Brandon Schmuck

Class of 2017

Articles

  • American media creates overblown gun anxieties

    °As headlines like “End the Gun Epidemic in America” become more common, Americans are growing increasingly afraid for their safety at work, school, and even in movie theaters. But has gun violence in America really gotten that much worse? While the media would like us to think so, the details say otherwise.

    Forum | December 7, 2015
  • CMU's Tor hack was unacceptable violation of user privacy

    Last week, the ethics of Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) were challenged by The Onion Router (Tor) Project's accusation that the FBI had paid CERT over $1 million to target and identify users of Tor’s anonymizing service. If true, this activity is both an attack on user privacy and a blow to the i...

    Forum | November 16, 2015
  • U.S. army must respect life "without borders"

    If you were given the option to kill one terrorist leader with a drone strike but kill 28 innocent Americans as a result, would you do so? If the United States government openly took such an approach, there would be global outrage. Why, then, has the international community tolerated and ignored a similar scenario in the Middle East?

    Forum | October 12, 2015
  • iPhone 6s not full redesign, but Apple's best update yet

    After a week with the iPhone 6s, I'm convinced that Apple has once again managed to create a great mobile experience. The "S" series of iPhones has long been known to feature more incremental updates than revolutionary ones, but despite the fact that the iPhone 6s is not a base model, it stands to impress with many of its new features. It is not a completely new experience, but one that takes an a...

    Forum | October 5, 2015
  • Government must protect data privacy under Bill of Rights

    It's a bit ironic to think that technology companies are now providing security on our devices to protect us from an organization that calls itself the National Security Agency. However, with each day it becomes more clear that the interests of the government and the people have come into conflict.

    Forum | September 21, 2015