Reading Response #4

The central idea in Mangu-Ward is about people fighting the idea of adding more surveillance cameras in the streets of New York. The claim that is made is that the installment of the extra cameras would not force people to sacrifice any of rights that they have not already given up. The piece argues that the same privacy rights that are arguably threatened have previously been forfeited by ATM’s and local shops that have installed cameras on their premises’. The ability to scan where a credit card was used or a withdrawal was made also surrenders some of the individual’s privacy. One can trace the wave lengths of a GPS system if it was used to navigate to or from a certain place. There are a lot of technology based things implemented in society already that exceed or at least match the privacy losses that would be a product of higher surveillance via camera.

For the most part, it seems that the research done was mostly things that one could come up with by simply thinking of all the logical places where technology tracks people. “Perhaps you would have stopped to pick up some cash at an ATM before your outing. There, you would have created another digital record, stamped with the time and place of your withdrawal in the bank’s records,” is included in such a cavalier way that suggests that it was thought up by Mangu-Ward just seconds before it was written down and included in the arguments. No matter how insignificant the information it detects might seem. The world we live in and the technological advances that we utilize require for the most part that all information be backed up somewhere.

I actually found myself quite affected by the research. I observed all the points that were made and felt that they were not only legitimate but written in a way where the idea was made much simpler and therefore easier to follow. Instead of diving into explaining how one would go about intercepting the waves sent out by a GPS system, the idea is just mentioned, accepted by the reader as a possibility and then the writing continues onto the next point.

I think that I was very easy to convince about this particular topic. I think this because I have thought about how public surveillance is not a very menacing idea in my opinion. I came to this conclusion when I realized that if there was something I did not want people to see, I would not do it out in public, regardless of whether or not cameras were posted on the street corner.

Joh actually states the central claim that is being made quite clearly in the beginning of the text. It was written that “This essay discusses why the government’s collection of “abandoned DNA” is a problem worthy of serious attention.”

I believe that a majority of the research within this piece is secondary. For instance, the story about the police officers in Seattle is clearly not written from personal experience. I think that the research is effective, however, because the topic at hand deals with police officers utilizing such practices of collecting “abandoned DNA” and so it is important that evidence of actual use is shown at some point during the text.

My opinion on the matter is that if I am suspected of a crime, a warrant should be obtained so that the suspicion must be ratified by a judge before the DNA collection could begin. This would help to deter DNA collection based on discrimination. I recognized that this was my opinion while I was in the middle of reading the text; however, I feel that the writing only served to start me thinking about my opinion rather than to help guide it in one way or the other.

I truly feel that Quarmby cannot form an opinion about the idea of national security cards. He states that the point of his writing is to “show that such a card system could in fact be found to be constitutional under the law of privacy as it stands today,” but I do not think he is clear on if he thinks they are a good idea or not.

It is clear that a majority of the evidence throughout the work is from secondary sources. He discusses the Driver’s License Modernization act, quotes the opinion of a law expert and uses other sources to provide information for the reader to consider.

In this particular essay, I did not feel motivated to form an opinion one way or the other on the matter. I believe this is because to me I could not get a real sense of what the writer wanted me to feel about the issue.

I think that my prior beliefs played an enormous role in how I read the essays. Since privacy is such an intimate issue, my feelings remained the same regardless of the number of valid points that were brought up.