Privacy: Online and Off

After watching the Ted talks I have further realized that our government has made it impossible for us as citizens to have any privacy at all. Not only does social media keep taps on us and only show us what we are interested in, but so does security cameras, automatic license plate trackers, and telephones. 

In the first Ted Talk, tattoos were referred to as what the internet knows about us. Tattoos on a person's body can tell us what they have been through, what they care about, and even the date that a loved one of theirs died. Facebook, twitter, Google, LinkedIn, cell phones, GPS, yelp, security cameras, etc are electronic tattoos that provide us with as much information about you as any tattoo would. 

Something that I learned that I found especially alarming is that now with how accurate face recognition is, you can take a picture of a random person, the Internet will tell you who they are and provide you with all their social medias in all records of them. Surveillance equipment is another very alarming device that allows for a mince amounts of information to be gathered on us, such as where we go, what our routines are, and so on. 

Automatic license plate trackers also allow for a mass amount of information to be collected on who you are, where are you go, and who you are with. License plate trackers are everywhere on police cars and stationed on poles on the roads. An innocent civilian who has never been convicted of a crime, who often drives in American, can go to their local police station and find that there are multiple pictures of you driving in your car, (that states the date and time) and even shows who is in the car with you. 

Another scary fact is that our cellphones and the networks that carry our calls were wired for surveillance first and foremost, along with cell phone towers can track where you are at any time you are making a phone call. 

Not only do these issues stated in these Ted Talks affect me, my friends, and my family, but they affect everyone in the United States of America. We should all be more knowledgeable about these issues and understand that we are all studied and tracked. 

The government should not allow for this much of our information to be out there for anyone to see and should set laws that help protect our privacy. 

To protect ourselves from these invasions of our privacy we should often use third party apps to communicate such as WhatsApp. We should also use FaceTime to talk on the phone instead of a regular phone call since FaceTime can not be intercepted.