blog post 7 privcay

privacy

Based on the TED talk videos we watched, I noticed that the main issue of privacy is deeply connected to surveillance by our government.This deeply affects our generation considering that the 21st century is surrounded by technology, mainly our telephones. In one of the videos, there were several points made about telephones which seems very scary but sadly true. The third TEDtalk video with Christopher Soghoian, he states that “our telephones and the networks that carry our phone calls were wired for surveillance. Throughout the video, he also states that “ apps that are used by hundreds and millions of people around the world, such as WhatsApp which is owned by Facebook, have built strong encryption technologies into its product which means that people in the global south can easily communicate with family and friends without their governments wiretapping their text messages. Another interesting thing that Soghoian points out is “what upsets  the government the most, is that tech companies built these encryption features into their products by default’.Therefore some government officials believe that all of these communications should be available to them. As a daily telephone user, sometimes I fear whether or not our American government or other governments , even hackers, could be listening to every phone call, or tracking every email, or text message that I send to my family and friends. My friends and family are also frequent telephones users and some of them have the same concerns as I do.I think that the government should put certain laws in action that address data security, and most importantly, the government should consider how some agencies handle and protect personal information.

Based on what was mentioned in the TED talk videos, ways that we can protect ourselves from invasions of our privacy include, limiting personal information we share on social media. When we provide too much information on social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter ect, can become easier for cybercriminals to obtain identification which also allows them to steal identity or access financial information. Another way that we can protect ourselves from invasions of privacy is to use more virtual private network (VPN) which is a network that gives you privacy by creating a private network on a public network.