Privacy, Online and Off

Flock cameras are becoming more abundant and track people's every daily move. 

In class on September 10th, we watched two TED talks and discussed online privacy and how it is changing for the worst.

One of the most eye-opening lessons from the videos and lecture was how surveillance has become a normal part of daily life. Whether it comes from government agencies or private companies, huge amounts of information are being collected about us every day without our knowledge of it.

Law enforcements, such as police and the FBI, now have access to technologies that can track people's movements in ways that would have seemed impossible a generation ago. Automatic license plate readers record the locations of vehicles, while cell tower dumps and Stingray devices can identify and track phones. When these records are combined into large databases, they create detailed pictures of where people go, who they interact with, and what activities they participate in.

Automatic license plate readers (ALPRs)

This is an enormous breech of citizens' personal privacy, and most people don't even realize that it's happening. 

At the same time, private companies collect vast amounts of personal information. Search histories, browsing habits, purchases, social media activity, and even health-related information can be gathered and analyzed. This alone violates HIPAA laws, which were put in place to protect our medical privacy in the first place.

Our in-class lecture compared this process to building a "digital dossier." A single piece of information may not seem important, but thousands of data points combined can reveal a person's beliefs, interests, emotional state, and behavior patterns with surprising accuracy.

What concerned me the greatest was the idea that most of this information is collected through everyday activities. Using a smartphone, browsing the internet, accepting a terms-of-service agreement, or speaking near a smart device like an Amazon Echo, or "Alexa," can contribute to a growing digital profile that the government has access to whenever they want.

Amazon Echo's are always listening to you.

These issues affect me, my friends, and my family because our personal information often feels less
private than we assume. Everything from social media posts to online purchases can become part of a permanent digital footprint. Information that seems insignificant today may later influence how advertisers, companies, schools, or employers view us.

Thankfully, there are some steps that individuals can take to protect themselves. 

Practicing good digital hygiene, deleting cookies, clearing browser histories, being careful about what is posted online, and critically thinking before accepting data-sharing agreements can all reduce your privacy risks, and will probably help you sleep better at night.

Disclaimer: Microsoft Copilot was used to form this blog post. I took extensive and detailed notes during the TED Talks and lecture, and submitted them to Copilot to help turn said notes into a blog post with no outside supplemental research.