Jeffrey Epstein's Prison Guards Put In Custody

Two prison guards on duty the night of American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s death were put in custody with the FBI Tuesday, November 19 and will be brought to federal court in Manhattan to face their charges.

Image retrieved from Star Tribune.

Epstein’s August 10th death in the Metropolitan Correction Center was ruled as a suicide by an NYC chief medical examiner, but a medical examiner hired by Epstein’s legal team disagreed on the ruling.

The first officer on duty that night was a previous corrections officer that had been relocated and the second officer was a fully trained female guard. Both of these guards were working overtime, but it is unknown whether or not this was mandatory. 

Bureau of Prisons Director Kathleen Hawk Sawyer testified on Tuesday that the FBI is continuing to investigate the death and the possibility of a criminal enterprise. Sawyer said she does not have any evidence that disagrees with any medical examiner’s findings.

In my opinion, I think it is very obvious as to what happened on the night of August 10th. I believe that the guards either killed Epstein or were at least aware that he was committing suicide in his jail cell. If the two guards were doing their job correctly, they would not have let the suicide happen, which leads me to think that it was a murder. It will be interesting to see how the rest of this case plays out and what evidence will be brought to court.


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How Email and Tech Companies Are Becoming Deceitful

As an additional blog post, I decided to write about two of the Ted Talks on privacy and elaborate on how privacy is slowly turning from a fundamental right to a form of corruption.

Image retrieved from ElTek.

In the Ted Talk "Think Your Email's Private? Think Again" by Andy Yen, he elaborates on how our email is not as private as we think it is. When someone sends an email to another person, it is assumed that the recipient of that email is the only one who can read it. However, an email can go through an Internet provider, the government, and an email provider before it is even read by the recipient. At that point, an email is not even a private message anymore. A way to stop this issue is by encrypting messages before the email gets to the server. With this kind of technological advancement, the idea of privacy does not have to be corrupt and it can actually become more accessible to users. I think Yen's ideas behind creating a new and private Internet are brilliant because everyone should want to live in a world where their content is for their eyes only and not for the government to see.

In Finn Lützow Holm Myrstad's Ted Talk entitled, "How Tech Companies Deceive You Into Giving Up Your Data and Privacy," he discusses the issue of privacy with a kid's doll called "Cayla." This doll has the capability of being hacked into by unnamed third party users, can record your child's every word, and can track locations and data with anyone with a smartphone within it's radius. Myrstad and his colleagues recognized that this was a severe privacy issue and helped shut down the sales of this doll in stores. Another issue that Myrstad and his colleagues tackled was the lengthiness of the terms and conditions listed before downloading apps on your cell phone. He makes a point that these terms and conditions should be shortened and simplified so that people would be more likely to read them and understand them when downloading apps on their phones. I agree with the statements he made regarding how technology can only get better if tech companies start to respect people's right of privacy.

As an avid technology and social media user, it is frightening to learn about all of the flaws related to privacy within the devices, their terms and conditions, and the way they are processed through the Internet. After watching these two videos, I know I am going to be even more cautious than before about what kinds of devices I purchase, what I'm allowing these devices to do, and how my information will be publicized online.


Ted Talks:
Blogger Ted Talk Page

The Issues with Privacy

For this week's blog post, we were assigned to watch four different Ted Talk videos on the issues of privacy with technology and social media. I have learned over the years that technology is an incredible invention, until it is turned against us.

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In the Ted Talk, "Your Online Life, Permanent as a Tattoo," Juan Enriquez discusses the permanence of real tattoos and how they correlate to our lives online. He describes an "electronic tattoo," which means that everything that someone posts online about themselves remains on the Internet forever. This also goes for facial recognition features and target advertising. It is interesting to describe social media as a tattoo because someone's profile can tell a lot about a person, similar to how a tattoo would on someone's body.

In "The Small and Surprisingly Dangerous Detail the Police Track About You" Ted Talk by Catherine  Crump, she elaborates on how the government is becoming too involved with our personal lives through location tracking and license plate readers. This information reveals where and when people go as well as who they are with at the time they are tracked. The federal government stores this information for "just in case" purposes, meaning that if someone were to eventually commit a crime, law enforcement has all the tracking information they need about that person before, during, and after the crime was committed. I believe that law enforcement having this kind of information can be very useful for those purposes, however I also think it is a major civil liberties threat to citizens. America is supposed to feel safe and secure according to the Constitution, so why is it okay that the government can track our every move?

