Blog Post #4

Privacy

    Privacy is a growing issue when it comes both the online and offline world. Online we are willingly sharing our personal information under a false sense of security when anyone can access it with the right skillset. 

    Offline, we are growing to be less in control of who knows what about us, an example would be through the second TedTalk watched talking about how police departments use the information from automatic license plate readers to keep records of private citizens' movements. The technology was not originally intended to spy on everyday Americans but to catch the plate numbers of cars going to fast on the roads. Now, you could go to the police station and ask about yourself, and they can pull up images of you driving through your day, in your driveway, and see who sits in the vehicle with you. What I think is most problematic about this is that all the unrelated case data isn't deleted at the end of the day, but kept on file "just in case." 

    I liked the analogy made in the first video, comparing your digital footprint to a tattoo, an electronic tattoo if you will. My parents were both involved in the tech world my entire life, I was always taught about how nothing never really gets deleted off the internet, and has created a different set of habits within me compared to my peers. I'm not paranoid about what the government knows about me, because I'm necessarily scared of what they might know. I'm aware of my online and offline history, and make sure that in 20, 30, or 40 years nothing questionable will pop up when I'm running for office. 

    Something about the government in regards to the privacy issue that does bug me is, the surveillance listening systems put into our phones. I understand why this might be helpful to our government, in case there's a foreign or domestic threat to our country's safety they need to be able to know, and at the end of the day the person carrying out that threat could be virtually anyone. Prior to the technology embedded in our phones from the start, the government had to jump through a lot more hoops and be a lot more intentional in who they wire tap. With this new system it's made us not only vulnerable to our own government listening in, but also vulnerable to foreign countries spying on us. 

    But, the government being upset to the apps that help protect our privacy is weird to me. Apps with encryption software like WhatsApp are built to help connect people through instant message, cellphone conversations, and story updates; but the nice thing about this app is that it's end-to-end encrypted making all conversations private (unlike iMessage) Which just makes me wonder, why do they make it known that they want to listen in? 

     I feel like people always think no one is after their information because they are not high profile, they're average why would anyone come after their information? What use is it to them? But, this could not be more wrong, companies are interested in your information so they know how best to sell to you, hackers so that they can get into your credit card information, etc. Everyone must always be on high alert when it comes to online activity and a few ways we can do that is through sharing less online, using more unique and longer passwords, deleting data from search engines, using VPNs, and disabling data tracking (rejecting cookies!).