Civil Rights

Civil rights are the rights of individuals to receive equal treatment and to be free from unfair treatment or discrimination in a multitude of settings such as education, employment, housing etc and based on certain legally-protected characteristics. Civil rights also include the ensuring of peoples physical integrity and safety; protection from discrimination on grounds such as physical or mental disability, gender, religion, race, national origin, age  and individual rights such as privacy, the freedom of thought and freedom of speech and expression. The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. The movement had a legal and constitutional aspect, and resulting in much law-making at both national and international levels. It also had an activist side, particularly in situations where violations of rights were widespread. I will look into three different instances or stories concerning the matter of civil rights, these being; surveillance of the common person, in relation to CCTV, police etc, Wiki-leaks and Bradley Manning and The Arab Spring.

Surveillance and CCTV:

The government and police are expected to secure and protect the common people that live around and in the local area, but there are times at which the use of surveillance can become a threat to an individual’s civil rights. In order for the cameras to operate, there needs to be someone manned behind the camera. Even though the uses of cameras are to protect us and help locate crime hot spots or criminals themselves, there is still the possibility of the cameras being used to, in a sense, “kill time”. A story that has come from the use of surveillance and the possibility of them breaching peoples civil rights is a story from December 2008 called ‘Surveillance cameras in Easton spark civil rights debate’. Here is an extract from the news story;

EASTON | If the city insists on installing surveillance cameras, its elected officials and police department should make sure the public is well informed, argues one community activist.

"When government starts surveilling its citizens, we at least deserve public forums," said Peter Crownfield, who helped found the Bill of Rights Defence Committee of the Lehigh Valley. "Personally, I might like to have (Easton) decide they're not a very good idea."

Police Chief Larry Palmer, meanwhile, stands by the city's plans to use cameras to help combat crime in the West Ward and monitor the safety of elementary school students attending the former Easton Area Middle School.

People such as Crownfield are expressing concern over the growing use of surveillance cameras they argue do little to prevent crime. The city learned in October it would get a $216,000 U.S. Department of Justice grant to buy surveillance cameras.

Wiki-Leaks and Bradley Manning:

Wiki-Leaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes stories of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources. Its website launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation and claimed a database of more than 1.2 million documents within a year of its launch. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder, editor-in-chief, and director. Bradley Manning born in December 17, 1987 is a United States Army soldier who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed restricted material to the website WikiLeaks. He was charged in July that year with transferring classified data onto his personal computer, and communicating national defence information to an unknown source. Wiki-Leaks has had numerous occasions of where it has had to defend itself from people accusing it breaks regulations of civil rights, but the case of Bradley Manning’s is by far the most widespread story. The most common people to be affected by Wiki-Leaks in terms of their civil rights are celebrities and public figures who have had information about them sent to Wiki-Leaks and it has become widespread.

The Arab Spring:

The Arab Spring, also known as The Arab Awakening, is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests that occur in the Arab world. It began on 18^th of December 2010. Several movements that have occurred due to The Arab Spring are revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, a civil war in Libya which resulted in the fall of its government and a civil uprising in Yemen which resulted in the resignation of the Yemeni prime minister. The protests have shared techniques of civil resistance in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches and rallies, as well as the use of social media to organize, communicate, and raise awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and Internet censorship. Numerous factors have led to the protests including issues such as dictatorship, human rights violations, government corruption, unemployment and extreme poverty.

Crime Prevention and Cyber Crime

Cyber crime is an aspect of the information age that has never been able to be fully eradicated or stopped, merely prevented and slowed down. Every year, there is an increased number of reports of cyber crime related cases, from a small credit fraud to a major bank heist. Over the years many different types of crime have occurred due to people infiltrating their way into confidential information and other people’s personal information. Some crimes that have made their way into today’s world are; hacking, fraud, spam, phishing, obscene or offensive comments, phone hacking, drug trafficking, cyber-terrorism and cyber-warfare. Despite cyber crime being a common thing among the information age there are ways in which they can be tackled. I will first explore three different cyber crimes and then three different cyber prevention methods or devices.

