Privacy in the modern era

It is obvious that privacy is slowly going away. Is this a good thing? Bad thing? What should be public today? What should be private? Do people really care that much anymore (Facebook)?

 

Our generation has agreed to not give a damn about privacy. Putting every intimate detail of their life on social media for everyone to see. It's sad. I don't use FaceBook and I only anonymously use Twitter never posting any information that can be traced to me in real life.

 

I agree with what Nero said, social media and the way people expose their personal lives on is ridiculous. People post every detail on their lives online, not realising that thousands of people see it

 

Have we really agreed to it? Seems like it has just happened without people actually knowing.

 

We put it out ourselves, though. Any loss of privacy was mainly our own doing.

 

But what about tracking? We don't put that data out explicitly for sharing.

 

Again, we are live in a tech savvy generation and we were all raised pretty much knowing how to work our way around a computer. We know what privacy is, but most just don't care. I believe that it has been agreed upon, whether explicitly or implicitly there is an agreement to shake off privacy in favor of sharing your every waking moment with some random person half way around the world.

The idea about tracking:
We actually do put that data out there. We have agreed to let companies track our purchases for convenience and ease of shopping for our next purchase. Emails being taken are a different story, but all major retailers tell you that they track your information. That information is then their information and they can do what they please with it.

 

I disagree from the first sentence. My parents use computers and are not tech savvy at all and most of our generation is not tech savvy. They can just use a computer. They do not understand it and will not understand that google is tracking them. You can not agree if you do not know it is happening.

 

Understanding how to use a computer and being tech savvy and understanding the intricacies of programming and the 'under the hood' things are very different things. Tech savvy doesn't mean you need a degree in programming. It means that you can pick up and iphone and then go pick up and android phone and know how to use them both in under 5 minutes, or how to use the internet effectively, or how to operate a tablet, kindle, or digital camera. If you can use FaceBook, or shop on the internet, or post to instagram it is your responsibility to know that you are being tracked by these compaines. I mean legally once you sign up or make a purchase you've agreed to be tracked. Websites that use cookies now HAVE to tell you that they use cookies to track your moves through the internet now. Most of our generation can do all of those things. Choosing to be ignorant about them is another issue all together.

 

I don't think legality is relevant. Knowledge is and informed decisions are.

 

I'm not quite sure where I stand on this. In one way it can be helpful (Murder cases, tracing search history, phone calls etc). It's a scary thought thinking that someone could be monitoring everything we are doing. It doesn't bother me that much because I don't have anything to hide.

If anyone is interested in reading more about all this, you should check out a book called "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell. It's a fascinating read.

 

Will you have something to hide when Hitler comes back to power?

 

Privacy is an illusion, since we "elected" the people that run every aspect of our lives they continue to enforce regulations that monitor us through any camera connected to an internet network, our own computers through remote access, and drones/satellites that watch us every day.

The government is fucked up and is bought out by everyone from the oil company's to the pharmacy's to the faceless people actually pulling the strings for their own personal agendas.

 

We haven't explicitly agreed to it (well, we probably have through terms and conditions but just not cared to read it), but if you are using a service, online or otherwise, the people who operate that service have the ability to interfere with it. People who care about anonymity will take steps to conceal their identities.

 

In todays word lack of privacy dosent seem to be too big of an issue, especially for myself. If thing in the future turn into something like chicago in watch dogs then its becoming an issue

 

I'm in agreement with SuF, at least partially. We use the term "tech-savvy" to refer to the ability to operate electronic commodities with ease, but I think most of us know more about the technology's functions than we do about its mechanisms, or rather the parts and processes that make it do the things we take for granted. Our generation loves tweeting and texting, but how many pay attention to what they externalize in doing so?


Now, the general concern in the thread thus far seems to be focused on our individual privacy, which is a legitimate prospect, but relatively trivial in comparison to the implications of inter-governmental privacy issues. Case in point, the United States' surveillance of foreign heads of state. Now that should serve as an indication of the extent to which our individual privacy may be jeopardized, to say nothing of its implications for the U.S.'s political and economic relations with foreign countries.


Also, privacy is not slowly going away. It began vanishing at least two decades ago with the internet's creation, although I've read arguments for a time frame of around the time the television became a multilateral device. It troubles me to contemplate what our present state might be, more so given the tendency to realize the effects of our technologies only years after they've been introduced into nearly all aspects of our lives.

 

The government does not run where I work or where I go to school.

Why should privacy not be the norm?

 

Privacy is a deceptive expectation. What is the purpose of requesting it when we evade other people's privacy? Not only is it contradictory, it sets the tone for others to do the same and so forth.

We should accept the standards we set. I really don't care for privacy because it does not exist.

 

I'm not sure how we evade others privacy?

 

Privacy? It doesn't matter what the Constitution or others say. I leaned a lot about "privacy" with bitcoins. You can literally track electric signatures down a wire and know what's on a computer with no Internet connection with only radio waves emitting from the machine. You may think you have privacy by not letting someone know about you, deleting your Facebook, or living in a log cabin in a homestead with no electricity... sadly you don't, and you never will. With the right resources, there is no such thing as privacy. The fact that people worry about it, or the fact that the word exists, is a testament to the lack of privacy. This is fact.

The only circumstance in which privacy can exist is when all parties have a true mutual relationship. And that hasn't happened since the need/instinct for survival was conceived.

I can answer that with a multiple choice question:

1. Kenya has 3 apples. America wants those 3 apples. How many apples does Kenya have?

A) No apples.
B) All of the above.