Privacy TEDtalk Videos

 Privacy in this digital age has become nonexistent. What was once simply a tool in order to find depths of information has now divulged into tracking devices, into file cabinets of personal information, and most terrifyingly: into a database of what you and every single American are doing, where you're going, and millions of subtle details into the person you are.

Prior to the influx of wearable and carriable technology, the personal habits of American citizens was truly private. The daily goings on of a mom who preaches word of the gospel to her bible study who has not been to church in a year, to a father who prides himself on being a family man but stops off at the local strip club every Friday after telling his wife he has to "work late" used to be known to only by those individuals. However: that is now no longer is the case. The father Facebook messages his wife as he leaves the office and is logged into Facebook's database, Apple's Maps app tracks and logs his drive to the club, the instant license plate reading surveillance cameras perched atop decades old light posts give evidence of his weekly arrival, and finally his phone call to his dancer who he has built a rapport with is done in a system which was built for surveillance first.  

Someone is consistently listening, watching, and logging the goings on of the over a billion individuals around the world who use this technology every day. There is are violations of our privacy happening every second of every day and on a scale where it is too intimidating to do anything about it. I think of my generation, Generation Z, who has grown up entirely online, who from a young age and before anyone knew the repercussions have been posting and searching and calling about information which has the potential now to ruin our lives. Our childhoods are saved into hard drives, our private questions which we are too scared to talk to family are friends about but trusted the surplus of information on the internet to help answer are etched into the digital tattoos of the people we are. 

This leaves us at an unsurprisingly sad state: realizing that it may just be too late for us.