Digital Privacy

Technology has taken over our world as we once knew it. As Professor Smith wrote, technology is wonderful, until it turns against us. It has turned against us in many ways that most people are completely oblivious too. 

Juan Enriquez talks about our electronic tattoos that identify who we are in the digital world. He goes on to say that there are people tracking what we like and dislike, what we’re searching, and distinctive information about us. Technology has become so evolved that there is even facial recognition built into our devices and on social media platforms. He gives a quite terrifying example of what our society has become - you can take a picture of someone in a bar and know their name and all of their information without even starting a conversation. This reminds me of an ad for a new technology I recently saw. There is this new company called Popl and it’s a small round chip that attaches to the back of your phone. When you scan the device it links you to all of the person's social media accounts. In the commercial I saw, this guy walked up to the girl, tapped her phone with his and was following her on all of her social media without saying a word. 

Catherine Crump speaks about the abuse of technology data in our police and government systems. Crump speaks about automatic license plate reader technology hidden all over America. These readers take snapshots of civilians that depict the plate number, location, date, and time, and even can show who you are with. The police have collected all of this data and often it is used for tracking cars that have done wrong but they also keep all of everyone else’s data just to have. While driving long trips from North Carolina back to Connecticut I have always noticed several camera looking devices on the highways and even a flash once in a while - similar to when getting your photograph taken on a rollercoaster - unexpected. I have never received a ticket in the mail for any of these snapshots so I have always been curious if they have these images of me filed away. 

Christopher Soghoian speaks about how in the past telephone companies assisted the government in wiretapping and even how it was a first priority for our phone network to make our calls wiretap accessible. This means that anyone can be listening in on our calls when we’re talking to someone on the phone including the government, telephone networks, or even hackers or criminals. The government was mad when companies like Apple encrypted messaging and Facetime because this made it more difficult to wiretap and the government believes they should have access to all of our forms of communication. Some may not believe this but if you think about it if the government is able to wiretap drug dealers or terrorists what makes you think they aren’t able to do it to you?

Sources:

youtube.com/watch?v=pcSlowAhvUk