeing as a potential threat.
The disrespect of personal privacy reflects the metaphor of Big Brother in 1984. As in 1984, citizens’ right to privacy is violated. Surveilling citizens and taking their privacy is a big issue that is shown in 1984 and shows that we still don’t learn from our mistakes now. “The fear of a big brother peering over our shoulders can chill free expression” (Singh and Blumenthal). Connecting Big Brother to our present really gives us a scare of that have not changed our system and learned from the past after all.
Section 702 is needed because we need it to stop terrorist and predict attacks before they happen but there has to be revisions made to stop hurting the American citizen privacy.
So what can you do? The most important thing is to be aware of your rights and laws. Another important thing is to vote. Thanks to a lot of Americans citizen voting and demonstrating against Trumps administration, the historic USA FREEDOM Act got passed, preventing the government to collect excessive information from American citizens (Lea REAX and Lee REAX). Every time you look at your phone you should be aware that the government cannot just tap into your calls as if “Big Brother” would watch over your shoulder, but you should be aware that in certain circumstances it can be possible.
Perspective Piece
What do you have to say about your world/life? What’s your perspective about something you want to celebrate, highlight, provide a solution for, share?
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Synopsis
My narrative film is about a girl that wants to finish a screenplay but needs to take a rest. She Is starting off on a desk trying to finish her screenplay with interaction in the normal world. She is really sick and has a timer giving her anxiety and nervousness about that she has to finish this screenplay fast. She then takes too much cough syrup which makes her go into an illusion. She then first meets her Mentor which is a dark figure so something scary but actually something good. He leads her to her path in which she is exposed to multiple genres of films. She first is left by the mentor and then meets the racer through him honking her off the street. She continues to a trail in which she meets a couple. She begins to realize that people do not seem to notice her. She then goes into a forest and meets a girl getting chased by a monster. The monster then confuses the two girls and chases her. She confronts the monster seeing at one point that it is not real. She keeps running from it and goes back through the other stories in which the boyfriend and racer start chasing her too. She is in a circle with the monster over her. All the guys are the same person and represent the sickness she is so scared off. She then wakes up in the place she started at the desk. She is thrown off by beeing in the real world again. She takes the timer and throws it at the wall. She then sees her mentor again who is walking her to bed. She is still scared and unsure about her decision but naturally happy which shows that she did the right thing. The masked figure disappears which was only created by her imagination.
