Ted Talk

Watching these videos, the first issue that can affect me, my friends, and family is facial recognition. Not only do I have that on my phone, but everyone around me also does as well. And just by giving them that information, they can find a plethora of more information on you that you don’t want them to have. And there is nothing you can do for them now to not have that information, unfortunately. Also, the government can now gain a detailed portrait of how private citizens interact through technology. Now the government has access to things not only in my personal life but in everyone's who has technology. It's also scary to even think that if you have a car in the United States, they have a picture of you in your car going about your daily life.

It is understandable why the police have things like high-tech surveillance, but where the issue lies is when they have so much information on people. It is extremely easy to track people who did nothing wrong and are just living their lives. But the TED Talk does explain that there are steps to help prevent these things from happening. One of the ways this can be prevented is by city councils passing laws requiring the police to dispose of the data of innocent people. I believe it is good that it is at least an option to get rid of the data of innocent people, but it is also scary to think that some town councils don’t pass these laws to get rid of all the data, so there could be so much data on innocent people. It makes me wonder how much data is out there on me and people around me when I have no criminal record.

Government and technology are tricky because the majority of the reason the government almost “stalks” you is for safety purposes. They can figure out a lot if they track a phone, like if someone is going to attack us, if someone is going to hurt someone else, rob someone, and many other things that could be harmful. But what’s hard is that innocent people don’t want their phone calls being tracked by not only the government but also other people. As far as the government helping people with technology being so invasive, it will be harder for them to help when they are also a part of the problem. I feel like the government needs to be less invasive for people to feel at ease, because people are not going to feel comfortable if they feel like every time they open up their phone someone is watching or listening to them. 

As far as protecting ourselves, it is definitely something that will pose a challenge. Even if you don’t have a phone, there will still be information out there about you, as explained in one of the TED Talks about the police databases. I think the main thing to do is just to take those extra precautions, like having all your accounts private and having extra steps to log into things like your email and a lot more. I feel like no one ever has complete privacy, which is unfortunate, but you can take extra steps to try and help have some sort of privacy.