Someone is Watching
After watching Catherine Crump's TED talk on surveillance in the United States, I have begun to wonder how safe driving really is. When I first started driving at 16 years old, I was taught the basics on safety and how I always have to look out for other people on the road. Sometimes the person driving next to you can be extremely dangerous. But what if that car next to you is a police car with a surveillance camera attached tracking and recording your license plate even though you aren't doing anything wrong? Catherine Crump talks about how police are now using these camera to record license plates of passing cars just driving around, even if they are not committing a crime. She then shows a chart with several instances of a man's liscence being recorded at different times and locations. One instance was his car parked in his driveway with the recorded picture as himself with his daughters at their home. It makes you wonder if the police have this information on you. Or if there was a camera on a police car that you didn't see while passing it and it recorded your license plate. It makes you think that the cars next to you on the road aren't the most dangerous, it's the police cars who track your license plate and locations throughout the day.
Another thing that Catherine Crump talks about is cell tower dumps that allow law enforcement to see what cell phones were using what cell tower at a certain place and time. This can result in law enforcement figuring out the location of hundreds of thousands of people across the country. This definitely makes me wonder more about how/when I use my phone, does it make you wonder? Police can also use a device called a Stingray to send signals into peoples' house to find out what cellphones are being used inside and ultimately who that cellphone belongs to. After learning this information, it makes me seriously consider how much privacy American's have even in their own homes. It also makes me question if this is happening to me, right now, inside my own home. I know we live in an advancing technological age, but we have to understand that not all technology is used for good. We have to be careful about what we post online and understand the scope of the consequences that can come from the Internet. We also have to look at the reality of our privacy and comprehend that maybe our lives are not 100% our own, but a part of law enforcement's because they have the ability and technology to track and record us, without permission, even in the privacy of our own homes.
Sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment