Explain how it could endanger their civil rights, such as the right to free speech, or right to privacy.

Assignment Overview: A recently released documentary called “Terms and Conditions May Apply” is a film that focuses on digital rights and privacy as well as contemporary misuses of digital data, which many students are not aware of due to lack of reading the terms of service for platforms like Facebook or Twitter. The future of policies and politics relating to the internet and digital rights is a crucial part of modern American politics. The viewing of the documentary is optional, but the trailer should give you some idea material covered:

Furthermore, the successful student will investigate the story of Edward Snowden and the NSA’s “Project PRISM” to understand the type of access that we as society have freely given to these multinational corporations and by proxy, our government:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/12/heres-everything-we-know-about-prism-to-date/

Assignment Detail: After researching of the aforementioned links, students are required to choose one of four major social media platforms to read the terms of service agreement. Students may choose from the following:

Facebook

Twitter

SnapChat

Instagram, etc., etc.

Students are to read the terms of service for their selected platform and write a 2 page paper (header will not count toward page length) response to a policy that they are concerned with as a user of the service OR a policy that they were unaware of before this assignment, and explain how it could endanger their civil rights, such as the right to free speech, or right to privacy. The successful student will relate the digital agreements to the lack of digital rights that are protected by the American government. I typically tie this conversation into the 9th amendment (my favorite) regarding the enumeration of rights in the BoR should not be construed to mean those are the only rights that we as citizens are entitled.

The paper needs to be 2 page essay, MLA formatted, 12 point font, grammatically accurate (including the use of minimal contractions, proper spelling, appropriate paragraph usage, etc.), and at least 2 in text citation [ex: blah blah blah (Author, year of publication).] along with an accompanying reference page.

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