Blog #8: Privacy

 Privacy Ted Talks

Intro 

    Our privacy in today's world is something that is often taken lightly. Many people don't realize how little privacy they have online, and when looking at what people and the government are able to get about you, it can be a shocking experience.

Ted Talk #1:

    The first Ted Talk comes from a man named Juan Enriquez, who talks about "electronic tattoos". What he means by electronic tattoos is that your information online tells a far greater story than any actual tattoo. There is technology now that can look at a picture, see your face, and bring up all sorts of information about you. The part where it gets really freaky is when he brings up the company Face.com, which is a company that developed a platform for efficient facial recognition. The applications had collected a total of 18 billion faces in 2011, and the really scary part is that this company was bought by Facebook in 2012. Who knows how many faces they have collected at this point?

Ted Talk #2:

    The second Ted Talk is by Catherine Crump. She goes into detail on how local police departments are being more and more equipped with military technology. The thing she focuses on in this talk is the use of license plate readers that are everywhere in this country, while we don't even notice them. These cameras take pictures of every passing car and their license plate, and go to a database where the police can look at hundreds of pictures of you or your family's car. She even gave an example of how police officers in New York City have used these cameras around mosques to see who is going in and out of these buildings. 

Example of the pictures taken by this technology

Ted Talk #3:

    The next Ted Talk done by Christopher Soghoian talks about our privacy when we are using our phones. When it comes to phone calls, at any point, someone could be listening in, and easily for that matter. It doesn't even have to be our own government, the government of another country, hackers, and other criminals are able to wiretap our calls. Where we can somewhat protect ourselves is when it comes to text messages. Texting another iPhone from your iPhone is hard to tap into, and using applications like WhatsApp are also difficult to get to. The government is very against access to all of our calls and texts being blocked, so it brings up the controversy, while having access to such information can help bring down criminals, is it okay for regular citizens to be monitored constantly?

Ted Talk #4:

    The last Ted Talk is by former news anchor and life coach, Darieth Chisolm. She goes into detail of her experience of revenge porn. Her ex-boyfriend was responsible for leaking a number of photos of her while sleeping naked, and even threatening her life. She brings up the shocking statistic of 1 in 25 women have been affected by revenge porn, and the statistic for women under 30, that number goes to 1 in 10 women. Unfortunately there is little legislation and laws to punish those responsible for this. At the time of this Ted Talk, there was only 1 federal bill pending, called the Enough Act by Kamala Harris, but it could take years to pass.