Blog Post #7

 Privacy in the Modern Age

Found image of my 16th B-Day easily found by Googling my name

Being born into the age of technology and the normalized use of social media has caused for my entire life (including every awkward phase) to be memorialized eternally on digital platforms (specifically my parent's Facebook pages but also local news sites and many others) for eternity. 

Maia Knight

The analogy of how each of our digital footprints are equivalent to a digital tattoo to our name is interesting. There is an entire genre on TikTok and YouTube for "family vlogging". This relates to the idea of the digital tattoo because as the genre grew audiences began to question the ethics of exposing children, who are not able to consent to participating in media. Would it be ethical to begin assigning "digital tattoos" to minors and children who are unaware of the immortal tattoo. For example a family vlogger popular on TikTok, Mia Knight (post backlash) opted to cover her children's faces and begin privatizing much of the information she used to freely share, in part due to dark sides of the internet utilizing her posts for nefarious purposes, inching toward child porngraghy.  On a far less serious note, if I were to scour the internet for "embarrassing photos" of anyone of my friends or colleagues it would take seconds for images to appear. Similarly, if I were interested in researching any person I could easily acquire tons of information including sports played in high school, where they attended school, family members, relationship status, job status, residency, and much more. This is all easily accessible information. 

In fact I was able to find my running times from 2009, I have not run track since 2009. 

Although it feels we share every aspect of our lives "willingly" on social media and other outlets there is a different concern of privacy when it comes to surveillance. The introduction of new technology, and even telephone companies have included surveillance technology in the creation of their servers, has begged the questions on where to draw the line. It can be argued that it is necessary for there to be some surveillance, for example monitoring terrorism threats but where there is the exception for one there is an exception for all. I was concerned with the idea of "license plate readers"(LRP), which can be attached to police cars in order to record the data of a license plate thus allowing the location stamping of a car, and upon further research I found the statement released by New York City (my home) which d
oes not provide any comfort. "LPR data may only be used for legitimate law enforcement purposes or other official business of the NYPD" There is not a specific guide on what is "other official business of the NYPD". Many police departments have been criticized for collecting and storing data recorded by the LRP, which often includes
not only where the vehicle was at a given time but who was in the vehicle, regardless if this vehicle was involved in malicious activities. 

Taylor Swift, Recent victim of DeepFake Porn brought attention to the Bill.

The government should be prioritizing our privacy. In the modern age of technology and the digital access to so much of a person's personal information it is completely necessary and important that the government adapt and apply laws to protect people. When the framers wrote the constitution and imagined for a future nation, there was no concern for things like "Revenge Porn" "Identity theft" or "Phishing" all of which are concerns of modern society. I feel that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (1986) needs to be updated to account for such things and future concerns such as the normalization of things such as "Deep Fakes". Currently awaiting Congress is the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act of 2024, which is intended to pass legislation in regards to the distribution of images such as deepfakes that are being created without the subjects consent.