Blog Post #4

 The multiple TED Talks all discussed different security issues. The first discusses how what we post online is out there forever, the second talks about how our location is always being tracked, and the third talks about how our phones are giving the government our information.

The first video is by Juan Enriquez, “Your online life, permanent as a tattoo”. He starts the TED Talk by making an analogy between people getting tattoos and how they can make one feel. They may represent happiness, pain, memory, or a mistake. The main point of the video is to tell us that what is on the internet is always there. There is no way to erase anything. Having my life always on the internet can disrupt my life in the future. Potentially something that was filmed or photographed could be leaked. This can happen to everyone. The government could make more security measures that make everything more private. But this is extremely hard to do for millions of people. The best thing anyone can do is be aware of what you are letting people see. Nothing and no one is safe.

The second video is by Catherine Crump, “The small and surprisingly dangerous detail the police track about you”. The main point of the TED Talk was to show how the police can keep tabs on every person in the United States. They use cameras and surveillance video to get pictures of people's license plates. This all goes into a spreadsheet. This makes it easy for police to track down someone of interest. But it also means that everyone is always being watched, even if they don’t commit a crime. Having the government tracking me while I’m driving is a somewhat new topic to me. I did not realize that police cars and video cameras were getting pictures of my license plate. Once again, nothing is private. The government should make people more aware, that they are tracking everyone’s cars and how they interact with each other. We can’t do anything about this issue. Everyone needs to get to where they are going.

The last video is by Christopher Soghoian, “How to avoid surveillance… with the phone in your pocket”. The main message of the video is to show how no matter what people think is private, there is no way of knowing that. Phone companies were made for the government to use, nothing is as private as we think. Like the first video, nothing is private. We may think there are aspects of our lives that can be private, but there is always someone watching us.