Privacy, online and off (7)

Privacy has always been something people want and feel they deserve as a citizen. I am one of those citizens that believes I should be granted privacy. This is not because I am or have done anything "sketchy" or plan to. It is more of a comfort factor knowing my personal business and whatnot is private and is information I chose to disclose, not a website or the government. In these TED Talk videos, I was able to learn quite a lot of new information that shocked me to be quite honest. The level of surveillance and privacy breaching that has been going on is crazy to me. For example, in Juan Enriquez's TED Talk he discusses how your digital footprint lasts forever essentially. He states that every single thing you do on the internet follows you and is a tattoo on you for the rest of your life. That sounds pretty extreme, maybe because it is. He discusses that your every move on the internet can be traced back to you with no problem which is very scary. Another scary subject Juan discussed was how the company that does advanced facial recognition for apps and devices was just bought by Facebook. We all know how intrusive Facebook has been in the past and I'm sure still is. This is somewhat surprising to me at first but in reality, it is not because of Zuckerburg and Facebook's past. In another TED Talk by Catherine Crump, she talks about how police are able to survey you without you even knowing. Crump goes into detail regarding police forces being given military-grade level technology. At first, you may not pose this as the biggest issue ever however, here is the problem. Police are able to scan license plates from a distance and determine who the car is licensed to and if they have any prior arrests and whatnot, but the technology that is able to do this saves all data collected every single time it is used. This is where the problem arises because the system police have been given works on its own. The officer does not need to operate this for it to work, it does it automatically. This allows for the government to track where you are once you enter your car and can see where you are going. 

In conclusion, anything you do online using a device related to you or even anything you do in public is tracked. Nothing you do online is 100% private, there is always a way for the government or private companies to track what you are doing at that moment or what you had been doing. I think that U.S citizens have known this for a while to a certain extent. We all knew that there was some level of surveillance online when we enter websites and such but I certainly was not aware of how heavy the surveillance is. For example, have you ever been talking about something you want to a friend during the day and you get an ad for it on your phone or computer later that day? Well yeah me too. This has always creeped me out and it has happened to so many people that it cannot be a coincidence. Edward Snowden is also another great example of revealing how much the government spies on you. Snowden was a computer programmer who worked for the NSA (National Security Agency). Snowden found some very disturbing information regarding the invasive surveillance techniques used by the government and leaked this information. Long story short, Edward Snowden now lives in Russia under the pretense if he returns to the U.S he will go to prison. Overall the level of government surveillance has always creeped me out however, after these videos I am much more creeped out but much more aware of what I am doing online with my digital footprint.