Homeland Security and Technology

First of all, I would like to state that what happened on Sept. 11th was a poor excuse for creating the Patriot Act. I'm sure the government wanted to spy on people way before 9/11, but didn't have any justification to do so. This is supposed to be the land of the free, but if people are constantly being watched, having their personal belongings checked, and can't use certain words because they’re considered threats...then how is that being free? Personally when traveling, having security guards and police everywhere makes me feel like I'm in prison or some kind of criminal.

I’ve never heard of the computer security systems mentioned in the book, so in my opinion they aren’t widely publicized unless someone was looking for information on them. It’s not like the government advertises these systems to make the public aware.

The PROTECT system seems to be more focused towards a chemical attack, but terrorists haven’t even done that…it’s always been bombs.

US-VISIT is probably the stupidest system designed. Instead of monitoring foreign visitors/travelers who come here legally on passports, I think they should use it to track down the immigrants who come here illegally.

The MATRIX seems to be the only decent computer security invented. It mainly focuses on criminal and terrorist intelligence data, which I think all of the security systems should be about. Security technology shouldn’t breach into people’s lives that aren’t guilty or suspicious of anything.

The National Security Agency (NSA) is something that really makes me mad. Instead of using this for niched investigations, they monitor cell phones and e-mail worldwide and even have translators so they know what people are talking about in other languages if it’s not English. I don’t want the government listening in on my phone conversations; they must be really bored if that’s the case.

The government has all of these ‘intelligence’ systems in place, but yet they still don’t get much data from them. George Bush admitted that the intelligence was wrong when he went to war in Iraq (which he was lying about anyway, he knows why he went there), so I ask why spend all of this money on computer technology and ‘homeland security’ when the information being given isn’t even accurate? No matter how much security they have in America or in the world, someone will always bypass it. I think our government underestimates the intelligence of terrorists and foreigners (whether they are allies or not).

All of this computer technology is just used to violate people’s privacy, which offends me as an American. People might as well go around telling others their social security number. With these computer systems nothing is safe. Computers can be hacked into and everyone’s information is just sitting there on a database that ANYONE can get if they really wanted to. That doesn’t make me feel safe at all.

I definitely believe the government has gone too far. It’s against the constitution and human rights. They are the ones doing something illegal and are our worst enemy. I think we should be monitoring them.

George Bush is the worst president ever and I think he should be impeached, he may not lie under oath, but he has lied and admitted to it and that’s reason enough to kick him out of office. I can’t wait until he’s gone. Thank you for your time :)

The set of topics I wanted to know more about were skateboarding and skaters. I don’t know how attention-grabbing this report will be because it’s difficult making a report interesting when talking about search engines and results, but I will try my best! Good luck to the people reading this hahaha, don’t say I didn’t warn you ahead of time :) Here we go!

Starting off with Google for my seven queries on skateboarding, I first typed skateboarding NOT skaters and I was very delighted to find a LONDON skating website (I just had to include that in my report because I love England). The websites that first loaded at the top included skateboarding only and beginner websites, but as I scrolled down the websites started to include skaters. So, the “not” didn’t make too much of a difference. I then proceeded to put skateboarding AND skaters and several websites on skateboard clothing showed up which surprises me. I’m an avid watcher of action sports and I expected to see EXPN.com or Tony Hawk’s name in one of the very first websites at the top. (the WHOLE first page didn’t include any skaters names or action sports websites, it was just mainly websites on clothing and merchandise.) I was really interested to see what the results of skateboarding OR skaters would be. The very first website was a skateboarding magazine called Transworld Skateboarding Magazine. As I scrolled down, the rest of the search results included things such as skateboard gear, the “science” of skateboarding, and the Professional Skaters Association. Based solely on the first page again, the results did not display any professional skateboarder’s names (another surprise). When I typed in the query skateboarding? most of the same websites showed up from my last search except for a Nike skateboarding website, which was new to the list. Putting quotations around the word still offered the same results. I’m starting to notice a pattern with Google with my one query. It seems very lazy of Google to keep coming up with the same websites no matter how many variations I type the word in. The field search however, came up with completely different pages, but the websites didn’t seem legit (they were more unprofessional and individual users created the pages). The wildcard search came up with sites talking about violence and injury prevention and clubs kids could join that include skateboarding and bmxing to stay out of trouble. I found this really interesting and it gives a more positive outlook on extreme sports, so not only is it a competition and professionals do it…but it’s also used to do the community some good. Every search I did, no matter what I put around, next to or near the word the “science” of skateboarding website came up. I was really hoping to see a list of tricks and how to do them and maybe some professional skateboarders websites. The only website I saw mentioning Tony Hawk’s name was talking about his most recent skateboarding video game. These findings were surprising, absolutely not what I expected.

I read in the book that Yahoo is the second most popular search engine people use aside from Google, but the truth is I never use Yahoo to search for anything. The only exception is when I look up song lyrics, what a song is called and by who. I learned a few years ago if I type in some of the lyrics and put them in quotes on Yahoo’s search engine it comes up with the name of the song, the artist and the lyrics. I haven’t tried this with any other search engine because I was just so used to using Yahoo for it. I was told by one of my friends that it was the best engine to use for song lyrics.

Now with Yahoo, I tried a different approach. I searched for skateboarding and professional skaters to see if any names come up. When I think of skateboarding there are always famous names attached, maybe I will get different results this time. I searched for “skateboarding professional skaters” and Yahoo said I should try my search again and take the quotations away, so I did and it actually came up with EXPN.com and skateboarding rules for the X-Games! (and for some reason there were a lot of sites on the history of skateboards). Skateboarding AND professional skaters came up with directories of pro skaters, professional skateboarding and women in the action sports world. I still see a lot of similarities with Yahoo and Google because I got some of the same websites no matter what keywords I put between the set of terms, but Yahoo is producing much better websites especially when searching skateboarding OR professional skaters. (there still aren’t any popular skater's websites that come up though). Changing up things a little to keep it interesting, a wildcard search on professional skaters was necessary and one of the sites that stood out was the Australian Skaters Association (I swear Yahoo and Google just pull these things out of their you-know-what, it’s so random!). It seems like typing in the queries doesn’t do any good unless you specifically say what you want to know, because even with skateboarding NOT professional skaters the word skaters STILL came up in the search! The field search came up with way better results than Google, so Yahoo is clearly the better choice when searching about action sports (sorry Professor Katz, I know you love Google). The two search engines didn’t differ TOO much, but Yahoo was just better haha. The only amusing thing about this process is a website for a skateboarding bulldog named Tyson kept coming up in the results. I will post his picture here to make the report more interesting.

Welcome to my blog! This isn't my first time having a blog. I never update my personal one, but I guess I have to with this one :) it should be fun though!