Privacy: The Daily Give and Take

 Privacy is often thought of as an unspoken yet understood right. You don’t have to tell people around you to not ease drop on your conversations, people just generally know to be respectful of your privacy.

 However what happens when someone oversteps that barrier of trust. Or even worse what happens when it it your own government?

In America and across the entire globe, one thing we all have in common is our use of technology. No matter the level of advancement we all use in some way in order to live our daily lives. 

Whether its driving a car to work, checking the forecast, calling in sick or mowing the lawn. Technology is universal, and it is everywhere for everyone to use. 

The problem is when it gets misused, Christopher Soghoian spoke about the early inventions of cell phones. He emphasized that they were first and foremost created with surveillance in mind. In today’s world they have certainly kept up with that original idea. 

On apps like Snapchat you can go on and see where anyone is at any moment. If you don’t want your location to show you have to go in and manually uncheck that box. It is almost as if having everyone who follows able to track you at any moment is normal. 

The government is not naive of this information, in fact it was their idea in the first place. Cathrine Crump’s Ted Talk topic was on just this the amount of surveillance that the government has on us. She explains that police cars and certain polls on the highways take periodic pictures of everyone’s license plates. 

This information is used and kept on hard drives just in case they will need it later. She also explains the idea of the phone dump. Phone dumps are used by police to see which phones were in a certain area at a given time. If you are hearing these terms for the first time they can sound creepy and like an invasion. 

However, personally this is not the first time that I have heard of such things. Phone dumps can be very helpful for police to solve crimes. For example, lets say a young woman goes missing on a busy street corner with no cameras. 

Cops could use phone dumps to track her phone and see if there is another phone near her during the time of her abduction. That phone likely belongs to her captor and that could help police find her or at least see who has taken her. 

Off all of the Ted Talks that I watched the one that was most compelling was the one by Darieth Chisolm. She spoke about her traumatizing experience of being a victim of revenge porn. When her controlling ex-boyfriend couldn’t accept the break up, he posted nude photos he surreptitiously took of her while she slept.

However finding out was just the beginning of her story. She discovered though this process that there were’t any laws to protect her form this violation. In the study of victimology, which is the study of victims as they are effected by their crimes. She is a perfect example of how trauma can effect victims for a very long time.

 Revenge porn,  is when people post fake explicit photos or videos of a person. Or they post real photos and videos without the persons knowledge or consent. It is something that we see a lot more in the news today and it has had devastating effects on victims lives. 

In todays world technology and privacy go hand in hand and it is looking more and more like you can’t have one without the other. None of these topics made me feel fearful however I do feel more aware of the different things that are possible. 

Especially where there are not that many privacy laws or protections when it comes to social media apps of today. However I am hopeful that with more public concern and with more people advocating like Darieth Chisolm we will see reform in the coming years.