Blog Post #8 Privacy, Online & Off

    In today's technology, everything is different, and nothing is seen as private. Technology has expanded and adapted more and more as we go. We have fingerprint and facial scanning on our phones, but technology and identity goes deeper than getting into your phone. Electronic tattoos and facial recognition are seen everywhere now; these images can get all of someone's information. Face.com is a website talked about in this TED talk. It is a website with people's faces scanned and uploaded, giving all types of information from name to credit score. These electronic tattoos will live longer than we do. Be careful what you post online because it is forever like a digital tattoo. Nothing can be erased. 

Most people have no idea how much their privacy is violated on a daily basis in  TED talk by Catherine Crump, she talks about Mass surveillance. Mass surveillance is helping police gather information that was never possible before. Location can be seen on this surveillance, where you go and what you do, giving the government an inner scoop of what happens behind closed doors. Police make guesses based on this location tracking. The government has thousands of pictures of us doing our daily lives even when you do nothing wrong. The federal government is collecting all this information showing where we traveled. In the TED talk, we were shown a situation of a guy who asked police for the pictures of his license plate that they took, and thousands of photos came up of him walking by his car and driving in it and then even being able to identify who is in the car. Every time you drive by a police car, whether or not you are doing something wrong, it takes an image. If this doesn't have you shocked about privacy, keep reading.

In a following TED talk was about wiring and phones and cell services being hacked. When talking on the phone, someone can always be listening. A hacker, a criminal, the US government to another government. The iPhone is hard to wire the same with WhatsApp. These companies' ability to encrypt their phones and services has the government mad. They cannot see messages and track our calls and texts. In the TED talk, he talks about how it will make the police's job more problematic when it comes to tapping a criminal phone, but it is for the sake of our freedom and our privacy. I agree with him. I'd rather have better protection and inscription and have the police have difficulty than be spied on.

People in the world are cruel. They will take any information or evidence they can get and ruin your reputation. We have to be careful and stand for better privacy rules and regulations. The scary truth is this isn't even when we always pay attention. Technology is always listening to our conversations. Everything around us always has eyes on us, and it is unfair we deserve to be able to walk and be free without being spied on. Our government should protect us from this new technology and give people the right not to worry about the risk of our private information and lives being leaked.