Drug Trafficking

Drug trafficking is widely regarded as the most serious of drug offences around the world in many countries. Although, sentencing often depends on the type of drug and its classification in the country into which it is being trafficked, and where the drugs are sold and how they are distributed. For example if the drugs are sold to underage people, then the penalties for trafficking may be harsher than in most other circumstances. There have been issues about having the death penalty for drug trafficking, including being framed with someone else putting drugs into another's luggage at airports. This can be a concern to people as not to leave luggage unattended.

Phishing

Phishing, as a general term, is the act of attempting to acquire information such as usernames and passwords, credit card details etc by masquerading as an honest and trustworthy source of electronic communications when they are in fact fake and untrue. Some forms of communication that are used to take peoples information include popular social web sites, auction sites and online payment processors. Phishing is typically carried out through the means of by e-mail spoofing  and it commonly directs users to enter their bank details or personal information at a fake website that looks and feels as though it were a real website. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training and greater public awareness.

Phone Hacking

Phone hacking is a term used to describe the practice of intercepting telephone calls and voicemail messages by accessing the mobile phones messages without the consent of the phone's owner. The term was first raised during the “News International phone hacking scandal” in which it was alleged) that the British newspaper the “News of the World” had been involved in the interception of voicemail messages of the British Royal Family and many other public figures. Since the very early days of mobile phone technology mobiles have allowed users to access voicemail messages, but requiring the entry of a PIN to listen to the messages. As many mobile phones were supplied with a factory default PIN that was rarely changed by the owner, it was easy for a person who knew the phone number and the default PIN to access the voicemail messages.

Now that I have covered three different forms of crime and what they include, I shall now explain three different methods of crime prevention (but not necessarily to prevent the crimes stated above)

Finger Prints

Finger prints have been used for centuries, but with progressive degrees of success and how often it is used. Fingerprints collected at a crime scene, or on items of evidence from a crime, have been used in forensic science to identify suspects, victims and other persons who touched a surface. Fingerprint identification emerged as an important system within police agencies in the late 19th century when it became apparent that it was a more reliable method for identifying persons having a prior record, often under a false name, in a criminal record data base. Fingerprints are the fundamental tool for the identification of people with a criminal history in every police agency.

Advantage of Finger Prints:

-The finger print method is not very costly at all and offers a reasonably quick alternative to some other methods if an answer is needed straight away.

Disadvantage to Finger Prints:

-The outcome of the process often needs to be double checked due to the level of inaccuracy it poses.

Number Plate Recognition

Number plate recognition, also known as NPR, is a mass surveillance method that uses optical character recognition on images to read license plates on vehicles. They are used by various police forces and as a method of electronic toll collection on pay-per-use roads and cataloging the movements of traffic or individuals. NPR can be used to store the images captured by the cameras as well as the text from the license plate along with some data base to store a photograph of the driver. Systems commonly use infrared lighting to allow the camera to take the picture at any time of the day. Concerns about these systems have centered on privacy fears of government tracking citizens' movements, misidentification, high error rates, and increased government spending. The NPR was invented in 1976 at the Police Scientific Development Branch in the UK. Early trial systems were deployed on the A1 road and at the Dartford Tunnel. The first arrest through detection of a stolen car was made in 1981

Advantage to Number Plate Recognition:

-The speed at which cars go does not affect the recognition of the cameras.

Disadvantage to Number Plate Recognition:

-Due to a civil rights law, pictures of the drivers are not allowed to be kept for references, only the number plates, information on the car etc.

Security Tags

Electronic article surveillance, usually shortened to EAS, is a technological method for preventing shoplifting from retail stores. Special tags are fixed to merchandise or books and the tags are removed or deactivated by the shop worker behind the counter when the item is properly bought. At the exits of the store, a detection system sounds an alarm to alert the staff when it senses active tags. A single EAS detector usually costs several thousand pounds. Disposable tags cost hardly anything and may have been embedded during manufacture. More sophisticated systems are available, which are more difficult to circumvent. These are much more expensive because of the use of more complex electronics and components. A major concern with these systems is when false alarms occur. This most often is due to tags on merchandise not being properly deactivated but also such as bringing in items from other stores and even other metal objects such as key rings.

Advantage of Security Tags:

-The sound that the security system emits is loud enough to be carried across almost all store sizes and so the employees can hear it and react to it immediately.

