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:
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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.

Image retrieved from Panda Security.

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:
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