Blog Post 4 Privacy On and Off

The two TED Talks we watched in class, starring Juan Enriquez and Catherine Crump respectively, made me realize how much of a struggle it is to maintain privacy in a world full of technological surveillance. These two videos went into depth about the threat of immortality. While this does not mean that people can live forever, it implies a much deeper problem. The term immortality is being used to warn us of what Juan Enriquez calls "Electronic Tattoos." That every post, comment, and picture shared online will always be online. Another big issue these videos highlight is how much information is being collected without our consent.

To expound more on the first issue, every post or detail submitted into the internet becomes a permeant part of our image and identity. Many employers, families, friends, and coworkers use the information online about others in order to form their impressions and opinions about a person. So any bad day or controversial post could ruin your repetition with everyone around you and get you "cancelled". This is a apparent problem because most of us do not comprehend the future consequences of sharing posts that seem innocent or fun.

With the second problem involving the amount of intel gathered online, we dive into the problem with how much information is being shared with the public, or more specifically, how much information is being collected from selected individuals. Catherine Crump does into detail about how there are automatic license plate readers that can track where people go and create a portfolio of intel about their daily lives. 

    

    With this kind of intel, the government or whomever collects this data can track your every movement and even predict certain kinds of patterns in your life. For instance, if you drive to a school everyday, the data collectors can tell that you either go to school or drop off people who do go to school and therefore send you promotional ads for educational-related products. Because we do not know how much intel these data collectors have gathered, we do not know what in our lives is actually private and what is very public information.

I believe the government needs to make and enforce laws and policies to protect people's privacy. This can include shutting down license plate readers, preventing ai analysis of security cameras, or sending company heads to jail for ignoring town, city, state, or federal decision when it comes to banning security cameras being built. Technology needs to have heavy surveillance in order to ensure we the people maintain our freedom to privacy and that sensitive information cannot fall into the wrong hands. At the very least, limits on how this intel can be collected and used should be implemented so that people know what is being shared. 

However, I also believe that we need to better understand the consequences of posting online. Many individuals share too much information about their personal lives on social media platforms, which tends to lead to people with bad intentions learning a little too much about you. We need to think before posting and remember that what is posted and removed is not actually gone from the platform.

In the end, I learned from the TED Talks that privacy is being taken for granted when it should not. That if we do not act now to prevent our right to privacy being taken away, we may just fall into a scenario just like 1984. While being careful about what we share online is important, we need to also prioritize preventing outside sources rom collecting our data by force.