As a self proclaimed Harry Potter fanatic, I'm ashamed to say that I've only seen Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part One once. So last night, while I was procrastinating starting my homework, I decided to remedy this.
The movie started off just how I remembered it. Hedwig dies, George loses his ear, there is a huge amount of sexual tension between Harry and Ginny, and everyone's life pretty much sucks. Oh yeah, and Rufus Scrimgeour, the Minister of Magic, delivers some not-so-shocking news: the Ministry has fallen. A few minutes later, there is a short montage of clips and images detailing the state of said ministry. One clip in particular caught my eye. Pius Thicknesse, the new minister, also a Death Eater, is standing in the Ministry of Magic atrium delivering a speech while people run screaming around him. In a voice laden with double meaning, he says the following:
Some people really don't care about the NSA and their snooping. "Why should I care?" they ask. "I don't do anything online that requires hiding." The strange thing is that these same people value their privacy just as much as everyone else. If someone just walked into their house and started reading their mail, looking at all their family photo albums, and writing down their credit card numbers, they would be furious.
I must admit that there are some reasonable justifications for looking a bit closer at our internet activities. Preventing terrorism is, for obvious reasons, really really important. But using this as an excuse for infringing on our privacy is not okay.
"You have nothing to fear, if you have nothing to hide."This got me thinking about the whole NSA scandal. Ever since Edward Snowden revealed how easy it is for the government to access our personal information, more and more information has come to light uncovering how little privacy we actually have. What started as an ability to read all our emails and access all our phone calls has quickly evolved into the use of software that collects every single thing we do on the internet and the circumvention of many methods of encryption, which is what what websites like Paypal and Facebook use to protect all of your personal information.
Some people really don't care about the NSA and their snooping. "Why should I care?" they ask. "I don't do anything online that requires hiding." The strange thing is that these same people value their privacy just as much as everyone else. If someone just walked into their house and started reading their mail, looking at all their family photo albums, and writing down their credit card numbers, they would be furious.
I must admit that there are some reasonable justifications for looking a bit closer at our internet activities. Preventing terrorism is, for obvious reasons, really really important. But using this as an excuse for infringing on our privacy is not okay.
