Privacy

Based on the four video I just watched, it can easily be said that the government has too much say in our private lives. 

The third video, Christopher Soghoian's Ted Talk, talked about how the government is upset that

technology companies set encryptions as the default. This affects most people, because most people have phones. If the government takes away encryption technologies on our phones, then they have access to everything. 

I very much agree with this. It definitely is not ok that the government wants to take away encryptions as the default. I believe as US citizens, we should have the right to decide that for ourselves, because it's our private lives. 

The second video, Catherine Crump's Ted Talk, discussed how the police use license plate readers. We don't even see these because they're hidden in/on police cars and around the road. Because of this, the police have access to what we do every day.

However, this is very similar to the fingerprint/DNA database the police have. In a lot of jobs, you must get fingerprinted, and if you take a DNA test, the government now has access to this. But what is the government doing with this information? The answer is nothing. If you haven't committed a crime, the government isn't interested in your DNA or fingerprints. This is the same for license plate readers. These are only in place to stop criminals. The government has no interest in a four-person, law-abiding family.

With all of this being said, if you are a law-abiding citizen, you truly don't have anything to worry about. Yes, the government might have access to all of this information, but they're not using it if you're following the law. There isn't a group of people staring at a camera spying on you specifically because there is so much actual crime in the world. There are better uses than having someone sit at a desk staring at you 24/7.

The fourth video, Darieth Chisolm's Ted Talk, is where this begins to get tricky. She discussed a personal issue with privacy. She said her ex-boyfriend posted naked photos of her on a website where

everyone could see. In addition to this, because there are no laws against this, Chisolm had to go through months in court. This not only meant that even more people had to look at pictures of her naked body, but she had to spend thousands of dollars on a lawyer.

If a law were simply put in place banning what Chisolm went through, she would not have been put in this situation. Just like how assault is illegal, putting intimate photos of your partner should be illegal and punishable with a jail sentence.

Let's not forget that though laws against what Chisolm went through would have made this 8 hundred times easier (and potentially not a problem at all), a bigger issue at hand here is the flaws in our Criminal Justice System. However, that is a much bigger topic for a much longer blog post.