Blog #8: It's Time to Freak Out About Privacy

 

Your online life, permanent as a tattoo

In this video, Juan Enriquez spoke about how things you post online and on social media are never erased. The things you say and post online never go away, they are permanent and stay there forever.

These issues affect me because most of the time I do not think about what I post on social media and that even if I delete it, it will never be deleted. This means that pictures of me doing things I love and pictures of me with my family will never be deleted and could be used for marketing purposes.

The government should be telling citizens what they will be doing with the things we post or say online because we consider this to be private. Meanwhile the government believes they can do whatever they want with our information because we agree to terms when we join social media apps.

To protect ourselves from our pictures and things we say being used for purposes we did not agree to, we should think about what we are posting online before we post it. Ask yourself, "Do I want this picture to stay online and follow me forever?"

In the second video, Catherine Crump talks about NSA survelliance equipment that has made its way to small towns to track your everyday movements.

This affects me because when I am home visiting my mom, I get in her car and we drive where we need to go. This means that pictures have been taken of me and my mom when we drive to the store or to a friends house.

The government should be telling local police departments to not hold on to the data or pictures they have of people's license plates if they did not do anything wrong because that is simply tracking our every movement. People did not sign up for this.

In the third video, Christopher Soghoian discusses how the phones in our pockets are surveilling us. Every phone call and every text message we make is being tracked by our phone companies.

Cell phones were built with the ability to track these things first, then came the ability to call and text someone. Cell phone companies wanted to track us before they gave us a service.

These issues affect me because I make phone calls and text people every day using my cell phone. Now knowing what my cell phone company is collecting every time I make a phone call or send a text message makes me more conscious of what I say over the phone or in a text message.

The government should be telling cell phone companies that they cannot listen to our phone calls or collect and read our text messages because we did not give them permission to do that. People trust that their phone calls and text messages are a private conversation between them and other person, not including their phone company.

To protect ourselves from this invasion of privacy, people can do research on when their phone company listens to their conversation and how they record these calls and what they do with them. Phone companies should answers our questions about how they listen to our conversations.

In the fourth video, Darieth Chisolm talks about revenge porn. Revenge porn is when someone cannot physically harm you, so they post nude pictures of you in order to harm you online.

This affects me because I am a woman under 30 years of age and statistically those are the people most prone to be affected by revenge porn. Also, it makes me wonder if intimacy can be achieved knowing these odds.

The government should be trying to pass laws that would make the consequences of revenge porn more serious. Currently, someone would get a $500 dollar fine if they were found posting revenge porn of someone.

It is technically currently considered a civil dispute. A $500 dollar fine is like a slap on the wrist to people who partake in ruining lives that cannot be rebuilt.