Henri was a well-known shopkeeper and
café owner in a small town on the outskirts of Paris. He was thrust into
a vortex of controversy in the summer of 2007 when he was falsely
accused of sexual harassment by a disgruntled clerk under his
employment. Henri was completely exonerated, but links to old, damaging
articles in the local newspaper remained accessible through Google. That
newspaper was particularly aggressive in its initial coverage of the
events and did not give Henri the benefit of the doubt, despite his
protestations of innocence. Years later, people still brought up the
incident to him or his family, often with an accusatory tone. Henri
wanted this portion of his past, full of these false allegations and
innuendos, to be expunged. Since most people came across this reporting
through their search of Google.fr, he had asked Google for its help in
suppressing the links to these old stories. Google was not interested in
responding to his repeated requests for its assistance in removing
these links.

There
are two attributes of internet data that cause problems for victims
like Henri: internet data are both permanent and easily accessible. Web
pages are rarely deleted, and sometimes those that are deleted are
nevertheless preserved by caching services like Google Cache and the
Internet Archive. At the same time, search engines like Google and Bing
make all of those data exceptionally easy to access.

It
seemed that people like Henri would never be able to control
incriminating information about their past circulating on the
internet. However, in 2014 the European Union Court of Justice issued a
surprising court order against Google. It demanded that the search
engine company remove hyperlinks that connect search engine users to
content that is “no longer necessary,” or “inadequate, irrelevant, or no
longer relevant.” Exceptions are warranted if there is some
“preponderance of public interest” at stake. Thus, if someone like Henri
asks Google to remove these links to “irrelevant” and outdated
material, the search engine company must oblige this request.

The
European Court’s decision was based on the “right to be forgotten,”
which was cited as a basic aspect of a person’s overall privacy rights.
The legal authority of this right to be forgotten is found in the Data
Protection Directive adopted by the European Parliament in 1995. The
Directive established a comprehensive privacy framework in the European
Union, requiring that data “controllers” respect the privacy rights of
all “data subjects.”

Advocates
of this right claim that individuals should be able to insist on the
removal of old, irrelevant material that infringes on their basic
privacy rights. Skeptics of this new legal development, on the other
hand, expressed their unease about the burdens placed on search engine
companies like Google. There was also concern that the deletion of
these links for private interests could lead to “counterfeit histories.”

What
about the public’s right to know this information that is now filtered
out thanks to an individual’s complaints about irrelevancy?

The
EU’s decision establishes a new but more precarious boundary between
privacy and free speech that clearly favors privacy. The decision is in
keeping with Europe’s tradition of giving equal weight to privacy and
free speech rights. In the United States, however, priority is generally
given to free speech rights, and so it is probably unlikely that
a version of the “right to be forgotten” will be codified in U.S. law.

Google
agreed to comply with the European Court’s ruling but acknowledged the
difficulties with implementation. Within a few months after the ruling,
Google had received over 100,000 requests for the removal of links to
“irrelevant” or “unnecessary information.” The EU’s order, however,
applied only to European domains such as Google.fr or Google.co.uk—not
to Google.com itself. Some privacy rights advocates claim that this
doesn’t go far enough and that the ruling should apply globally in order
to fully protect the data rights of European citizens. There are other
questions about how extensively to apply European privacy rules, such as
whether or not publishers should be allowed to appeal Google’s decision
to remove links to their content.

What
is your opinion on the EU’s decision tu more precarious boundary
between privacy and free speech? What are your thoughts about the United
States leaning towards free speech rather than privacy? What do you
think will be the best way to balance privacy and free speech? EU’s way
or USA’s way? Why?

Assignment 3 Text mining

This is an individual assignment. Please be sure to watch the recorded “Assignment Lectures” for Assignment 3 (two parts) before you start. Lecture videos are under Content and contain step-by-step demos. You have to submit the Excel Graph activity before you progress to this assignment.

Purpose: Some of the most important data that we have are large quantities of text data. Text data includes books, articles, blog posts, social media posts, emails, reports, journals and diaries, shopping lists, etc. etc. etc. This data is unstructured and can be massive. We have software tools available to help us make sense out of large quantities of text data. When we use software to analyze and try to make sense out of text data, we call this text mining. A practical example of this is chat bots. Chat bots utilize algorithms to try to make sense out of what the user types so it can select an appropriate response. In this assignment we will explore the text mining strategies of looking at word frequency and occurrences. Other methods beyond the scope of this class include part of speech tagging and machine learning. 

Tasks: 

In this assignment you will need files or web links (URLS) with text data. Please watch the How-To video before you start the assignment. You will use two free browser-based text mining tools to analyze your text. 

Task 1. Visualizing Word Frequency. Looking at the frequency of occurrence of each word can give you an overall sense of a document. You will use your first file to create a word cloud to visualize frequency and understand how stop words affect word frequency analysis. We will use WordClouds for this.

Task 2. Taking a deeper look at word frequency and occurrence. For the second text document we will use Voyant Tools to explore other visualization methods as well as look at word correlations. 

Download the attached Word document Template add your screen shot for Task 2 and answer the questions for each task. This website can show you how to take a screenshot on whatever device you are using.

Steps for Task 1:

1. Open the following website: Word Clouds

2. Watch this HowTo video. To create a Word Cloud, you can upload a file or paste text or submit a URL.

3. Personalize your Word Cloud by using different Theme, Shape, Gap, Font or other options. Observe that Stop Words can be included or excluded. They are excluded by default, so you have to create two Word Clouds from the same text: one with and one without the stop words. The website has the common English stop words already.

