The Issues with Privacy

For this week's blog post, we were assigned to watch four different Ted Talk videos on the issues of privacy with technology and social media. I have learned over the years that technology is an incredible invention, until it is turned against us.

Image retrieved from Panda Security.

In the Ted Talk, "Your Online Life, Permanent as a Tattoo," Juan Enriquez discusses the permanence of real tattoos and how they correlate to our lives online. He describes an "electronic tattoo," which means that everything that someone posts online about themselves remains on the Internet forever. This also goes for facial recognition features and target advertising. It is interesting to describe social media as a tattoo because someone's profile can tell a lot about a person, similar to how a tattoo would on someone's body.

In "The Small and Surprisingly Dangerous Detail the Police Track About You" Ted Talk by Catherine  Crump, she elaborates on how the government is becoming too involved with our personal lives through location tracking and license plate readers. This information reveals where and when people go as well as who they are with at the time they are tracked. The federal government stores this information for "just in case" purposes, meaning that if someone were to eventually commit a crime, law enforcement has all the tracking information they need about that person before, during, and after the crime was committed. I believe that law enforcement having this kind of information can be very useful for those purposes, however I also think it is a major civil liberties threat to citizens. America is supposed to feel safe and secure according to the Constitution, so why is it okay that the government can track our every move?

In the Ted Talk, "How to Avoid Surveillance... With the Phone in Your Pocket," by Christopher Soghoian, he reveals that cell phones were originally wired for surveillance purposes before they were a common way of communication. Although tech companies have mostly out smarted wiretapping and have installed encryption pieces into their devices, this makes the government extremely angry since their citizens' information isn't as easily available. In my opinion, I feel much better about technology than I did before because I didn't realize how much more difficult it was for the government to tap into our information as it was before. Soghoian believes that we should continue to use text messaging, FaceTime, and calling on our phones because we are more protected than we think. Although this is reassuring, I will probably still continue to think about if the government is tracking my every move when on my cell phone.

In "How Revenge Porn Turns Lives Upside Down" by Darieth Chisolm, she explains her controlling and manipulative relationship with her ex-boyfriend and how he made her life miserable through cyberbullying, also known as "revenge porn." The major problem with revenge porn is the large amount of people that are affected by it every year and the lack of laws that prevent it from happening again. After listening to Chisolm's story, it made me so angry that she had to go through almost a full year of court dates, reliving the horror over and over again, all while still having her body exposed publicly online. Although justice was finally served, revenge porn still remains to be a problem today and I admire her bravery on sharing her story with the world.

After watching all of these Ted Talk videos on privacy, I am somehow both more scared yet more calm about technology. Although I know that technology and social media have the capability to be private, they are still very very public platforms for everyone to see. I think the biggest fear of them all is how long will privacy even be a thing anymore? How long will it be before technology completely takes over the world?


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