prompt: What are each of the central claims in Mangu-Ward, Joh, and Quarmby? Analyze the kinds of research (primary, secondary) and evidence (personal experience, facts) the authors use in support of their claims. How much are you influenced by the kinds of research and evidence provided? Why or why not? How do your prior values and beliefs affect how you read these essays?
In Is Privacy Overrated? The Merits, Drawbacks, and Inevitability of the Surveillance Nation, Katherine Mangu-Ward focuses on whether the surveillance cameras everywhere in the U.S. is worthwhile for the citizens or infringements to human rights. He based his claim on New York City and his clear claim is "proliferation of video surveillance public and private can protect citizens from police misbehavior or other miscarriages of justice"(P11). He first uses secondary resources from the report to show people are worried about the misuse of widespread video surveillance, and then gives primary examples of credit card, EZ Pass, and bank records as well as many evidences, such as the cameras in London subways led to the speedy capture of the four bombers, to convince the reader that the correct use of cameras deter illegal behaviors and benefit people. Elizabeth E Joh's excerpt Reclaiming '"Abandoned" DNA: The Fourth Amendment and Genetic Privacy is a very long argument essay intends to raise public awareness of abandoned DNA. He quotes the secondary materials from The Simpsons and Victor Weeden to inform us that we leave our genetic identity everyday, and the police may collect the DNA from us, ordinary people, for potential use. He then criticizes the Forth Amendment doesn't restrict police's collecting our DNA by offering lots of facts through the whole essay. However, his essay lacks his personal experience. Ben Quarmby's The Case for National DNA Identification Cards excerpt is a much shorter essay compared to Joh's. He describes the new scheme of the ID cards after the September 11, 2001, by incorporating evidences such as the Driver's License Modernization Act of 2002. He also carefully analyze the controversy of containing a fingerprint in the ID card by quoting Alan Dershowitz's opinions and incorporating the opposer of the card scheme's opinions.
Coming from China, I did not have too much concern about my privacy before. I never suffered the police misconduct or worried about leaving my DNA in public. There are so many Chinese and I'm only a small fish in a sea. I don't think the government has interest in my trivia such as where I withdraw my cash if I'm a law abiding citizen, who will spends lots of time and money to investigate my eating habits even if he or she may have records of me. But these three essays somewhat raise my concerns of my privacy, at least to make me think of privacy. Before reading Mangu-Ward's essay, I held the same opinion with Mangu-Ward that installing cameras in the public or private can protect us from the misconduct of others. However, I never think about cameras can make police-officers behave better. Ben's essay reads interesting to me since I had no knowledge about the U.S. ID card system before. Chinese ID cards don't contain biometric informations, There are only my picture, my ID card number, my permanent address, expiration date, and such basic information on my ID card. Even if the Chinese government enforce us to add fingerprints to the ID cards, people will do and there won't be too many different voices and rejections, who cares as long as it can help to find the law offenders and secure our society. Although dealing the same issue about DNA, Joh's essay is too academic for me to appreciate. It's too long and kind of boring, and he doesn't provide many evidence to prove the bad effects of abandoned DNA. I agree with him that little attention has been paid to the abandoned DNA collection and police nowadays have methods to collect DNA with out violation of law. In this respect, the Fourth Amendment fails to protect citizens from having identities. However, what will be the bad results of that except that threaten our privacy rights? the author does not provide convincing evidence showing the downside of police use or abuse of our DNAs to change my mind since I do not care about leaving my fingerprint at all.