In the Ted Talk, "How to Avoid Surveillance... With the Phone in Your Pocket," by Christopher Soghoian, he reveals that cell phones were originally wired for surveillance purposes before they were a common way of communication. Although tech companies have mostly out smarted wiretapping and have installed encryption pieces into their devices, this makes the government extremely angry since their citizens' information isn't as easily available. In my opinion, I feel much better about technology than I did before because I didn't realize how much more difficult it was for the government to tap into our information as it was before. Soghoian believes that we should continue to use text messaging, FaceTime, and calling on our phones because we are more protected than we think. Although this is reassuring, I will probably still continue to think about if the government is tracking my every move when on my cell phone.

In "How Revenge Porn Turns Lives Upside Down" by Darieth Chisolm, she explains her controlling and manipulative relationship with her ex-boyfriend and how he made her life miserable through cyberbullying, also known as "revenge porn." The major problem with revenge porn is the large amount of people that are affected by it every year and the lack of laws that prevent it from happening again. After listening to Chisolm's story, it made me so angry that she had to go through almost a full year of court dates, reliving the horror over and over again, all while still having her body exposed publicly online. Although justice was finally served, revenge porn still remains to be a problem today and I admire her bravery on sharing her story with the world.

After watching all of these Ted Talk videos on privacy, I am somehow both more scared yet more calm about technology. Although I know that technology and social media have the capability to be private, they are still very very public platforms for everyone to see. I think the biggest fear of them all is how long will privacy even be a thing anymore? How long will it be before technology completely takes over the world?


Ted Talks:
Blogger Ted Talk Page

EOTO Presentation Review

I decided to write about Group 2's EOTO presentation about the mainstream media, whistleblowers, alternative media, citizen journalism, echo chambers, and reliable sources.

Image retrieved from ShellyPalmer.com

Mainstream media is every news outlet that is a current trend. This type of media can include newspapers and broadcast. For example, some of the most popular types of mainstream media are CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. The reason that these news outlets are mainstream is because people tend to rely on their information due to their popularity on TV, online, and through word of mouth.

A whistleblower is a federal employee who reports wrongdoings to better the system and has protections within the government, such as the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989. However, a "whistleblower" is a federal employee who reports mismanagement for a political agenda that has no protections. The reason that a "whistleblower" has no protections is because they try to expose secretive information that is deemed illegal within a public or private organization. They have negative intentions when doing this and may tend to report illegal action that isn't even true.

Alternative media is media that differs from the mainstream. For example, www.truthdig.com is viewed as an alternative media site because it is a source, but it is not well-known or widely used by the public. This type of media tends to be viewed as fake news because of its lack of popularity and large use of opinion writing.

Citizen journalism is journalism that does not come from professional journalists, but citizens that get information from websites, blogs, and social media. An example of this is how people use Twitter. If someone were to be at a Black Lives Matter protest and got a video of protestors marching and yelling down the street, this person can tweet the video and caption it with their own opinion on the issue. This is beneficial for professional journalists because they have an opportunity to get more information on the protest from ordinary citizens. However, since it was tweeted by a citizen, they don't have to "get in trouble" if the information they say about the event is false.

An echo chamber is an environment in which a person is only surrounded by beliefs that agree with their own. Someone that is an echo chamber avoids trying to find out all the facts because they just want to find people that agree with them.

Lastly, reliable sources are sources that are trustworthy because they know the truth and have no motivation to lie about the topic. Examples of reliable news sources are the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times.

For most of these terms, I had heard of them before and had a fair idea about what each term meant. However, I got to learn about the difference in a whistleblower versus a "whistleblower" and what an echo chamber is from this presentation. I think it is interesting to see how the public views the media and how the media corresponds with the public within these different media spheres.

The Theory of Agenda Setting

Agenda setting is the creation of public awareness and concern of the most important issues by the news media.

Image retrieved from YouTube.

One of the positives that comes from the agenda setting theory is that it keeps journalists and society up to date on current news stories. However, one of the negatives is that the public may only be able to retain the most recent stories, not necessarily the most important ones. The audience will only be able to recall the most accessible memory in their heads, whether that be a news story on the president or what the most popular song is of the week. This theory doesn't tell the audience what to think, but what to think about.

Agenda setting affects society as a whole by putting an idea in people's heads of what the "most important" news story is, when in reality, it might just be the only story they remember. Through the public, media, and policy types of agenda setting, society's perceptions may be altered based on how journalists want to show the news.

