Ways Technology Could Jail You

Technology has aimed to make life easier, but there are ways in which it could actually ruin life and peace of mind. Even if you forget that potential recruiters could hire or fire you based on your Facebook profile, and that people judge you by your profile picture-- your deleted photos are still available, and you are privy to information like who un-friended you, internet firms can read your personal texts, SOPA and PIPA’s cousin-bills are still in the writing, and governments could access your mail or comments and prosecute you for them.

Now although most of these deal with the issue of privacy, recent events have shown that anything you do in the digital world can be used against you, (especially when more connectivity means more accessible you are) and you could even end up facing a sentence in jail, or even worse, reported PC Mag.

Read on to know about eight incidents that show how technology could ruin your life:

1. The right to “tweetdom”
Hamza Kashgari, a Saudi journalist and poet is facing trial and could be sentenced to death for expressing his views on Twitter. The 23 year old dared to envision a conversation between him and the Prophet Mohammed. He tweeted about his experience on the day of Mawlid, (i.e. Prophet Mohammed’s birthday) saying “On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.” His tweets also went on to say “On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you've always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.” The three tweets showed him as a controversial figure, even after he had deleted his account and issued a letter of apology for the same. As a result, he tried to seek political asylum in New Zealand, but was deported from Malaysia back to Saudi Arabia.

2. What’s in a name?
In the United States, domain name seizures of websites by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security are fairly common. Although most would expect their seizures to be against file-sharing or copyright-infringement sites, their seizures don’t need a conviction to go forward, and according to a report on PC Mag, there’s no transparency as far as who condemned the site. Rojadirecta.com and Rojadirecta.org (Spanish sites that had been seized late last year) were seized apparently because they contained links to live sport video streams. Another site that made news in this case includes hip-hop blog DaJaz1.com which was seized because it allowed to listen to music, and featured what it says is copyrighted material. Ultimately, the domain name of the site was restored.

3. Jail-breaking could be made illegal
Not referring to breaking out of prison, this action allows you to hack into your own device so you’re allowed to customize it according to your taste. PC Mag’s article said that sometimes what happens to an object interests the device’s manufacturers, and so this action could be made illegal.

 

4. Terms of agreement or terms of abuse?
Every time you sign up for a service online, you tend to click the “I Agree” on the document that has most of the terms and conditions stated. However, Richard Downing, the American Justice Department's deputy chief of computer crime has suggested to the government to expand the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act so violations of the terms of use violations of terms of use subjects offenders to the Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. This means those who hack into critical national infrastructure would have increased penalties, but those who create a fake Facebook account, are not honest on a dating site, or upload a prohibited video to YouTube will also have the same type of punishment.

5. Sharing isn’t caring
A natural resources coordinator by occupation,  Jammie Thomas-Rasset shared about 24 songs on a file sharing site and has been battling with the court over the same for the past four years. 2010 saw her third trial. After one jury found her liable for copyright infringement in 2007, she was ordered to pay $222,000 as a fine to the music label companies. The judge later ruled that he erred in instructing the jury and called for a retrial. The second trial (which took place in 2009) she was found liable for $1.92 million. The next case saw the jury deciding that the price of file-sharing had gone back up and the mother of four was asked to pay $1.5 million, but the court itself reduced it to $54,000. Thomas-Rasset has appealed the decision.

6. The right to inform?
Shi Tao, a journalist from China, is serving a ten-year sentence after which he will be denied political rights for two year, because he sent an email to the Asia Democracy Foundation in the United States.His email, which contained a document from the Communist party that ordered the suppression of media coverage on the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, of dissidents returning to China. Yahoo supplied the Chinese government with Shi’s email, saying it was following the nation’s law, following which the government deemed the email as evidence of “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities.” Shi is still imprisoned.

7. Being Responsible Adults
SOPA and PIPA received a lot of attention last year, with even Wikipedia blacking out against it, but the bills’ cousin, called “Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011” didn’t. This is because the bill does a lot to protect children, but at the same time, PC Mag’s report stated that if the bill is passed, ISPs will be required to retain every IP address they assign, and all activity (i.e. social networking, instant messaging, email, Web browsing, and downloads) associated with them (this also includes internet services used on mobile phones, phone numbers and tracking IDs, and banking information). They will also be able to obtain a subpoena for anyone within 500 miles of an investigative sex offender or anyone who’s had any online contact with one (even if they only got a spam email from the targets).   

8. Overprotecting against the right to privacy
American teens in the state of Arizona will soon need to text in codes and because a senator in the state has proposed a wireless carrier mechanism by which parents will be able to read the texts their children send, and not just see the recipient and the time of sending. This bill would require parents to pay a fee for the service, and will need the child to permit the service to be carried out.

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