Technology is cool. And weird and scary. When you think of technology; text messages, social media apps, videos, websites etc you think of privacy, no? I mean naturally when I go on social media I think I can look at anything and send anything I want because more often than not it is only between myself and another person. But no. Going into watching TedTalks about privacy with technology I thought that yeah I have my own privacy but I knew the government could check in if they wanted to if NEEDED (key word here), right? No. The government can look at whatever they want, they can take pictures of license plates anywhere without reasoning. Now off the top of my head I think well, people do bad things and I'd rather have them have pictures of my license plate if that means they can check others against possible warrants and other bad doings. But they can use this technology to try to find information on things they don't need to know about. In the video from Catherine Crump of police tracking proves that in New York City, police cars equipped with the ability to take photos of licenses plates were driving by mosques to track who goes in, and out of these scared places. Something clearly rooted in hate in another religion. That to me is just not right. While this may not directly affect me because all I do is go to class and sleep, it can affect so many others who may be targeted simply because their skin color resembles something the police don't like or they believe in a religion that isn't the norm.
I think the government is in a hard place. On one hand they want to be scanning some things to protect the entire country from the potential of another terrorist attack, but on the other hand are sticking their noses in too far for comfort. Its hard to say that I'm okay with the government just sitting back and watching when Darieth Chisolm had to go through months of legal trial to get naked photos of herself taken down that she never even consented to. That could have been someone I knew, going through the pain of wondering who saw something they shouldn't have ever seen. It could have been my future daughter or son having to bear those emotional wounds for the rest of their lives. All too often we sit back as a whole community saying "oh jeez, well that sucks. Now I know what not to do" but until its yourself plastered everywhere you don't want to be, no one will understand the severity of the lack of privacy we all have and change will not be fought collectively because the majority is in the mindset of "that sucks, not me though." Things need to change.
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