Sunday, April 13, 2025

Blog #5: Privacy, Online and Off.

Introduction:

This blog post is a reflection on these six Ted Talks by Juan Enriquez, Catherine Crump, Christopher Soghoian, Darieth Chisolm, Andy Yen, and Finn Lutzow-Holm Myrstad.




These TedTalks covered a wide variety of subjects that all fall under one umbrella, and that umbrella is privacy. However, they mainly cover online privacy, which is a very prevalent issue in todays society.


    To give some background on myself, I am a very "tech savvy" person as most people would say, as a computer science and game design major. I love the internet, and think it is one of the greatest advancements that humanity has ever achieved, and my life would've been completely different without it. However, I understand the risks that come with it, and that every technological advancement has a downside.

While I don't use common social media, I am very active on Discord and YouTube, and I livestream to people on Twitch, so I have a very distinct online footprint. This makes the issue prevalent to me, but I always had an opinion of indifference, until I watched these videos.

How My Opinion Changed:


My initial stance on the issue of online privacy was very loose, as I knew from the second I was born, there would be records of me, and I had no problem with that. To me, I am a law abiding citizen, and I am guilty of no crimes, so why should I care about the government watching me or using my information?



But after watching these videos, I learned about how malicious users can get in to these services that the government uses, like telephone lines as Christopher Soghoian said. This is a troubling issue, as these services that are meant to be used for good, to catch criminals and people with bad intent, are being misused against innocent people. 




I also believe there should be more policies against revenge porn after listening to Darieth Chisolm's story and what she went through. These great inventions become weapons in peoples hands, yet there is light punishments for their actions, and the damage remains. 

Conclusion:

    After going over several TedTalks about online privacy, they have changed my outlook on online privacy and the applications and information I share online, due to the chance that bad actors can take this information and use it against me.





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