Privacy, Online and Off

While online privacy is something relevant to all of us, the issues raised in these TedTalks are areas of online privacy that I had not specifically considered before. The second and third videos focusing on surveillance particularly resonated with me. The fact that something as simple as driving allows the government to gather information and data on you is shocking and disturbing. Automatic license plate readers keeping record of every plate and tracking trips to therapy, doctors offices, alcoholic anonymous meetings, and more is an obstruction of privacy and an injustice to all of us. Furthermore, telephone surveillance has allowed any phone call for over 100 years to be tapped by anyone from our government, to another government, to a hacker or stalker. It is only with the recent development of Silicon Valley companies that encryption technology has been incorporated into these devices, protecting privacy in this way.

Government involvement in areas of online privacy is a difficult issue because of the tension between their potential to help solve the problem and their negative complicity in the problem. For example, when governments use online surveillance in traffic and telephone calls to collect data on dangerous people, there is nothing restricting them from also collecting data on regular citizens. In my opinion, the government should extract all involvement in online surveillance and use their position of power to protect their citizens from all privacy breaches online.

I see issues of online privacy in my own life through social media. I know so many people who have been hacked on Instagram, and their photos have been posted on hacker accounts promoting some kind of false identity or porn platform. Also, my friends and I often joke that “the government is listening to us,” because shortly after talking about a certain topic, we will have ads pop up on our social media about that exact topic. I think that to protect ourselves from invasions of privacy online, it is crucial to take measures like making personal accounts private, creating secure passwords, and reading all terms and conditions closely before accepting anything.