Blog #7: Digital Privacy

 

In a TED Talk given by Juan Enriquez, our online presence is compared to a tattoo. They both define parts of who we are, and much like the tattoo ink put into our skin, our online presence is permanent. Enriquez calls the technological footprints that we leave behind electronic tattoos. It can never be erased, and in a sense, this makes us immortal. We must be careful what we post.

Local police departments can gather a lot of information about us—information that we never willingly handed over to them. Catherine Crump discusses this in one of her TED Talks.

She discussed location tracking. This tracking allows local police departments to make inferences about us. They have plate leaders which, simply put, are cameras that can take pictures of car’s license plates—even if you did nothing that warrants surveillance. There are also cell towers that can track your location based on cell phone activity.

Cell Phone Tower

Crump says, “Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it's not there.” This quote really resonated with me, and it is an important thing to be wary of.

In a third TED Talk presented by Christopher Soghoian, Christopher discussed how the telephones and networks we use are “first and foremost” wired for surveillance. However, big companies such as Apple and Facebook have created encrypting technology which actively prevent this surveillance. This upsets the government—especially because these big technology companies make this encryption a default setting on their products.

Soghoian talks about the controversy surrounding wiretapping. Yes, there are bad people in the world that need to be tapped However, we as the public do not. The truth is, if we allow wiretapping to occur, there is always the possibility that “bad guys” other than our American government will hack into our information.

At the end of the day, Chrisotpher says it may be harder to catch bad people by encrypting technology, but it will keep the general public’s information secure and protected.

Darith Chisolm also gives a TED Talk regarding the protection of our online information. In her speech, Chisolm gets vulnerable and personal, detailing her experience with what she called digital domestic violence.

Digital domestic violence is the term for when a controlling ex cannot get to you in a physical sense, so they use the internet to manipulate you. Chisolm shares statistics that show that, like her, one in every twenty-five women have been affected by revenge porn. Revenge porn—the nonconsensual online sharing of someone else's nude photos—is a severe problem that can result in job loss and even suicide.

Darith ends by explaining that no one should have to go through the humiliation she faced and that we should “release the shame and end the silence” surrounding this issue.

Overall, all four of these TED talks demonstrate the need to be cautious and protective of our online imformation.