Winter Vacation

   For Christmas, my family and some relatives from my mom's side planned on meeting up at a hotel in Las Vegas. The day I found out about this I was very excited to see my cousin Nicole. On the 23rd of December, we decided to start packing up our bags and head to Las Vegas. Since we were only going to stay for two days, I let my mom do most of the packing, while I took care of my important belongings. I made sure to have my earphones, wallet, 3DS, and my chargers for my phone and IPad in my purse.

   After packing up everything we need, I started carrying our packed bags down to the car. I brought down bags of food, clothes, supplies, and my dog carrier. By the time all our bags were downstairs, I was exhausted. We live on the third floor, so going up and down the stairs multiple times was really tiring.  

   By 3:00 pm, it was finally time to get into my mom's car and start driving to Las Vegas. I got into the backseat of my mom's charcoal grey car, and started relaxing. I put on my Apple earphones and plugged it into my phone. When I plugged my earphones in, my music automatically started playing. Once I made sure we were all settled and not forgetting anything important, I started to fall asleep.

   Around 5:00 pm, we got off the freeway to eat dinner at a place called Toto's. I wasn't interested in the food they were serving, so I asked my mom if she'll let me order at Jollibee instead. She agreed and gave me ten dollars to buy my favorite Ultimate Burger Steak. Whenever I go to Jollibee, I order their Ultimate Burger Steak because it comes with their delcious gravy, thick french fries, and rice. 

  As I waited for my order, I took out my IPad from my purse to read the manga Beelzebub. Since Jollibee is a fast food restaurant, I only had to wait about five minutes for my order. After I got my food, I went back to Toto's to meet up with my parents. 

   Halfway through dinner, I got felt my phone vibrate. I checked my phone and saw that I got a text message from my aunt. The message read, "Your room number is 5308. You're rooming with Tita Edith." I told my mom what my aunt said, and from the look on her face I could tell something was wrong. My mom told me to text my aunt saying, "I thought we are rooming with Tito Paolo." I didn't think it was a serious problem, so I gave my mom phone and went back to eating. As I continued eating, my dad started saying that we should just not go, we're just an inconvenience, what's the point in going if we're not all comfortable. I just sat quietly and listened to my parents rant.
   After an hour of eating and convincing my other relatives to switch hotel rooms, we got back to the car and started driving towards Las Vegas. I went back to listening to my music and sleeping. Ten minutes along the way, my dad started complaining and whining about how someone will steal his camera equipment. I hoped my mom would ignore him. Instead of ignoring him and continuing the drive to Las Vegas, my mom got off at the next stop on the freeway. Before getting back on the freeway, my mom stopped in a stranger's driveway. While she was parked, she input our address into her built-in GPS. When I realized what she was planning to do, I was very upset and disappointed. 

Assessment

How can we prevent the government from being able to access our personal matters being kept online? Having digital privacy should be an expectation in the 21st century. Collecting our data is an invasion of privacy and is not completely legal. Whether or not it is for a good cause, world wide data collecting is not good.


"Privacy is a basic need," Bruce Schnier, author of "The Eternal Value of Privacy"  states, "if we seek privacy we are not always doing something wrong." If a person hid in a bathroom stall, they most likely only want privacy to do the deed, not to secretly do something illegal. This quote supports, my claim because the general public's data is most likely innocent and meant to be private.


Keeping our online data is an invasion of privacy. Our personal data kept on a digital device are mostly innocent and meant to only be for ourselves unless intentionally shared with permission. In modern days, many people store their private and personal memories online. Storing memoirs online is much more easier and somewhat safer. In Virginia and Utah, there are giant server farms collecting our digital data. According to Douglas Rushkoff, "they don't have authority to go over it, but they may at some point." This quote means the higher officials are not trusted well enough to give us privacy. Since many people can not trust them, it is more difficult to give them the benefit of doubt to their reasoning for collecting our data.


The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) collects domestic telephone records or audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, etc from people overseas. According to James Clapper, director on National Intelligence, said the internet monitoring is, "used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats." While this may be a good thing to do, FISA is not considering innocent people's rights. According to the US Data Fact Sheet, "The FISA court, Clapper and other administration officials obviously think so [that the data collecting is legal], but many privacy advocates and some lawmakers believe this sort of broad data goes too far." This quote supports the idea that what FISA is doing is not right.


Digital privacy should be an expectation in the 21st century. Wanted privacy is a right for everyone to have. The data collecting that FISA is doing is not even completely legal and approved by everyone. Protest to the government for our right of privacy online.