Privacy(Blog #4)

I knew that the world we live in could be a scary place sometimes, but after watching these TED talks about our privacy being invaded each day I feel frightened. It is absolutely horrifying knowing that every little move that I make throughout my day could easily be used against me, even if I simply just drove to the grocery store to buy a snack. This matter is something that should be talked about more and should have many more consequences than it does to our government today.

Personally, I am not the type of person to be known to have things on my phone that I shouldn't, and most things I tell to people I would be easily comfortable sharing with a crowd of people. I can admit there are some things that I say over text or phone calls that I would not want anyone else to know about, but that is the whole point of being able to speak with someone one-on-one digitally. The whole point of these one-on-one conversations is that you want only the person on the other end to know about what information you choose to give to them. If I am choosing to tell Sally that I plan to go to the mall tomorrow afternoon, why is it that the government needs to know this? Why does it concern them so much where I am? As someone who pays money out of their own pocket to have a cell phone, data signal, and wifi there should be no reason why people should be able to take my information and use it against me. 

    Not even just with phones, but also the whole deal with license plate scanners being every square inch away from me no matter where I am. Catherine Crump's TED Talk video caught my attention severely when she shared how easily our cars get tracked several times a day without us even knowing. The fact that police stations have records of random civilian cars in their own driveways, their own private property, is a complete invasion of privacy. It is funny how this information, again from someone who has done no harm or has no reason to be tracked, can be owned by the government even though the property they live on is privately owned and not owned by the government at all. It is not okay that for no reason whatsoever we are all being tracked for our every move. 

    

The government should not have this type of control over us and they should be worrying about bigger issues in our country. I mean aren't we getting involved in several attacks around the world right now, and they are worried about what phone call I am giving to my mother about getting an A on a quiz? Stuff like this really gets me thinking about all the things I can do to try and protect my privacy as much as I can. One thing that I have heard to be useful to add to your everyday life to try and prevent your information from being the property of the government all of a sudden is a good VPN. Using a VPN allows you to use your own private network when connected to other networks surrounding you. Many people I know use these when they are connected to public wifi and it restricts your access to certain websites and applications. Although this does help, these VPNs can help ensure a hacker cannot have access to what you are doing, because when you use these public networks everything you do underneath that network can be information to them. 

The world of technology can be a scary place so try and think before you send that text that could get you caught up in some sort of trouble. Although it is not right in any way, shape, or form for our private information and conversations to be owned by several networks, people, and the government, we must all either come together with our senses and create some sort of stop to it all, or all do our own part to the best of our ability to keep our information only our information. Simply researching ways to lessen the chance and excessive amounts of your information being taken from you can go a long way in the long term.