Blog Post #8

The problems that are brought up in the Ted talks (that I will leave the links to below), are all large issues that our society faces at a whole. Our rights to privacy are slowly being taking away and we aren't aware of it. One of the main threats is surveillance systems. Surveillance systems are constantly tracking you 24/7.  Storage spaces are constantly growing which is making it easier and easier to store large amounts of data. Companies like Google and Amazon own large factories with rows and rows of data storage units, where the main goal is storing and keeping data from surveillance on you and your family. 

The police along with the government have access to these types of servers and they choose to keep major amounts of data of your everyday life that you don't even know they have. Surveillance cameras from the street, local stores, and even in phone cameras and computers are able to track you along with where you go. There was research done that found that drivers plate scanning machines were keeping track of your daily routines and could see where you were going and what you were doing. This didn't apply only to criminals that were being suspected for crimes, this was doing to innocent everyday people. The police are collecting this data on people who are innocent and have families, and choose to keep it on file, just in case they need to look at it in the future. These type of private tracing are so advanced that they can see if you are going to a food store, to the therapist, to the hospital, or even can track where you drop your kids off at school. This information has no reason to be kept by anyone, even the government because it violates the privacy of the people. I have added some sources down below. 

https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/license-plate-readers-just-dont-keep-data-innocent

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/09/flock-license-plate-reader-homeowners-association-safe-problems

These issues are very intrusive to my everyday life and I personally feel as if I am being stalked by the government when I haven't done everything wrong. The thought that every time I walk by a surveillance camera means my personal whereabouts are being tracked and stored by a data storage source leaves me feeling very disturbed and as if my right to privacy is being taken away. My family and friends are all living honest lives and the fact that they are being watched like criminals doesn't seem right and just to me. The government shouldn't be allowed to just store data of myself and the people around us, they should be giving us the respect and trust we deserve by not storing every step we take. They should be respecting our privacy and need to stop watching and storing everything we do in front of a surveillance camera, if what we are doing is legal. The only precautions we can take to ensure our own privacy is to cover the cameras on our computers, and petition for the ban of surveillance cameras where they are not necessary.