Privacy 2.0

What do I believe about privacy? I don’t know. I feel like a lot of this political stuff I am still naïve in a sense of what is going on.

I think back to a recent friend I met here at Dixie who keeps a sticky note over her front camera because she knows how easy it is to hack into them. I asked her if she knew how to do it. She said no. So I'm skeptical as to how easy it is. And maybe somebody in class could enlighten me.

And I am the bit of the opposite, if I knew somebody was watching me I would probably moon the camera or do some practical joking of some kind. But the key word “if”, because I don’t know if or when they are. Or if it is all the time. And I can’t help but think how boring I would be to watch 96% of the time.

I went out hunting on youtube to see if I could be taught how to hack into my own front camera. I have yet been able to do it, but now I am almost kind of determined to figure it out now for kicks and giggles. If I figure it out, I'll let ya know. But I did find this video that showed how to see if anyone might be on my computer that shouldn't be.

My task manager looked a little different working on Windows ten, but I didn't find anything suspicious. Though after watching the documentary in class this week, I am skeptical to think that the FBI and NSA are surveilling my computer and yours backdoor through Microsoft security systems, where they aren't readily noticeable.

Regarding other aspects of privacy, I think it is cool that ads pop up for me, because they are convenient and I have enough self-control not to buy everything I want versus what I need. However I also don’t pay a lot of attention to them either. But I think our generation might be naïve to the idea of privacy and what it truly is and vice versa can be said about older generations by taking our day and age and thinking its all evil under the argument that it isn’t how things use to be.

Are we willing to sacrifice our some of our freedom to be monitored by the government for safety? Or are we going to be more vigilante and start to rebuild closer communities? Maybe we are so opposed to the idea of being monitored because we are afraid of government abusing the power or individuals like ourselves figuring out how to abuse by means of the government?

One last thought on privacy that is derived from journalism, but I think can be applied on an individual basis is... When learning about journalism in college they pose the question “why are journalists able to exploit private matters of celebrities and public figures and not individuals within the community?” And the answer is because they are a public figure as a celebrity and public official they have willingly put themselves out in the public. So now my question is, are we giving up our rights to privacy by putting ourselves out there willingly through social media?