Blog Post #8 "Privacy"

Privacy, something that we should all have but what if we discovered our lives were not as private as we thought. When watching the Ted Talk by Juan Enriquez, he asks the audience about tattoos. Sounds pretty random right? Well the thing about tattoos is that they are permanent, forever on you, following you wherever you go. However, as Enriquez highlights, we have electronic tattoos. These "tattoos provide enough information that could easily generate a story about you." When he talked about facial recognition on iPhones and how it can tell you if that is your face or not it became pretty creepy. 

At one point in the clip, you heard the audience gasp as he talked about a website known as, "face.com." This website contained hundred of millions of photos of peoples faces due to facial recognition. Well, in 2012 this website was sold to Facebook. As someone who has an iPhone and knows that there is a section in my photos where it will show me faces of other people and even try and match their names to the photos. It never dawned on me how creepy this truly was. 

When watching Catherine Crumps Ted Talk, I got an even creepier portrait of what it is like to not only be watched by big tech companies but the government. What if I told you that everything you did was under constant surveillance? Picked up by traffic cams, locations from your phone that ping your whereabouts. It is as if there is a constant narrator on you depicting every minuscule aspect of your life. 

This information used to be private but because of big tech companies it has been so widely exposed to absolutely any and everyone. However, one of the most compelling and job dropping Ted Talk videos was Christopher Soghoian. Who discussed that we are all being wire tapped by companies that can then go on to give this information to the government. Think of the TikTok app, have you ever said something that you did not look up but you said it near or around your phone and now you are getting personalized TikTok videos on that subject? What if you discovered that you were not going crazy but instead being listened to? 

This information is then used to learn more about that you, more than you may even know about yourself. It tries to predict future behaviors and patterns to learn every tiny bit about you. After watching these videos it makes me think about how often we are being watched. Due to the technological advancements we have in our society today, there is no way you can avoid your privacy being impeded unless you were to carry a burner phone, not have any social media, not get a licensed tag plate/passport. Anything that has ever identified you can help not only local law enforcement but the government keep tabs on you. I don't know about you, but I think that is pretty scary.