NSA Articles

Articles about the NSA

“New Snowden Leak Reveals the NSA Planted Agents inside ‘World of Warcraft’,” Paul Tassi, Forbes

The NSA planted agents inside online video games for surveillance in their fight against terrorism. Follows the trend of the NSA doing ridiculous surveillance with no tangible results. Tassi argues that the NSA overextends its resources on ridiculous and ultimately fruitless endeavors.

“Keep Spying on Foreigners, NSA,” Eric Posner, Slate

This article argues in favor of NSA surveillance of other countries, this article argues that the NSA should continue spying on other countries because we have no reason not to. He says that the U.S. has an edge in surveillance and we should try to keep it.

On the first article: When I first saw the title for this article I will admit that I thought I was reading The Onion. The NSA is spying on a bunch of  thirteen-year-olds. I was unaware that demographic was a primary threat to national security. But a few Google searches proved me wrong: many articles across the internet mention this. According to the NSA “Terrorists use online games – but perhaps not for their amusement,” it says. “They are suspected of using them to communicate secretly and to transfer funds.” Oh. Another good reason to keep your kids off the computer, eh? This whole thing seems kind of ridiculous to me. The amount of time and manpower it would require to infiltrate these games, find the terrorists, and stop them seems excessive. The article mentions that the NSA has tried to recruit other players, but lets be honest, a 13 year old boy would not react well if he was asked to assist the NSA in spying on terrorists on his favorite video game. Either he would say "**** off, ******!" or he would think he's a secret agent or something. In any case, this does not seem like a good way to spend taxpayer money. While the released document says “Al-Qaida terrorist target selectors and … have been found associated with Xbox Live, Second Life, World of Warcraft, and other GVEs [Games and Virtual Environments],” the document says. “Other targets include Chinese hackers, an Iranian nuclear scientist, Hizballah, and Hamas members.” I'm not so sure that their activities online are a major threat to our national security. 

Cheating: An American Problem?

There are countless examples of cheating in the United States: The Lehman Brothers, Joe Biden, and more recently Rand Paul. In Wenke's essay "Too Much Pressure" cheating is only discussed as an American problem. Clearly it is not a problem confined to the United States, but is it as bad everywhere else?

 In 2006, Vladimir Putin was accused of having plagiarized 16 of 20 pages that open a key section of his dissertation "The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market Relations" from "Strategic Planning and Policy" published by two academics from the University of Pittsburgh. As one would guess, Putin has denied or ignored the allegations. In the St. Petersburg Times article states "Dubious academic credential-building was common in Eastern Europe..." As we discussed in class, using someone else's words as your own in a paper is considered normal, and even respectful to the professor.  
This leads me to believe that we are not so much worse here than everywhere else, and that we should not worry so much about incorrectly citing a source. But it is important to acknowledge the line between doing your own work with the assistance of others' ideas and molding someone else's work to fit your assignment. It is also important to have strict punishments for crossing that line and cheating in other ways, because if we don't then we will continue to have scandals such as this one.

Complaints

Yes, as Buckley says, a major reason why we don't complain is because we expect others to do it for us. No, neither he nor I mean it in the sense that we are too lazy to do it, but rather we believe that our actions will be fruitless. We think that there are so many other people out there in the same position, one of them is bound to speak up. Unfortunately, one of the issues with this is that if we all think like that, nobody actually complains.

People today also complain less than they used to because of our media. We are constantly bombarded by the most sensational stories in the world.  This gives us two more reasons why we shouldn't complain. When we are always hearing about a crisis of the most dire magnitude, all of our problems seem petty. How can you complain about the quality of your food when there are millions of starving people in the world who would give anything for a scrap? This is not to say that there weren't people starving worldwide one hundred years ago, but people feel closer to these hardships when they see them on TV or read about them online than they did one hundred years ago.

Our desire to complain is also affected from the opposite end of the spectrum by our media. Movies, documentaries, and television shows also showcase people like Jackie Siegel (shown below)

who are excessively rich and complain about money issues (as in questioning whether or not her family can afford a $75,000,000+ customized mansion). Those of us on social media surely (I wouldn't know) see dozens of comments daily about getting the wrong toppings on their pizza, not having time to eat breakfast, etc. Being exposed to all of these unworthy complaints leads us to think less of those that complain about anything less than the death of a family member. So we keep our mouths shut, even when our complaints are valid.

I do not have that much to complain about, and when I do, it usually can't be solved by complaining about it. When I do however, I usually have a pretty good reason. Last year, my AP Physics class got off to a rocky start. It was my teacher's first year teaching an AP class. So I went to my counselor, and through my counselor administration, and complained about it. While obviously it was not his fault, there was much more that the students, my teacher, and the rest of the staff could do to make things better. I complained on this occasion because it seemed like that was the only way to get anything accomplished. If nobody had said anything (and some of my classmates did as well), then nothing would have changed. Thankfully, it all worked out in the end.