4. Save your Word Clouds as two images, called “WordCloud with Stop Words” and “WordCloud without Stop Words”. Use the PNG file format. Submit these images to the Assignment 3 drop box.

5. Answer the questions in the Word document for Task 1.

Steps for Task 2: 

1. Open the following website: https://voyant-tools.org/

2. Paste in some URLS or paste the text from your Task 1 text file or from a different text file. 

3. You will see data in five different windows and each window has a tab. 

    a. In the upper left window click ‘Links’

    b. In the upper middle window click ‘TermsBerry’

    c. In the upper right window, leave it on ‘Trends’ (or click it if it’s not there)

    d. In the bottom left window, leave it on ‘Summary’ (or click it if not there)

    e. In the bottom right window, click ‘Correlations’

4. Take a screen shot of the entire screen and add it to your Word document. 

5. Answer the questions in the Word document for Task 2. 

P.S. Other tools that can also be used for this task: 

LINCS Project mirror

Huma-Num mirror

Acquire and prepare datasets of your choosing for your own chosen location and study. Now, it

is your turn! Your task is to choose a place and bring together a variety of data in ArcGIS Pro,
such that the data are ready for study with each other. Do NOT merely replicate the datasets
that are already provided for your location of interest. You may go through similar types of
workflows as described in the sections above. Your requirements are as follows:
a. Choose a bounded location. You can use an administrative boundary, such as a
neighborhood, city, or county boundary, or you can draw your own boundary, as was done
in the above workflow.
b. Choose your location carefully. If you choose a very large area, your processes with take
longer than they would for smaller areas. Similarly, you can choose anywhere in the world,
but your work will be much more streamlined in you choose a place with good data
availability.
c. Find four sets of data from at least four data sources. Do NOT merely replicate the
datasets that are already provided for your location of interest.
d. Choose at least one raster layer.
e. You can choose your data as if you were going to conduct a study, such that all the data
layers are relevant to your given topic, but you are not required to do so. If you propose a
study, it need be only generally stated, as the study described herein is a broadly described
study of buildings and land cover at the UPC campus.
f. Choose an appropriate projected coordinate system for a spatial analysis in your study area.
g. Ensure that none of your data exceeds your chosen boundary.
12. Write up your results in a short report. The report should have your name, a title, and section
headings. The report should have high-quality language, free of grammatical and spelling errors.
Figures should have captions and be referred to in your text, as done in these instructions. Write
out prose in complete sentences for each section; do not just use bullet points. All language must
be in your own words no quotations, even properly cited ones. Citations to your sources of
information, such as for information about your chosen datasets and projected coordinate
system, should be in the Author-Date format of Chicago Manual Style and properly referenced
at the end of the written report. The report need only be long enough to clearly respond to the
listed topics for each of the following sections:
a. Introduction. Briefly summarize the data, methods, and goal of your data acquisition and
preparation project. (1 pt.)
b. Assessment of exemplar project. Briefly summarize the exemplar project and respond to
the questions posed in step 10 in prose NO bullet points or pasting of the
prompt/questions. (1 pt.)
c. Study area and coordinate system. Describe the geographic location of your data
collection and preparation project. Describe the boundary that defines the study area.
Describe and explain your choice of coordinate system for your study. (1 pt.)
d. Data Acquisition and Preparation. Go through each of your (at least) four chosen data
sets, and provide: (1.5 pts. per data set; 6 points total)
i. A QUESTION of the data, including what aspect of the real world it purports to
represent;

Overview

For the purposes of this assignment, imagine that you are a systems architect at a medium-sized publishing company with 130 employees. The company primarily publishes books, both in print and online. It also produces other kinds of content, such as audiobooks, interactive reading material, and magazines. Your leadership has decided that it is time to either upgrade the current OS or adopt a new one (e.g., Windows, Linux, macOS).

As the systems architect, you have the responsibility to determine which OS the company should implement for each department. There are many aspects to consider when making this decision, including what existing applications are used by employees on a frequent basis, cost, functionality provided, performance, vendor support, and so on. To determine which OS should be implemented, you need to complete a site survey first. Later, the site survey can be used to help you make a decision as to which operating systems to implement based on what is currently used in the department. For this activity, you will conduct a site survey. This is also a step that you will need to take when you submit Project One in Module Four. The feedback that you receive after submitting this activity should be implemented as you craft your Project One submission.

Prompt

Complete a Site Survey: A site survey compares the three different operating systems that the company is planning to implement. To complete this task, use the Project One Site Survey Template linked in the Supporting Materials area. Specifically, you must address the following rubric criteria:

Operating Systems: Acknowledge what OSes are already used in your site survey. The type of OS already used and how many employees are using it can influence your decision making.

Server: Determine whether the desktops are on a hardware or cloud-based server.

Although not required in this portion of the project, you may want to think about whether or not the server should be changed. This change could be recommended in your proposal.

• Standard Hardware for Operating System Types: Determine the minimum required hardware. This could include desktop and server.

Network Connection: Determine whether the network is wired or wireless. 

• You will want to think about whether or not the network connection should be changed. This change could be recommended in your proposal.

Applications: Identify what software applications need to be supported by the OS. Your survey of what applications desktop users use most frequently will influence your decision making, as some applications are not supported by certain OSes.

Supporting Materials

• The following resources support your work on the project:
• Reading: Organizational Needs
  This document will provide you with context on the company’s needs and industry best practices. As you review this document, you will learn about what the company currently uses when it comes to hardware and software. Learning about the organization’s needs can help you make an informed decision on which OS to implement.