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Killswitch Film Analysis

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The documentary film Killswitch raises several issues facing government policy towards internet regulation, net neutrality, and drawing the line between private and public information. Throughout the course of the film several political activists, professors, and leaders in internet political activism give in-depth descriptions of the precise issues facing not only American democracy but also personal liberties. Arguably the most concerning issues expressed during the film is the amount of opposition towards net neutrality and anti-privacy regulations. Americans are inherently at a political disadvantage when it comes to making decisions that protect their interests and not those of multi-million dollar corporations or own political superiority. …show more content…

“Policymakers, on both the national and organizational levels, recognize the importance of regulating privacy in online environments and its potential repercussions for online behavior”(Dmitry 149). Control over public information that is provided to us via the internet would be in violation of the fundamental constitutional foundations of American democracy, freedom of speech, which to many internet users would be considered as the beginning of a totalitarian government motivated by financial interests. “In the cognate-based approach, the notion of control over, and limited access to, one’s personal information emerges as the dominant method of conceptualizing privacy”(Dmitry 151). While the concepts of regulating internet privacy may be perpetuated by mainstream media sources and by lobbyists, the general consensus online would agree that self-regulation is more appropriate than government regulation. Much of the self-regulation has come from government-sponsored ideas that would protect users by education rather than by control. “Most self-regulation has some government involvement in directing, shaping or endorsing the regulation”(Tusikov 2016). Limiting access and privacy “speaks to the notion of privacy as a state of limited access to a person or her information, a state that, in our context, can be disrupted by policy or technological change”(Dmitry 151). These concerns of privacy over the internet raise the question, if our information isn’t private who is monitoring us and what can they do with our

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