SOPA/PIPA/CISPA

In the past year, online privacy has become an extremely powerful source of controversy. It has in fact always been a questionable topic, but within the past few months, the controversy has grown. Many bills have been looking for votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and websites have been fighting back.

Many anti-privacy protests have been emerging in the past few months along with the bills. One is SOPA or Stop Online Piracy Act. Many websites joined in on the fight against these privacy acts, including Tumblr, Google, and many others. I use Tumblr and had the decision that day to "black-out" my tumblr which basically prevented anyone one from seeing it, as a boycott against censoring and privacy laws.


Another protest is CISPA, or Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. This protest has many more websites joining in the fight, including Facebook and Microsoft. According to FoxNews, the objective of this program is to prevent and "prohibit Washington from forcing private companies to hand over information and to help American businesses protect their computer networks and intellectual property from cyber attacks". 

In regards to this issue, I have to say that I disagree with the government claims that they have the right to take personal information from websites. People put their information into websites with the understanding that it is secure, and if the information were then given to the government this would not be the case. I feel as though it would anger many consumers and prevent people from using certain website, which would be a huge setback for many websites. I also do not agree that the government has the right to censor the internet. If it were censored, almost everything on the internet would be illegal, as pretty much everything today is at least somewhat suggestive of any sort of "censor-able" subject. 

The Fight Against Global Warming

Within the past 10 or so years, Global Warming, a phenomenon in which our carbon emissions have begun to deplete the ozone layer and allow more and more "greenhouse gases" to trap sunlight inside, has become a problem seemingly too large to fix. This may or may not be true depending on how one looks at it. Although the problem may be too far gone to fix completely, there are certainly ways in which Americans can make a change in their everyday lives.

The most important thing Americans can do, is to spread the word. A powerful example of this is with the Kony 2012 video, which recently went viral and influenced the awareness of millions of Americans all across the country. With such a powerful media force today, this would not be terribly difficult, if only it was attempted.

The documentary An Inconvenient Truth is one such example of a media propaganda. This movie describes in detail many of the changing aspects of our world because of global warming, and creates a powerful visual towards the need for change. Despite these brilliant uses of media, not enough people have witnessed the movie, which forces the movie to lose its power. If only this was required to watch in schools, more people would get to view it and learn about the ways in which they could make a change.
After the first time I viewed this film last year, I had a discussion with my family about the need to change our everyday living customs. Both my brothers and I were able to describe to my parents the various ways in which Al Gore showed the deprecating planet conditions. If everyone were to see this movie in school, millions of these conversations would be taking place, and millions of changes would be made every day in regards to our planet.

Other ways in which we can help make a difference are certain things such as riding a bike rather than driving everywhere, only using as much gas as necessary, taking shorter showers, recycling, using less water, etc. There are many ways in which Americans can make a change, we just need to step up and do it. We know the truth about global warming and now it is time to react.