Blog Post #6, Privacy

 

    After watching a couple of Ted Talks on privacy and some further research I can say that I am uncomfortable but at the same time I am not surprised. This is something I have always thought about and heard things about apps like Facebook, and Instagram stalking us and gathering our information. Funny story that relates to that as not too long ago I was in person having a conversation with my dad about getting new sunglasses and about a couple minutes after having that conversation I was scrolling through Instagram and got an ad for sunglasses. So, there you go. The Ted Talk that stood out to me the most was the one with Catherine Crump and in her speech, she talked about how the police departments and government are flat out stalking people which they try to say is for “investigation purposes” although Crump mentions a point that they were tracking someone who had nothing to do with anything illegal. The problem is here that the police and government are allowed to have this information on us like our location and whereabouts, how we interact, our daily lives. The fact that this is being allowed to me is actually insane. Crump also mentioned that the Government can have over 100 photos of you and your daily life, which is just wild to me. It not only makes me uncomfortable but at the same time frustrating that they are just doing this and there is nothing to be done about it. I really see why people do not even want to purchase phones because they are literal trackers at this point, that is why I do not blame Professor Smith for waiting for so long, the class should not of have him the crap they did for that to be fair. Something I do to try to minimize my information from being out there is any of my social accounts are private, because I know 100% the government and police look through people's social media. Another thing I do is not sign up for accounts on every single website or app I go on, therefore less information of mine is available. Also is anyone going to talk about how on the new IOS after you opened any app on your phone it asked if you could allow apps to track data or something, that is simply CRAZY to me. Instantly I said no to all of them as that is not necessary one bit. Overall, privacy is a huge issue and with the technology we have days I would not be surprised if it got even worse.  

Blog Post #5, Anti-War

 

 After spending time reading and looking through Antiwar.com, I found it refreshing to see something like this because I feel as if it is hard to come by these days, and especially because of what has been going on in our world now. I believe it is important to let other people stand up for what they believe in, instead of blocking them out because they disagree with the government or a certain group of people. It is sad to see that this is the stuff that you won't see go mainstream and that is because there are people who do not want it to be seen but at the same time, I think people are also afraid of supporting it in a way. Also, something that I personally pointed out during the Russia-Ukraine war, is that I've seen more people post/tweet/ and share about wanting to help Ukraine and sticking up for the country and no posts about antiwar and wanting to help and spread information about this by posting about it. So that ties into the issue that you just won't see antiwar promotion or websites like this unless you look hard because people are uneducated and get manipulated by the media, or they are nervous about being against what our government believes- (which would be like a news station, so they do not get heat or lose money/viewers). I hope in our future we can promote more anti-war advocates and instead of completely blocking out people's opinions about it, let them freely express that they are against war. People need to be better at that, period.