Privacy, Online and Offline

Is Anything Private Anymore?

After watching the TED talks and doing other research on the lack of privacy we have now as citizens, it is a very scary thing to think about. There are so many scenarios of people's privacy being breached and having information about them they do not want to be completely open to the public eye. It is truly a very scary thing. It raises the question for people like myself who are scared of the lack of privacy and for the people who have no idea that this is happening, what does this new technology mean for us in the future and how will my life and privacy be changed.

A study created by Inside Science states that your smartphone after a certain amount of usage ends up knowing more about you than you know about yourself. That is something that is extremely scary to think about. Never before in human history have we had machines be able to know more information about us than any other human being in history including ourselves. These devices know more about what we like to do in our free time, what we want to do in our lives, and even who we are affectionate about. There is some information about us that we simply do not want others to know about, but after watching these videos it may seem like hiding information about anything may seem impossible.

These videos affect not just me, my family, and my friends, but it affects everybody. There is no reason why the government needs to be storing my information unless I pose a threat to the United States. Even then I would like them to provide solid evidence to how I am doing that before they decide to look at all of my information. 

The government is looking at this situation from two points of view. One point of view is on the side of the people and they understand that most people do not feel that it is right that the government is able to wiretap a phone call or look through our emails and text messages. On the other side, governments are looking at this saying that these practices that they are using is to insure the safety of the American people. I understand both sides but I do have to agree with what Christopher Soghoian thinks, which is that even though it may be harder to solve crimes, it is violating our rights and it is unlawful to be wiretapping and keeping information on every citizen.

As we have learned, it is very hard to be private online. But it is something that we have to start taking much more seriously. We need to think before we send that picture to a friend, think before we post that photo on your social media, think before we repost that news article, we need to live in a world where we are much more cautious about what we allow the world to see and what we decide to hide. We as human beings are entitled to keeping certain information that we do not want people to know to ourselves.

If I want to go to a therapist I do not need the government to know that my car is at the therapist office every week. If I decide I need to check myself into alcohol anonymous, it should remain anonymous, it is in the name!

Overall the war on privacy is something that is not going to end. We need to make sure as a society we are voicing our opinions to let the government know that certain things need to remain private. People used to threaten people with death, now people can threaten a person with immortality, let's hope someday we can change that.