Privacy Issues

    There are two significant privacy issues raised in these TED talks: Catherine Crump: The small and surprisingly dangerous detail the police track about you and Christopher Soghoian: How to avoid surveillance... with the phone in your pocket. In Catherine Crump's video, she talks about the mass surveillance technology utilized by local police departments across the United States that enables them to track people's locations by recording the license plate of every vehicle that a police car will pass. Separately, in Christopher Soghoian's video, he addresses the issue of telephone companies having wire-taping and surveillance capabilities programed into their service so that they can provide the government with the means to monitor phone calls when requested.

 

    Both of these videos bring to light issues that have drastic privacy implications. In particular, the existence of surveillance software that has the capabilities to monitor the actions and behaviors of every American citizen is a dangerous tool that can easily be abused. When these devices are used for their prescribed purpose of monitoring illegal activity they are very beneficial. However, these benefits are easily outweighed by the privacy costs placed on everyday people whose whereabouts can be tracked and whose daily actions can be predicted.

    In light of this, we should all take steps to protect our private information from cybersecurity threats and surveillance efforts using tools such as encryption software and VPNs. Encryption is vital to securing digital information and ensuring that it remains confidential. As a result, it is important to use devices, applications, and websites that use encryption to protect users' data and keep private information private. Additionally, VPNs or virtual private networks provide online privacy by hiding a device's IP address and making the users online actions untraceable, thereby protecting them from being monitored.