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ucbiridescentbrian-blog · 8 years ago

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Privacy or profit, that’s the question. (I’m getting offline now!)

(Creative Heroes)

Image that a police officer accompanies you 24-7 and keeps watch over every behavior you do. What you feel is safe or it infringes on your privacy? (and make you crazy?)

(Dave Pearson)

For companies

Telling a story of myself. Recently, I was studying Artificial Intelligence, and I always searched some information in the search engine like Google and Baidu. At the beginning, these search engines offered me some news about AI automatically and I felt it was very convenient. But later on, there were some advertisements of computer science educational institutions immerge on my screen when I surfed the internet. And recently, I even get some spam calls and emails on my personal phone and in my mail box. How could this happen?

(Casey Florig) There is only one explanation, the internet company were selling my information to others without my permission. Ironically, I did felt comfortable and though it was convenient to take the “service” even if my privacy was infringed upon. However, it didn’t last long as I was soon overwhelmed by an ocean of spam.

(Michael Coghlan) There is another example, AT&T and Verizon are selling information about their cell-phone customers, enabling mall owners track shoppers based on the signals emitted by the cellphones in their pocket.

(Run With Scissors) It sounds like mall owners want to provide a high quality service, but actually, it sounds terrifying and makes us worried about who our information is used in illegal ways. (Because it’s out of our control.) "The father of the Internet," Tim Berners believes that social networking is stifling the Web, and competition between companies caused by user power damage is the user "electronic human rights" violations. In a sense, these companies don’t give customers the right to choose. Maybe it’s more appropriate for these corporations to ask for customers’ permission first then share the information.

For governments

(Stephen Melkisethian) Undoubtedly, the safety of the Internet always of great importance. And it’s reasonable that governments take some actions to make it possible. But as time goes by, people find that some governments agencies break in people’s internet life bright and upright and made many wrong judgments which brought many difficulties for innocent individuals. And the ready access of governments made the public feel their privacy is unsafe. (Your privacy may be infringed when you are sleeping!) Like the FBI can get anyone’s location easily by tracking the signal of phones and the NSA is always scooping up Americans’ phone calling records without their permission. As a result, the freedom on the Internet is fettered.

(EFF Photos) So did the monitoring of government makes the internet world safer or not? And if the government should have the power to monitor us, who monitors them? These are questions. As the passage “You’re under surveillance” mentioned, “Information is power. Anyone who holds a vast amount of information about us has power over us. In the twenty first century, large institutions—both governments and corporations—are gaining the upper hand in the information wars, by tracking vast quantities of information about mundane aspects of our lives.” So here is the question, are they fighting for our safe and convenient life?

(CHRISTOPHER DOMBRES) In conclusion, technology allows us to find how wonderful life can be, to realize the world is more colorful than we thought before. But technology also allows others to spy on us, causing us to pull back from digital intimacy. (THE WEEK,2014) I believe that there is a line between privacy and profit. If someone cross the line and shift the balance, the “Ellen has your Facebook photos!” may not be humorous, but hurtful.

(nolifebeforecoffee)

Brian.

#ucbwriting

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