Disadvantage of Security Tags:

-The cost of installing the security systems are very costly and are prone to false alarms.

My Experience:

My experience of crime prevention devices and methods and cyber crime is very limited. The only knowledge I have of either of these things are from what has been shown on tv programmes or films. As time has gone by so has the means of how we store information on people and what we use to prevent crime, like how finger prints used to be done with ink but are more commonly done on small electronic devices; even though there are still many instances in which ink is used instead of an electronic device, but the end result will almost always be processed by a machine for maximum success and accuracy. However, when I have gone into some shops, the most common one being HMV, the security systems tend to under go many false alarms and need to be restarted again to stop the noise alarm.

Entertainment

Entertainment has developed and been boosted phenomenally over the years because of the Information Age. Even before the huge corporations like Apple, Sony and Microsoft inventing break through products and high tech devices, there still had to be a start to the entertainment years and years ago. Most people take these services that are provided for us for granted and see them as something that every common household would normally have, but that was not always the case. There are a varying degree of entertainment devices and services that range from music and games to films and television. I will look into these four aspects of entertainment and see how they have developed and what they have provided for the 21^st century.

Music:

Music is a feature of life that can have a different impact on different people, depending on the style. There are many genres and subgenres that are being created and made more popular all the time. As genres and music have grown over the years, so has the way in which we listen to it. Before the use of small and compact C.D’s there were large discs with spiralled grooves in them, known as vinyl records, which would be played on a gramophone. These were the primary source of music for most people in the late 20^th century. The gramophone would have a large needle arm that would run along the vinyl record and project a sound. The very first form of a gramophone was made by Thomas Edison in 1877. As well as the gramophone there was also the juke box. The juke box was a device made around 1890 and carried through into the 20^th century. Just like the gramophone the juke box would play vinyl records, but was able to store a large quantity of discs. When people today think of devices that play music, they think of the Ipod. The Ipod is a product that was made by Apple and has had a huge impact on the way in which we listen to music. Many different products have been made, a few different examples being the Ipod shuffle, Ipod touch and Ipod classic. Apple was also the founder of Itunes, a software in which users can store all their desired albums and music, whilst being able to play the music and place them into groups for easier listening pleasure.

Advantages of Music:

-Because of the sheer amount of choice and genres there is something that will appeal for everyone.

-Music can be part of peoples jobs, whether that be a member of a rock band or orchestra.

Disadvantages of Music:

­­-Some lyrics to some songs can promote drugs, sex, violence etc.

-Some people are able to purchase music for free and, usually, illegally.

Games:

During the 20^th century, around, the most common form of gamming was relatively space orientated; with games such as Space Invaders which sparked more and more space shooters. These sort of games were known as arcade games which were played on arcade machines, and commonly found in locations like shopping centres, restaurants etc. The invention of Space Invaders was dated to 1978, and can be seen as the start of the golden age for the arcade gaming industry. Space Invaders was the most popular arcade game to date, with the only other real competitor being Pong. In 1980 the arrival of Pac Man sparked a new era of gaming, which could appeal to both genders. These three arcade games, Space Invaders, Pong and Pac Man are often credited for being the landmark in game history. The death of arcade games came to be in 1989, when Nintendo released the first handheld console known as the Game Boy. Since then gaming consoles have been more popular ever since, but arcade machines are still used today in some old school local restaurants and other public areas. However, the modern day console is much different to what it was before. The Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii are among a few that have made a name for themselves in the recent years, with a new feature being added to them very often. The main reason for people buying these consoles is the experience of playing with friends and other people around the world. Some examples of games that are most commonly played by these platforms online are Call of Duty, usually on Xbox and PS3, Halo, only on Xbox, and Mario Kart, only on Wii.

Advantages of Games:

-They are a good time waster.

-Playing with your friends is a very fun experience.

Disadvantages of Games:

-You can become easily addicted to playing games.

-The actual consoles and accessories are usually very expensive.

