Opinions

 

Week 1 Opinions

It feels like my fellow citizens are concerned with how much information gets filtered through the NSA, but there are parodies and jokes made about the situation, just as there are dramatizations (like Orwell’s 1984). The NSA intercepts about 700 million phone calls per day, so how can that many really be listened to? They are searching for key words and phrases that might lead them on a trail. I don’t usually talk about bombing anything in casual conversation…however in Brazil, civilians like to joke around with the fact that the NSA might actually be reading every email it intercepts and mess with the systems by including phrases like “stop holding my heart hostage, my emotions are like a blasting of fundamentalist explosion.” Perhaps in my own experience, I have led such a take-it-for-granted lifestyle that the government’s omnipresence currently doesn’t irk me, but it does bother me that the government can just as easily take away the rights that my ancestors have worked so hard to earn. -Autumn

Some argue that for the sake of national security, the NSA should be allowed to look at whatever they want. Others think the government has no business to look at anything that is supposed to be private, like emails and phone calls. I personally lean more towards the latter, as I dislike the idea that I have no privacy at all. There have been allegations against the NSA about reading private emails and listening in on phone calls in the US for decades. -Francoise

In the case of China, I feel like it is the individual’s choice to decide whether or not to have children. Forced abortions or restriction from abortion goes against the individual’s rights in my opinion. – Autumn