Online Privacy is a topic that has been on the forefront of society lately, but I'll admit it: I love online data collection about myself. I think it's awesome that I can go back to any date on my Google Maps profile and see exactly where I went. And even though it's not the healthiest habit, I love that I'm shown news and posts that I actually find interesting rather than generic news stories that don't appeal to me. In my phone gallery, I can sort all my pictures and group them automatically based on who's face it is. When I ask my voice assistant a question, I know that the information of my voice is being used to increase the accuracy of the device; I think it's flattering that I can be so useful without even doing anything extra. I even think targeting advertising is good; if I have to see an ad it might as well be something that is intriguing to me. If the police wants to take my picture and keep my information, they can be my guest.
All of this goes to say that, I have a lot of trust in the system because it hasn't given me a reason not to trust it yet. Sure there has been data breaches, but I have never heard a legitimate story of someone's life being entirely ruined because of big data, which is a pretty impressive ratio considering their are, literally, billions of active users. And while I like it how it is, it is concerning that there is the potential for very bad things to happen if there was corrupt leadership in these big data companies. I think that there needs to be a lot of regulatory caution to make sure that these big data companies are being held accountable and to ensure they are being responsible, yet again, it's such a hard thing to do when you are dealing with intangible data.
The first video concludes with the statement about the threat of immortality. However, in reality, I believe that quite the opposite is possible. Yes, there is a lot of information on the internet about a lot of different people... and there's even more information on the back end that the public cannot see. However, this is the very reason why I think that immortality is not likely on the web... because there is so much other competing information. The fact that your information can live on a server somewhere forever does mean "immortality" in a way, but are you really able to live forever if no one uses or notices that information? As of May 2019, there was more than 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. Will every single one of those video's exist for ever? As far as we know they will. However, the very nature of the amount uploaded makes it unlikely that anyone will find those videos in the first place. I suppose the fear is not being discovered by another human, but being subjected to algorithms and AI that can search millions of faces/ characters a second to identity you if necessary.
The video about the government surveillance was intriguing. The point was made by the speaker that it is better to have entirely encrypted/ unmonitored communications at the benefit of not being tracked by the government but at the expense of not being able to catch threats as easily. For me, my view comes down do: what are the quantitative statistics of the number of criminals that are caught using communication surveillance, and how many normal people are wrongly accused with video surveillance. If your ever day person is rarely ever effected by communication surveillance yet numerous criminals are caught, then I would say it is worth it. I believe that the right to life and safety is more important than the government knowing about my lunch plans, or my bank account information for that matter: I mean they already have access to that.
Image sources:
Sources:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/259477/hours-of-video-uploaded-to-youtube-every-minute/
Comments
Post a Comment