New Report #2

"Senate Bill Defends Reader Privacy by Regulating Survaliance"
9-22-2009
Jenni Terry
American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2009/september2009/justiceactintro091809.cfm?persistent=&expy_dt

There was a bill that was introduced before the senate on the 17th of this month to review and revise three parts of the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act was introduced after the terrorists attacks on The World Trade Center buildings in 2001. The act gives the government power to access different information and surveillance on people if they are believed to be invovled in acts of terrorism. One of the parts that is being reformed is Section 215 also known as the "library provision". This gives the government access to certain information that people may have been viewing in the a library. The revision of Section 215 would allow the government to access this information on a suspect but, they would have to get permission to get this information without just seizing it. It would also allow the suspect to counter the information saying that it is not useful in their investigation. The revision would also increase judical review surrounding Section 215. The bill is being supported by the Obama Campaign along with the revision to much of the Patriot Act. This bill came from a push that was made by a group of librarians in 2004 from Connecticut.
This revision is a great idea. It would make it much harder for the government to be able to just access private information on people. The government have the ability to gain information to peoples personal life way to easy right now. I feel like this bill would help limit that ability while at the same time still making it possible for the government to gain that information when necessary. The government still needs to be able to gain this information in some cases but this would make it much more difficult and they would not be able to get the information with out proof that they need it. The Patriot Act makes it possible for the government to know so much about us. Even to the point of knowing what we look at in a library. This review process that is occuring is just one step in the right direction for our government. If these steps continue to happen I feel that America will grow happy with the government again and will coroperate better with them. The less easy it is for the government to gain access to our personal lifes the better. They are here to control the country and not our lives.

Web Article #1 post

This article gives lots of information in to the world of fake websites. It gives a description of the various types of websites ranging from malious to hacks. These web sites can be anything from just presenting false information to sites that try to persuade you to their bias views. These websites have included sites that attack the validity of Martin Luther King Jr. and that try and convince people that Europeans were the orginal settlers of North America and not Indians. These sites can be harmless but can also convince people in to beliefs that could be essentially very harmful. It can be very difficult sometimes to check the validity of these websites. Some of the easiest ways to tell if the site is legitament or not is by checking who registered the site. This can be a good indicaption as to who is operating the site and if they are representing true information or their own biased views.
This article helped me to learn ways to spot how a website might be false. It helped me to learn that many sites present false and bias information. It kind of makes me upset that so many sites are able to present this kind of information. The internet has given people to basically say and do anything on it that they want. So if someone wants to make a website about how great white power is or about how our government is responsible for the events of 9/11 they can. This of course is part of freedom of speech but it can be very dangerous. These webpages should have some kind of censor for validity. They should be allowed to share their option but they should not be allowed to present false informantion as fact. This direct deception should not be allowed on the World Wide Web. The government should try and censor it the same way that they try and censor dangerous websites that allow people to view how to make pipe bombs and items of that nature.