Over watched and Overheard: where has our privacy gone?
I read an essay by @tarazkp today regarding all the unintentional monitoring and surveillance we undergo daily. Quite a bit of information is apparently gathered on us daily by our phones. Our GPS location, our speed, our calls, our internet browsing, our music and video choices, our shopping searches, our purchases, our internet research, along with our conversations being overheard by devices like Siri, Alexa, Ask Google and the latest revelation that the phones and devices of other people are constantly listening to us and potentially recording our conversations and interactions.
For example a male friend recently told me he turns on his phones audio recorder every time a female coworker comes into his office alone just in case to record their conversation. I was surprised both by his fears and the fact he was recording someone without their knowledge and by how easy it was for him to store many many conversations on his phone.
While I don’t consider myself the paranoid or conspiracy obsessed, when faced with evidence of growing surveillance of ones activities, even if all legal, one has to wonder how much of these intrusions for the sake of convience should we allow and where should we draw the line. It’s nice that Google helps me search the vast archives of the internet using my previous searches. It’s nice that Amazon suggests new products based on my previous searches. It’s nice that my web browser helps me find old websites I enjoyed reading and suggests new ones which are similar. It’s nice that my map applications tell me where I am, how long it will take to get to my destination and suggests new routes or new stores I may want to visit based on my previous trips.
But it’s a little unnerving to have multiple emails from stores selling products similar to ones I researched or bought last week or last month. It’s a little worrisome when telemarketers start calling me to sell me products I researched on Google. It’s certainly convent for all these services to know so much about my interests, wants and needs, but is the trade off of privacy fir convenience okay? When did I consent to this and where do I go to change my mind and limit what is revealed about me?
These continuous little intrusions are adding up to continuous detailed monitoring of information which be used both to sell us stuff and to sell us out.
It’s a scary situation where we can’t escape because we have all consented to carrying around these monitoring and tracking devices
The future of surveillance and monitoring by “big brother” has snuck up on us like a friendly servant and turned into an eye and ear in the sky
Our privacy has been sacrificed on the alter of convenience and very possible our growing new need to always be “connected” to the internet and the need to publicly announce on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram our every move and thought...a new need and desire being nurtured in us all as a society.
It is possible that the battle for our privacy has already been lost without us even knowing it had begun.
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