Blog Post #8 - Privacy

Our right to privacy is a fundamental right to our existence as a society. Within the technological age, this privacy becomes difficult to retain. Most of this is caused by the individual release of data via posting pictures openly on the internet. This should be known as an acceptable risk because if you are sharing your information for everyone to see then you should have to deal with the consequences of your actions. I do believe that people should have the right to have personal information or media permanently deleted if they choose to do so. Unfortunately, this is not the society we live in so we must stay vigilant and remain aware of the dangers of sharing too much on the internet publicly. 

What should stay private is pictures, videos, or information sent to another individual privately. It should be the same as having a face-to-face conversation with another, it should be private from the government. Nowadays even our phones and texts are being tapped so that the government can listen in on our private conversations. This is an outright invasion of privacy for the majority of people who are law-abiding citizens. As stated in one of the videos, it seems like the government can just track criminals' conversations because those are the only ones we see on the news but with the decreasing costs of data storage, information on innocent people is being stored in the hopes that one day it will become useful. Personal data should only be stored if that person is a suspect or has committed a crime.

Darieth Chisolm made a good point in her talk by saying that the internet is an international thing, therefore it should be protected under international law. This means that people who commit crimes over the internet, especially internationally, will face punishment faster and issues can be solved quickly. Hopefully, more and more people, primarily women, will no longer have to face horrible attacks, such as revenge porn, and we can retain our right to privacy. Policies all over the world should be created to prevent such rising issues in our society. The internet is a very powerful tool and can easily be misused, but with the proper sanctions in place, people can peacefully browse, consume, and share internet content without the fear of privacy invasions.