Films and Cinema:

Films and the overall quality of watching them have changed drastically over the years. The very earliest form of a film is that of plays and theatrical dance, which can date back hundreds of years to before the Shakespearean era and into the Roman period. The first proper films were only in black and white and known as “silent films” since there was no proper way devised to project any sort of film track. Commonly a live band or live spokesman would make a commentary of the film as there was no distinct way of reading the film in one certain way. The use of proper colour in filming did not come into play until roughly the early 20^th century; but by 1954 half of the films made were being made in colour. People were not able to watch movies at home since there was no way to project it at home. As years went by new ways of projecting and watching films were invented. One such invention that has only recently been put out of fashion was the VCR player; abbreviated from video-cassette player. A VCR would have a tape wrapped round it and the VCR player would uncoil the tape, allowing the film to be projected. Nowadays though there are DVD’s and, even more recent, the Blue Ray discs. A Blue Ray disc has more detail to the picture than regular DVD’s but can only be played on a certain type of Blue Ray player.

Advantages of Film and Cinema:

-Watching films is a good time waster in the evenings or just generally anytime of the day.

-A lot of people enjoy going to the cinema to watch new films with their friends and family.

Disadvantages of Film and Cinema:

-Going to the cinema can sometimes be quite expensive.

-When buying DVD’s you need to make sure they are not copy righted.

Television:

The television, more commonly known as tv, is one of histories most widely renowned inventions. However, it was not made by one single person. Over the years contribution and ideas were passed down by people working together to make the tv what it is today. Here are a few significant dates revolving around the invention of the tv: 1831 was the date at which Joseph Henry’s and Michael Faraday’s work with electromagnetism jumpstarted the era of electronic communication; in 1880 inventors Alexander Bell and Thomas Edison theorize about telephones devices that transmit image as well as sound; 1907 Campbell Swinton and Boris Rosing suggested using cathode ray tubes to transmit images, independent from each other they both developed electronic scanning methods or reproducing images; 1924/25 American Charles Jenkins and John Barid from Scotland each demonstrated the mechanical transmissions of images over wire circuits. In today’s world it is practically unheard of for people to own a black and white tv, as almost all household tv’s are now in colour and high definition. Not only has the colour changed on tv’s but the amount of channels too. Whereas before there was only at maximum about 3-5, you can buy Freeview boxes that allow up to hundreds of channels. The amount of tv’s sold has changed drastically too, as there would only be one tv per house, and now you would expect to find at least 2 or 3tv’s in a single household.

Advantages of Television:

-The news keeps you informed on current world affairs.

-Since there are so many genres of programmes it is easy to find something that suits you.

Disadvantages of Television:

-Watching for excessive periods of time can cause migraines and damage your eyes.

-People can become addicted to watching the tv.

My Experience:

My experience of entertainment in the information age has seen all of the features that I had mentioned here. I have got an ipod of my own which has alot of music currently stored on it. I have a number of gaming consoles at home, some being an Xbox and Wii, with some being handheld like the Nintendo DS. We have a large collection of DVD's, most being regular standard DVDs with several blue ray discs, and yet we still have a huge collection of VHS tapes for a VCR player, even though we are no longer in possession of one. And even though we do have some tv's in our house, I only really watch tv on the weekends in the mornings and evenings but rarely in the afternoon.

ICT in Education

ICT within education has become a great asset to teachers and pupils alike, with the parents also benefiting from it as well. ICT in the school environment has grown very quickly and with very big success. ICT skills has got to be the most important skill that a student needs to learn before they go out and find a job, since the world has become so dependent on computers and technology it would be almost impossible to find a job with no source of ICT within it. Almost all aspects of school can be related to some form of ICT, whether that is features such as:

-Registration at the start of lessons (and also aids staff members in student information, attendances, academic performances, behaviour logs, school time tables, medical information etc.)

-Interactive whiteboards to teach on instead of a normal chalk board.

-E-books which could possibly contain an entire syllabus on just one programme or disk.

