Privacy Please!?! Privacy Online & Off

How do these issues affect you? Your friends and family?

After watching the Ted Talks about privacy issues and doing more research, I've found that most people are getting increasingly worried over privacy issues, with good reason. I know I am! I don't like how much companies and the government know about us based on our "digital tattoos." Not only are our online activities being tracked by "cookies" and sold to advertisers, but the internet has also become a tool for a form of abuse called cyber-harassment that 1 in 25 women have experienced. I worry about my younger nieces and nephews dealing with something like this, as well as my elderly grandparents being scammed by an unscrupulous company that got ahold of their data online or through their phones without them knowing or consenting to it. I'm reminded that I'm being tracked through social media and my phone every time I start seeing ads for products I have just been searching for, or talking to a friend about. 

What should the government be doing about these issues?

Many things in the US changed after 9/11. A change that the government enacted that had an extreme effect on our (lack of) privacy was the Patriot Act, passed into law under President George W. Bush. The act made it legal for criminal investigators to share information with intelligence officials and vice versa. This data sharing was illegal before the Patriot Act and the idea was that "this prohibition contributed to our inability to detect and stop the attacks on 9/11". But many people think these laws took things too far and the act's broad surveillance powers have the potential for abuse, leading to invasions of privacy without proper warrants and targeting of innocent people. The government could repeal this act and look at social media and online advertising companies' policies and make sure that users are able to opt out of this tracking.

What can we do to protect ourselves from invasions of our privacy?

Nelio Leone is a Growth Hacker who gave a Ted Talk about how he went from a data privacy skeptic to a data privacy evangelist. He shared his ideas for new "friendly tech" that empowers users while respecting basic rights. He suggests that we pass laws to make it harder for our data to be tracked and not fall into the mindset of "I didn't do anything wrong so I don't care if you track me." His point is if you give an inch, tech will cross a line and start snooping into things you don't want them too like health data. We need to be more careful about what we post online, and what we allow our tech to have access to.