Blog Post #8

    Privacy is such a large part of today and it is continuing to be pushed past a boundary that most people don’t know about. It basically affects anyone today that has a phone, uses an ATM with a camera, drives, or, even watches from a streaming service. Some form of their life is out there on the web or in data and they may not even know about it and that is the scary part. Take the Ted Talk about driving and law enforcement keeping tag numbers and locations. While it started as a way to keep everyone safe, those in power decided to use it as a way to keep tabs on everyone but never informed anyone that this was happening. Had I not watched the TedTalk, I would have never known and yet I am from a small town where cops are around all the time.

    While this can affect those on a small level within towns and cities, the global side is even darker. Using technology that is meant to read tags to watch people going into mosques or watch people at non-violent protests is a massive abuse of power. Local government can only do so much to handle that especially if they don’t know what is happening themselves. And take the phone companies building ways into wiretapping phones into the updated versions of phone companies. They built access-ways into the phone itself to make their life easier yet never told anyone it was happening. It’s not mentioned in one of the TedTalks but it has been shown online; you can say keywords or questions around your phone and your phone will start to show you post or suggestions based on what the phone heard while you didn’t realize. I shouldn’t be able to talk about baby clothes and then a few days later, get baby clothes posted on Instagram. That alone is a violation of my life and my privacy that I have no control over. It comes at a time when the government may need to step in and say when enough is enough. And yes, no one is truly listening in on my conversations as a college student from North Carolina, and they are busy actually listening to terrorists or those involved with illegal activity but there is nothing stopping them from listening to me anyway.

    The best way to protect ourselves from this invasion could be to just go off the grid, get rid of the phones, credit cards, etc, and just walk into the woods… but that isn’t logical. I believe that even just being aware of what is happening to our privacy and happening with our phones is just the way that we can even start to protect ourselves and change what is happening. Reading the privacy information for each social media, each service that we sign up for, and just knowing what exactly technology can share without us our knowledge is just the first step towards working toward more privacy from technology.