Let me just tell you that we do not have a choice. You use cell phone every day in order to connect with your family members, friends, class mates, find the closest coffee shop, send an email to your professor and make a cute selfie for your boyfriend. Let’s imagine that you have read the entire policy of AT&T Company and figured out that your privacy would be violated. You did not signed any contracts and went to T-Mobile store across the street. Guess what? They would have approximately the same private policy and you would have to put your signature and accept their terms or lose the connection with your entire world.
System of government control knows who you are, where you live and work, how you spent your weekends and what fashion style you prefer. And, obviously, there is a clear relationship/connection with the economic system. First, “they” tell you what you should buy in order to feel happy or satisfied, then “they” will collect all the necessary information about you and finally “they” would produce something you would buy and make a profit for “them”. Does it affect your well-being and freedom? Of course, it does. Can you actually do something about it? Not really…Well, you can delete your Facebook and Instagram profiles but your friends would not be able to find out what type of sandwich you had for lunch and how angry you felt after the last president election. You will finally realize that you live in one big illusion and nothing is real: you don’t have real friends, real connections, real interests and real yourself. You will not survive my friend, so stop thinking about it.
Nothing was surprising or even shocking for me from the documentary. I am Russian, and I believe in conspiracy theory my entire life. I was concerned about “red flagging” part. First of all, this guy who twitted that he would bomb America is just stupid and I do not feel sorry for him at all. It’s obvious that sometimes we should use our brain. Eleven year old kid, who is an expert in politics, should play outside with his friends, not writing a nonsense post about Obama and his safety. Googling on “how to murder you wife” or “what is the best place to bury a dead body” is maybe useful, but not productive, because “they” will see it and, eventually, you will get caught. If you want to kill someone, do it quietly.
OK…now I have a question. If it’s so easy to predict the crime using digital technologies, why do we still have to deal with terrorism? I would not share my opinion about it, because I do not want some weird looking dude to knock on my door tomorrow morning. See, I kept my thoughts to myself and my privacy is not violated.
Questions:
- Do you personally feel that your privacy and civil rights are being violated? What would you like to change in our modern digital society in order to feel more comfortable and safe?
- Imagine, that you work for google, Facebook or any other company that collect personal data from users. Will you be more interested in making more money for your company and yourself or keeping people’s privacy unviolated would be your priority?#behonest
Hi Margarita. Very interesting post. I totally agree with you about the fact that we don’t really have a choice. We need to at least have a cell phone, or use a computer if we want to live and be successful in this world.
And for the first question you asked. I think yes, the companies and the government are doing it too much. Basically after watching this documentary I realized that we think that we are totally free and have our freedom but in reality in my opinion we’re in control. They are kind of directing what we are doing, eating, buying and stuff like that. I feel like they have a big influence on us. I don’t think there is much that we can do but I guess we have to be extra careful of what we’re saying and posting on social media for example. And if we fly “under the radar” we’ll be safe unless we say something or post something that might trigger their attention even if we said it as a joke.
To answer question #1, I honestly don’t think our privacy and civil rights are being violated because somehow we all agreed to this, the moment we turn our smartphone on. But what I think we can do is to find a way that for every corporation that collects our data then we should get some money back because they are using it to “tailor our needs.” is just an idea. great post
This is very interesting post with very straightforward opinions. I love it! one of my question is yes, people could use brain to surveillance themselves when posting but what if they do not know “these” are happening? To be honest, I did not really aware of “the severity and prevalence of surveillance in society” and I was not even thinking further of “okay if I post this violent image or text, the FBI would watch my action” before learning all of the concepts in this class. We came to digital society so easily like creating an account for just a minutes and want to keep connection with friends and celebrities.. right? I wonder how many people would think of that in depth.