Ted Talks and the Online World
In the first ted talk that was posted, I learned about electronic tattoos and face recognition. Electronic tattoos stay online long after we are gone; they are online forever. These are similar to tattoos because they tell a story, have a meaning to them, and are there forever and cannot truly be removed. Face recognition has gotten to the point where you can take a picture of people at a bar and it will tell you that person's name which will lead you to more information about them. On Facebook, if you take a photo and someone is standing in the background, it will tag them in the picture based on face recognition. This can be very damaging because it can lead dangerous people to find out everything about you.
In the second ted talk, it talked about location information and how the government can track you anywhere you go. If you go to AA meetings, church, or the airport, the government will know. This is helpful if they were only tracking criminals, but they are tracking everybody. The government can get a detailed portrait on you that once was private information. The way they do this is by automatic license plate readers. These license plate readers are able to capture the license plates of every vehicle that drives by it and they are located everywhere. It is able to take pictures of you and whoever is in the car as well as even a picture of you and your kids getting out of the car in your own driveway.
The third ted talk that I watched was about telephone companies and the wiretapping assistance to governments. These cell phone companies that we trust have actually built in surveillance software inside of the phones which allows for anyone to be able to listen while you are on the phone with someone. However, Apple and WhatsApp cannot be easily wire-tapped because they have started to be encrypted in order to protect our privacy. The government officials are not happy about this at all. The encryption is making it hard for them to get the information they want so they are trying to get the encryption removed.
The final ted talk that I watched was dealing with something called digital domestic violence. This woman's ex-boyfriend created a website and posted nude images online of her, without her consent, for the world to see. This caused her to be depressed and not know what to do for months. She had to pay tons of money for lawyers and spent months going back and forth to and from the court. In the U.S. there are very small penalties and no laws against this. However, in Jamaica, they actually arrested him and if found guilty, he will have to pay thousands of dollars in fines. She is fighting to change the law here in the U.S. so that no one has to deal with that again.
The digital world has turned into the scariest world we could live in. No one is safe from it and even something that was posted 10 years ago and deleted, or even something that was posted of you without your consent, will be online forever.
Comments
Post a Comment