United States of Secrets

I just finished watching "United States of Secrets" part 1 & 2. This has been a revelation to what I had already known about what was revealed by Edward Snowden. I knew there were serious overreaches in certain areas like email and some text messages, but I am in shock. Phone calls, recording of conversation, pictures, emails that are casual... EVERYTHING! This discredits the U.S. Government completely. I understand the need for national security, but as the movie said, there needs to be ways to use the privacy protections to "anonymize who it's listening in on". I have mixed feeling about Edward Snowden. On one hand he could have put thousands of lives at risk buy revealing this information that is classified. I don't think he had a choice to do it, but maybe not as much. On the other hand, as a Army solider, he made a promise to "support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic". There is the greater good, and at the end of the day he said the purpose was to open conversation about "These things need to be determined by the public, not by somebody who’s was simply hired by the government. This is the truth. This is what’s happening. You should decide whether we need to be doing this". I agree it needs to become a public debate. I know that my information, not matter how careful I am, will get out there somehow if I use modern technology. What people need to do is take preventative measures to ensure their privacy and security. They should read all the terms and conditions, check the privacy settings of Facebook and  be mindful of what and how they post, share and use the technology. 

1. President Obama's reversal on FISA, refusing to uphold his promise of Federal transparency, is the reason why Edward Snowden became a whistleblower. a. True

2. "Metadata" refers to b.email and text message content.


3. President Obama commissioned a committee to investigate the NSA, giving them free reign to assess every aspect of the agency's behavior, as long as their investigation did not
c. interfere with his Constitutional oath in defending the United States of America.

4. Snowden's interview and revelation of the NSA's surveillance techniques that violate the IV Amendment rights of Americans brought the President to the point of justifying efforts in the balance of b. freedom and privacy.

5. What kind of access were internet companies such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft, and Apple giving the NSA? a. Unknowing access to their physical data streams. b. Enforced secret compliance through a National Security Letter.d. Both a and b.


6. The NSA modeled their internet data and intelligence gathering after a. social media's marketing algorithms.

7. Prism was not only the code name for a data-collection program of the Federal Government but was the actual method through which the NSA was copying internet data from AT&T's internet backbone in San Francisco. a. True

8. Google, Facebook, Amazon, YouTube, Apple, Microsoft and and others were amassing huge data troves on their users, just like the NSA was amassing on US citizens, resulting in a. surveillance for advertising instead of law enforcement.

9. ________ messages are scanned for content much in the same way the NSA scans data for meaning. c. Gmail

10. The NSA piggy-backs on _______ developed by social media companies to surveil US citizens. c. tracking cookies