Week Eight

1. If your mother uses wifi at home to send you e-mail, and your home network is not protected by WEP or WPA, what reasons would you suggest to her for enabling one of these two protocols at home if the liability of reading those e-mails still exists once her message leaves your home, on it’s way to school?

Having a WEP ( Wired Equivalent Privacy) or the better system WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) system protects the sender's computers as well as the receiver's computer. If you do not have a secure network on your computer than it is easy for someone to steal your private information including e-mails as well as passwords. In addition to having private information stolen from a non secured wifi system, you are the one paying for the internet. If your internet service is unprotected then anyone can gain access to your server therefore they are getting free internet while you are paying for it. Yes there is still a risk when it enters the internet and follows me on my way to school. Even if you have a secure network nothing is one hundred percent guaranteed secure so any valuable information should probably not be sent over the internet.



2. Some news reports have suggested that the Bush administration used the USA Patriot Act to look at the e-mails of American citizens without a warrant. What’s your position if this was indeed the case? Should citizens be willing to give up their privacy? Does it bother you to know that your online communications are very potentially semi-private instead of private?

I think that somehow the United States government always finds a way to gain more information about the citizens. The USA Patriot Act was created to fight against terrorism and reduce the government's involvement with intercepting phone calls and e-mails and other records. I do not think that the government has the right to look through my private e-mails to search for information. If they do not have a warrant or probable cause then the government has no reason to search through my private information. Since the United States was founded on freedom and liberty I do not think that the government has the right to search through people's private information. If the government has the right to search through e-mails then people will lose their freedom. Online communication regarding e-mails should be private. However, websites and other public information posted online such as facebook is open to anyone who wants to read the information. Therefore this information can be considered semi-private because it is available to the public.