DevLog 4-3

DevLog 4-3

Create a database-driven application using Node/Express/MongoDB

Use Node.js and MongoDB Atlas to create the back end for Big Feelings. Then publish your full-stack application on Vercel. Follow Modules 10.3 in Critical Web Design and Module 10.4 on the CWD Wiki to complete your DevLog.

1. Fork the criticalwebdesign/big-feelings-starter and update it per Module 10.3.

2. Modify the project structure, install dependencies, and run the project.

3. Create a MongoDB Database (CWD 10.4)

4. Create an .ENV file, add your connection credentials, and test your database connection (CWD 10.4)

5. Add routes to get data from MongoDB (CWD 10.4)

6. Allow Visitors to Submit Feelings (CWD 10.4)

7. Add an environment variable and deploy your project on Vercel. (CWD 10.4)

8. Read 📚 ICE Is Going on a Surveillance Shopping Spree, EFF 2026. Post a reading response in your DevLog per information in the Assignments. ✏️

   1. This article describes how increases to the ICE budget have allowed the organization to buy millions of dollars of surveillance equipment. These technologies can be used to surveil almost every facet of your life, both digital and physical. ICE now has tools to monitor your social media activity, and potentially access your phone by unlocking it in real life if you are arrested or from afar using software. They also have technology to track where Americans are driving, and use face recognition technology to profile people. They also have technology that they can use to track your cell phone to find where you are in real-time.

   2. “Palantir makes it so that ICE has all the data they have acquired in one place so it’s easy to search through.”

   3. This quote above is exactly why the organization I lead, the College Democrats, partnered with other student organizations to email the Matthews Center and demand that they not bring Palantir representatives to campus last semester. Ultimately, the representatives themselves decided not to come to campus. I recieved flack from some on campus for saying I was squashing deliberative discourse, but I believe there is nothing deliberative or democratic about what Palantir does.

   4. A question I have is how did Barack Obama’s changes to ICE help ICE get to a place where they could do stuff like this? How much power did they have prior because of the Patriot Act after 9/11?

   This reminds me of Owen’s “I Know Where Your Cat Lives” because of this sentence: “Tangles is able to link together a person’s posting history, posts, and comments containing keywords, location history, tags, social graph, and photos with those of their friends and family.” Essentially it sounds like they are using metadata to track people’s movement.

9. Write a reflection explaining what you did learned in your DevLog. Link to sources. ✏️ We learned how to connect our projects to a MongoDB database with Atlas and test the connections.

10. Publish it on Vercel and turn it in by posting the direct link to this DevLog on Moodle https://y-1ecqca9rn-julia-siqueiras-projects.vercel.app/