Privacy? What Privacy? Blog Post #5

Ted Talks have been a staple in the classrooms for many years now, once again in class this week we got to see some more Ted Talks. Each video had a different idea that was brought forward, but they all have a central idea that connects them. The topic is Data Privacy and Data Collection and how we as people always have eyes on us. For people hearing this for the first time, it might be enough to make someone panic.

The video that caught my eye and raised some interesting points was Your online life, permanent as a tattoo. In this video we see the comparison of a tattoo to our online presence where everything we have ever published from Twitter to Instagram is visible. Juan Enriquez even poked fun at the fact we will be immortal with these digital tattoos. 

These digital tattoos themselves affect my family and me because now forever whenever something is posted it stays around. With any big-time job, a company can go back to see anything they want, and if any bad videos or pictures taint a reputation your chances at the job plummet. With the issue of digital tattoos creating immortality, the government may have to step in. With this issue, I think the government should use software to sift through all the bad videos and figure out how to make the nation safer and the good videos should be deleted to save room in the databases. To protect ourselves from this invasion of privacy we can be careful of what we post. If we do not incriminate ourselves there is no need for the government to go through all of our media and try and find something that we can be charged on. 

There was also a second video that caught my eye and that video was Christopher Soghoian's talk about How to avoid surveillance... with the phone in your pocket.  In this video the highlighted the topic that with cell phones and media in general we are always being watched. One of Christopher's points against this surveillance is the companies in Silicon Valley that have made their technology very hard to survey. 

The surveillance issues affect me as a person because I am always being watched. I always have to be worried if I buy things online that my credit card information may be stolen or maybe my identity will be stolen. This is where I want the government to step in and help create a nationwide VPN or something to protect the web so people are safer. They will never do it because the government also wants to watch the citizen's media along with the hackers. Finally, to protect ourselves if there is no nationwide VPN people should buy their own to protect themselves. These days, all we can do is be cautious about the media and protect ourselves.