One of the most prominent examples of agenda setting is the Super Bowl. Every year, it seems like that is all people talk about the week of the game. It is one of the most viewed events on television, but not everyone watching the game is even a sports fan. Most people that watch the Super Bowl are caught up in the moment, meaning that they feel as though "everyone is watching it," so they should too. Viewers are more inclined to watch the game because of how relevant it is in the media.

In my opinion, I could see how this theory might affect people of older generations versus younger generations. People of the older generation have more of an accurate perspective on what news is the most important because they have more life experience. The younger generation's opinions are more likely to be affected by agenda setting because they have less life experience and more exposure to the media in general.

The theory of agenda setting affects my life because I fall victim to reading and watching what news stories pop up first on my timeline and fail to read further down. I, as well as many others, do this because of my subconscious telling me that everything "below the line" isn't as important. Overall, agenda setting is important, but can also be dangerous within the media.


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My Online Presence

After listening to the lecture in today's class and searching my name in Google, I can easily say that I am alarmed by all of the information that the Internet knows about me.

As someone who enjoys using social media and values technology, I have a fairly broad online presence. I have social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Spotify, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and VSCO that I use on a regular basis. As far as a personal website, I have an account on Adobe Portfolio that I use to display all of my work to send to companies when applying for internships and future careers.

On all of the social media sites that I use, I normally post pictures of my friends, family, and myself. I am very adamant about keeping my social media content "clean" on all platforms for the fear of future employers finding content that does not accurately display myself as a person or as a potential employee.

By searching my first and last name, someone can find my Facebook account the easiest. However, when searching my full name, Anna James Harris, people can find my Twitter, VSCO, Instagram, Pinterest, Spotify, and pictures of myself on Google Images because I use my full name as my username for almost all of my accounts. By clicking on any of these accounts, people could figure out where I'm from, where I go to school, what I look like, what kinds of music I listen to, etc.

As far as private information, I have given my email to most social media sites because almost all of them require an email when creating an account. I do not share my phone number to most accounts, but have it on some just because of security purposes. All of this information is shared for my viewing only, however, I know that the companies have access to it.

After looking at the questions on The Atlantic articles, I believe social media helps people feel a void of some sort. Whether that be loneliness, depression, low self confidence, etc., I believe that anyone can feel more "fulfilled" by numbers of followers or likes on a screen. However, just because one might have hundreds of followers or millions of likes, it does not mean that they feel "whole."

Personally, I believe that social media has its advantages and disadvantages. It helps people connect in a new way, it utilizes technological advancements, and it allows people to be creative through a different outlet. However, I think that social media can create a toxic environment for people in a social setting and it has the possibility of being extremely detrimental to one's wellbeing.

The Diffusion of Snapchat

Snapchat, one of the world's largest social media platforms, was created in the halls of Stanford University by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown in September of 2011. This multimedia messaging app is now worth around $15 billion and remains as one of the most popular social networking sites for the Millennials and Gen Z.

Image retrieved from Smart Insights.

To demonstrate the growth of Snapchat, it is best to refer to the Diffusion of Innovation Model.

Stage 1: Innovators
Brown mentioned to Spiegel how he wished that pictures he was sending to a girl would disappear, and thus, the idea of Snapchat was born. With the original name, "Picaboo," the app obtained about 127 users by the end of the summer of 2011.

Stage 2: Early Adopters
Due to an argument amongst the three friends, Spiegel and Murphy decided to continue the company without Brown. In September 2011, the two relaunched the app under the name, "Snapchat," increasing its popularity significantly within the next year. The app reached 100,000 users and investments from different companies.

Stage 3: Early & Late Majority
By May 2013, 150 million snaps were being sent per day by the app's users. Between December 2014 and August 2016, the app participated in active fundraising and had a significant increase in video views. Snapchat drastically improved with the addition of stickers, Chat 2.0, and new monetization strategies during this time as well.

Stage 4: Laggards
I believe that Snapchat is still in its Early & Late Majority Stage. However, the company has rebranded itself from "Snapchat Inc." to "Snap Inc." and introduced initial public offering. Although I don't believe that Snapchat is lagging, I could see the app starting to dissipate by the time my generation is in their late twenties or early thirties. With the invention of so many new social media apps and the way we have aged at that point in time, I think the new generations will begin to pick up on the newer apps and leave Snapchat behind.


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