Privacy is major thing in my life. My business is mine and mine alone. Not that I’m constantly doing bad things that I don’t want people to know about, but if people aren’t involved in my day to day actions, then why should they be aware of such actions. Thesis 16 mulls over scenarios that may not be present today but definitely possible in the near future if not already being implemented as we speak (or read). Stores tracking movements, drug testing toilets (a topic I brought up personally in discussion last week) and sensory floors embedded in our workplaces are just the technologies that will soon invade our privacy. “Methods of data collection…implicate us whether we know it or not,” states
12 February 2007
Thesis 16 - I've already said it
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8 comments:
I agree with you when you said “My business is mine and mine alone” assuming your not involved in any criminal activity or harming others which I’m sure your not. I do not know where we are headed when it comes to our privacy and what we will be able to tolerate from these new technologies. I can understand how such impedances can surely benefit corporations in tracking employee actions and any violations of drug use but I believe the American people will soon draw a line and take in greater consideration when allowing these new technologies to invade our privacy.
With all this technology that is available to us, it is hard feel private anymore. If you think about the time before we had cell phones and pagers, you could go somewhere with your mission in mind, complete your task and be home. If someone needed to get a hold of you during that time, they had to wait until you were available to pick up a landline when they called. Now, we have cell phones, some with GPS capability, blackberries, laptops, access to internet hotspots. We can't even be private to people we know. We have made ourselves become available to everyone and eventually we are going to be suffocating at the mercy of those who want to know everything about us without even having to speak to them.
I am not a paranoid person by any means, but imagine how much tougher this would have been to swallow for the Uni-bomber, if he was not locked up. As a paranoid schizophrenic, he was having delusions of people trying to use computers in scary ways. Maybe there was something to that. Although he obviously went about blocking the advances of technology in an archaic way, the point that technology may be becoming too "everyware" (pun intended thank you very much) seems more valid after reading thesis 16. Think about walking into your business on a Monday some time in the not so distant future. You are greeted by a new "interactive" office that your boss is SOOO excited about. You walk in and are dazzled by all the new features. You read a contract, but not all the way (as your boss gives you things to sign all the time) and then you sign it. What you don't know is that you have just signed over the rights to your privacy to your company, and they can collect any data however they can over the course of your daily routine in the office. Drug tests in the toilet, body weight sensors in your floor, you watch as the beautiful world where work and play used to be separate no longer exists. That's the price of progress I guess.
I agree, invading our privacy in all of those ways is like taking away a lot of our freedom. Being able to have our privacy and not have to leave ourselves open that way is one of the main reasons why the United States is so loved. Our privacy is our right and I feel that our forfathers faught for our freedom which includes our freedom to be as private as we want to be. However, I am a little conflicted inside because as unacceptable as I am about not wanting to give up all my information so freely, whether it be through a uranal or a floor sensor, I am still looking forward to the day where the technology capable of doing this will be open to the public. I enjoy watching movies like Minority Report because I like the way the future is portrayed. I would like for us to be able to have this technology everywhere, but I also believe that WE should have the choice on whether we want it to be able to “read” us or not. Not exactly sure if that would even be possible, but I guess that’s where the hackers come in play.
I share the same unesy feeling regarding privacy, but we have to remember that there is, and never was any constitutional protection of one's own privacy. It took a Supreme Court case sometime in the 70's to even broach the subject of one's own privacy. A married couple wanted to buy contraceptives, and whatever state they lived in at the time had legislation prohibitting teh sale of contraceptives. The point is this: privay has never been guarenteed; it's always been a question of personal choice, an individual's own perogtive to exercise at will. The crux of the privacy issue, in the face of the perpetual leaps and bounds IT makes, is the simple fact that its now much easier to allow your private life to lapse into public domain. We just have to be a little more aware of the fact that if we mess up, people will know about faster than any other time in history. Still, it makes me paranoid to think of getting an email from my boss regarding the nap he "saw" me take in my office via the room's passive sensor.
I definitely agree with the whole "invasion of privacy" bit. Especially because I know they won't create the technology without invading our privacy. They won't impliment limits on what information they gather from us, unwilling targets. So, we will have to buy security, like we do now, only more advanced. We get all excited thinking about new technology, then we wonder what personal spaces it will invade. The only way to stop it will be to buy something else. We'll walk into a building and our norton anti-detection software will queu up a notice asking if we want to allow so-and-so detection software to detect us. Like I've said in one of my blogs before, with more information, comes more problems.
Interesting thought...I hadn't considered the idea that not only will there be many ways to invade our privacy, but there will be just as many ways to avoid it. The sensor blocking shoes are particularly genius. I don't know that I agree totally about what is private and what isn't though. I think there are some things that I wouldn't mind having monitored, such as my vital signs and possibly scans of urine for life threatening diseases. I think it mainly depends on how the technology is used-whether there are good or evil intentions. I think there will be a very fine line between acceptable and invasion of privacy-much more restricted than it is now.
Thinking about this post and the responses-clearly this is a touchy issue in everyones mind(as well it should be)- got me thinking about RFID and how I could track my belongings when they go missing. i.e. remote control, wallet(which is currently lost)-- major benefit, but I dont want the Internet knowing where my wallet is, or even a proprietary "security and privacy" company knowing...which I pay for?!?. The only valid option for me would be to protect and secure my property on my own. When I was young I wouldnt accept much help, rather stubborn: "I do myself!" is what my parents said was my motto for everything. And I think that is fairly applicable here[see Jeremy M.]. In response to Ronnie R. - I was surprised that Our Founding Fathers' notion of FREEDOM, being in such sharp contrast to our current state of *freedom*, was not looked at more critically. I hear a lot about freetrade, freedom of information, copyright... not really so much of the freedom We, America had claimed from our oppressors. Like Taylor and others have said, Mo' information, mo' problems. Ironic, we had to reach near ubiquitous communication to realize hey wait, maybe we should re-think this "progress". Not short of pissing off much of the globe however
Print had a HUGE influence on our liberation from G.B.. Comparatively, with the introduction of the Telegraph and popular press/media- our established notion of freedom has been in perpetual decline. Thesis 16 is ripe evidence that this decline is by no means going away. We should seriously take a more critical look at the state we were born into, and not just accept these things as given. How free are we? How much privacy did we used to have? Sorry, I usually try to stay away from some radical rant, but increasingly, this is how I see things. I'm all for knowledge and hard work, and the prospects our future holds. Yet I stop short of excessive consumption, whether it be information, money, plastic values. Now, we have never been truely "free" I mean, in the Vagabond's sense of freedom. perhaps in pre-history; and then there was the Indus Civilization. but however ideal, far too impractical to say the very least. True freedom and privacy I think is unattainable, the issue is one of morals, personal and social lifestyle, a collective change or no change. The technology is (or is becomming) avaliable, to allow us to find/claim a middle ground between the surveyed and the surveyors. By what means I cannot say, I dont know. but It is certainly necessary, from what I can tell. If you disagree, please respond, but first read some of this...
This is an old article (05) but a little imagination puts the situation in perspective. tell me what you all think. is this guy off the wall or what? . Specifically the last comment about equiviellance:/
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