Blog #7

These TED talks were all very interesting and things that I did not know or did not consider. In the first Ted Talk given by Juan Enriquez, he compares someone's online presence to tattoos. He calls it an 'electronic tattoo'. He questions if online platforms that hold your information can tell as much about who you are as any tattoo could. I think this is a really interesting comparison and something that I had never thought about but agreed with. When growing up and learning about internet safety, different educators always heavily pushed me to be careful about my digital footprint. I was always told that once something is on the internet, it's out there forever. I have always been conscious about what I put online for this reason. 

In the second TED talk given by Catherine Crump, she discusses police license plate recognition. I've always known that we can be tracked, but I was not aware of automatic license plate readers. I also did not know that mass data on where Americans have gone is being collected and stored. I was shocked by the pictures of the man with his kids getting out of their car outside their home. I think that is overstepping, we should be able to walk outside our house without being watched. This one was not as concerning to me as the other videos. 

This TED talk given by Christopher Soghoian highlights surveillance through our cell phones. This is something I have always thought about and figured was happening. I did feel better about the fact that text messages and video calls on iPhones are not easily wiretapped. Even though there is nothing concerning my phone, it's just a privacy thing, no one wants people reading their personal messages. One of the other things that was discussed was how can governments still watch for criminals without compromising the data of secure citizens. I think in this case, all we can do is be careful with what we do on our phones and agree to. I never thought much about all the things that I agreed to online before this class. Since discussing the online cookies I have tried to be better about automatically hitting agree to all. 

The last TED talk was Darieth Chisolm, which discusses revenge porn. I think this is one of the most disgusting things in society today. Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence. This should not be something women, or anyone should have to worry about or deal with, and is a vile breach of privacy. The only thing I think you can do is try to protect yourself as much as possible. In this specific story, she was sleeping, there was no way for her to know what was going on and what would happen. It's horrific that anyone would do that. Laws should be stricter against revenge porn, as it is the ultimate breach of privacy.