When we share pictures of our kids on Flickr, we probably don’t expect to see them turn up as faces on coffee mugs for sale on website Koppie-Koppie. Using Twitter (TWTR, Tech30) to comment on politics wasn’t supposed to land us in jail, as is happening in Turkey. Having a mobile phone with a SIM card wasn’t supposed to provide a perpetual backdoor to government security services that want to listen to our calls.
Source: CNN Tech
Date: February 19th, 2016
Link: http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/03/technology/privacy-mobile-world-congress/index.html
Discussion
1) Most people handily dismiss each of the actual situations in this article because “it won’t happen to me”, even though it already is happening to them. Why is there such a laissez-faire (French for “let it be”) attitude around ones privacy?
2) Are there ways to circumvent any of these issues listed here in the article?
Rayane Bedjaoui
1) Well nowadays most people tend to be very social and outgoing through the means of social media. It has almost become a way of life, and a tradition that must be followed, as the vast majority grew up with the full exposure of those social networks. It is a trend that is very hard to stop, as people are influenced by others, where if 90% of the population follow the technological route, the others are more likely to join, and unlikely to stop. We are actually the first or second generation who received that much of exposure to technology, where the consequences and drawbacks are still unknown. Since it’s unknown, those people aren’t afraid of using this technology, and therefore they go full steam ahead without any precautions. Partly, we cannot blame them, but perhaps they should be aware that all those benefits come at a cost, and as well the magnitude of the consequences can most definitely reach them.
2) Well, in my opinion the most productive way to deal with the potential consequences of technology as a whole, is to involve the government. The government should impose privacy security regulations for every technological related products, specially including social media. They should as far imposing fines and ban sanctions for those who do no follow the privacy regulations. Although this seems relatively easy to establish, the main issue is that most governments are not compliant with this. As they use technology for their own agenda, for example to listen to people conversation via SIM cards.
For that to be eradicated, we need a new political leader that understands the privacy of the people not as a privileged but as a right.