Privacy online and off

What flock cameras are doing.

The two videos I watched during class made me think about how much privacy or actually lack if privacy I have and how much privacy people are giving up without even realizing it. The first video my classmates and I watched focused on government and police surveillance, mainly flock cameras. 

These cameras can be useful for lawinforcment but they arent being used in a respectful way for citizens that have not commited crimes. Police officers are abusing there power, they are collecting information about people who have done nothing wrong.

 Liscense plate readers can record a plate along with the date, location and time, which means that storing enough of this information can create a long history of where someone has been and what they do during their day to day lives. 

Thus issue affects everyone around me because especially for me I am constanly going places without really thinking about who might be watching me. In highschool I would drive to school, after school programs, my friends houses. My dad drives to different job sites all day all around Connecticut, the vet, and down the shore. 

I understand why police want technology that can help solve crimes and see where dangerous people may be going, but I also don't think that innocent people should be getting followed just because the technology makes that an option. There needs to be a balance between public safety and people's right to privacy.

I think the government should work on creating stronger and clearer limits on how surveillance information can be collected and kept. Police should be able to use technology for legitimate investigations but only for that and I also think that their should be a specific team of law enforcement that are allowed access to this technology to stop the police officers that are absuing their power to stalk their ex partners.

The second video I watched in class has an idea of electronic tattoos, this really stood out to me because I started getting tattoos at 14 years old and personally I think my tattoos are a big part of my identity. The electronic tattoo idea was explained by showing social media and other online platforms create a digital record of our lives. The comparison to a tattoo makes so much sense to me  because something we post online can be almost impossible to delete just like getting an actual tattoo removed is extremly painful and expensive so its hard to get ride of as well. 

He also explained the stories of Sisyphus, Orpheus and Eurydice, Atalanta and Hippomenes, and Narcissus he comapered their stories with whats happening now and hekoed explain different problems with this. We can become stuck with things from our past, learn information about other people that we night have been happier not knowing, and have embarrassing posts, messages, or mistakes follow us long after the post date.

This obviously effects alot of people my age because majority of the life we live, we live it online. Something that may seem harmless when it is posted could look extremly bad years later. For example Proffesour Smith shared with us the story of two sorority girls a while ago posted a normal TikTok, they had skin care face masks on but they where "canceled" because the face masks where black and it was considered black face. We can't control everything that governments, companies, or other people collect, but we can control some of what we share. We can make accounts more private, use strong passwords, review app permissions, turn off unnecessary location sharing, and think before posting personal information.

Overall, both of the videos I watched in class showed me that privacy is becoming more and more public everyday due to technology. Technology can amke society safer and more convenient but it can also make it more dangerous. Governments need reasonable limits on surveillance, companies need to be more transparent about data/cookie collection and people need to pay more attention before hitting accept, allow or post. Technology should not be able to make privacy disappear.

AI DISCLOSURE: During the creation of this post the I used Copilot, Microsoft AI, and Grammarly. I took detailed notes while watching 2 videos about privacy and I took notes during the lecture. I used Copilot to organize my information and grammarly to fix my grammar and spelling.