Registration and student logs:

Registration is a feature of every school life that all teachers and students must do to show that they are at school and the teachers are also keeping track of their students. A popular registration system that is used in a variety of schools is the programme Sims. Sims is a school registration that allows for teachers to take registers easily when needed. Single letters or symbols are used to show a student’s attendance, generally a ‘N’ will meant that the student is not present and a’/’ means that the student is present and an ‘I’ means the student is not at school due to an illness. A teacher can log into their own Sims account from any computer that is fitted with it and take a registration regardless of the room, and it will have a lesson by lesson log for the teacher so that registration doesn’t take very long. Now that registration has become such an improvement in schools, from a simple hand written registration to a computer controlled system, it is much easier to find students who are perhaps skipping lessons or are under-achieving in certain lessons since Sims keeps a record log of each student in the school. Not only does this benefit the teachers to aid students who need help the most but parents can be assured that the school knows what students expectations are and how their behaviour is.

Interactive whiteboards:

Interactive whiteboards are among the most commonly seen technology in schools, particularly in higher education such as secondary schools, college and universities. Some primary schools have invested in buying and installing interactive whiteboards but the majority do not as it is generally not needed among the younger age group. An interactive whiteboard is a big step up from a normal whiteboard or chalk board. The key thing that an interactive whiteboard gives to a lesson is the flexibility it provides. It can be used to show demonstrations or pictures that originally would not have been available before, teachers can type up the lesson objectives or information on a computer and it will be projected onto the screen for the students to see with greater ease and perhaps most importantly it provides a great amount of interaction between both students and teachers seeing as the whiteboard gives such a huge learning space. However, with these advantages to the interactive whiteboard, there are some disadvantages. The instillation cost of a single interactive whiteboard reaches an average of around £1300 which is an enormous sum of money for a school to invest in, especially if a whiteboard is required in every room. The set up of an interactive whiteboard can become very tedious as it needs constant recalibration so that when the pen touches the board is not in an obscure place to where the pen is actually situated. An issue that may arise in the common school environment is if a student accidently uses a board pen on the fragile interactive whiteboard then the mark made will most likely be very difficult to remove, or in some cases not removable at all.

E-Books

An e-book, a shortened name from electronic book, is a book like publication but in digital form. An e-book consists of text and images and is readable on a computer and other electronic devices; but in the school environment a computer is what will be used to present an e-book. In the Oxford English Dictionary the definition of an e-book is “an electronic version of a printed book”. E-books can contain a variety of information and are laid out in a format that is almost identical to an actual book. Users can scroll through the ‘pages’ of the book using their keyboard or mouse. One large advantage to e-books is how the user is able to read what is presented. Text and images can be enlarged for ease of reading and specific features can help prompt users with reading, such as highlighting words at a steady pace. Some e-books have an audio feature that pupils can listen to whilst they read along which makes learning much easier and bearable. Of course, since the e-book is an electronic device, this makes the device and software relatively expensive when compared to the common text book that would be used normally.

Advantages of ICT in Education:

-Using ICT in lessons makes showing images to students much more practical and will improve the memory of that image for students.

-Complex instructions and objectives can be explained in a much easier fashion through the use of putting them up on a screen.

-Lessons become more enjoyable and practical if the students are included; this mostly refers to the interactive whiteboards.

-Teachers can form a better understanding of students who need more help than others because of particular logs and reports that are made from other teachers around the school.

-Students who miss lessons are more likely to be found out with the use or a computerised registration that automatically keeps track of attendance.

Disadvantages of ICT in Education:

-Setting up devices and software can be a troublesome ordeal.

-Some applications can be way too expensive even if the school can afford several; there is no point in having some of these applications in select classes and not in others.

-Learning and adapting to new technology is always a hard concept to get into, especially for those with no IT skills.

-Arguments over the devices or software may occur in the younger ages if there is only one of said device or software.

My Experience:

Being a student in a secondary school, now currently in the 6^th form part of the school, I have had a fair amount of experience with both software and devices. The most obvious being the interactive whiteboard. I went to a primary school that, in the latter years of being a pupil there, managed to afford an interactive whiteboard in every class; probably because there were only seven classrooms. So going into secondary school I had already had a brief experience with this new technology that at first seemed very daunting and interesting. Now that I am in 6^th form I have grown up with computer registrations, interactive whiteboards and at least one computer in every class room. I prefer using technology to do work as I find typing out work and assignments a much easier process when given a keyboard that only takes a brief moment to type out a word when compared to physically writing it out with a pen. This is not to say that all work related instances are completed with a computer and keyboard; note taking within class is almost always done with pen and paper.