Surprisingly, finalists of a contest are competing to lose their privacy for 1 month. The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is looking for someone to live in their museum for exactly 1 month and blog about their experiences. During this time, the public is free to stare at this person's life-in-a-cube. Although the living space looks pretty sweet, would you allow strangers to stare at your actions for an entire month?Believe it or not, people reveal private information for the public to see everyday, but usually not intentionally. In fact, President Obama is encouraging companies to redesign their communications systems to make surveillance easier. While this may seem extreme to us, some governments have threatened to ban Blackberry devices unless the company made it easier for the government to spy on its users. But won't this increase the incentive more than ever before for hackers to infiltrate government systems? Also, many times rules are exactly followed. The article I found states that for phone call and e-mails in the U.S. after 9/11,
Although procedural rules stated that only non-Americans and international phone calls were to be listened to, actual practice didn't always match those rules. NSA analysts collected more data than they were authorized to and used the system to spy on wives, girlfriends and famous people like former President Bill Clinton
But the government and law enforcement officials aren't trying to put on the facade that all of your information will be private. In fact, the Obama Administration specifically stated that "Americans should expect no privacy while in public". With GPS devices, one's location can be instantly tracked. In class, we found that there were over 300 cameras on our University of Maryland campus, alone. Can you think of any other examples of how our privacy is violated off the internet?
Meanwhile, take a look at the following video, paying close attention to the segment at 1:35.
What happens in Vegas no longer stays on Vegas. It can permanently stay on several social networking sites, even without your consent. Someone else can post photos or videos of your vacation without you even knowing. After all, most people have cell phones these days and most phones and cameras. Therefore, you must be careful what you post!
I first would like to comment on the video that you posted. It amazes me how fast Facebook connected with so many people. At first I didn't believe in the Social Media Revolution, but now I am pretty convinced about this and "socialnomics". I totally agree with the statement in the video about advertisers finding us! I read on another classmate's blog that a company called Phorm tracks website user's history etc. I also am dumbfounded that Boston College doesn't give out email addresses to incoming freshmen! I wonder how they "officially" communicate with their students. Personally I like using email and would prefer to use email to communicate with friends and family, but everyone (including some family members!) love facebook more. I would definitely leave facebook if I thought I would still be able to communicate with friends. Email is so much more accessible now with the ability to "push" emails to your phone! I wish everyone would email more.
ReplyDeleteThe "Month in the Museum" experiment sounds interesting, on their website it says that the contestant will have limited or prohibited facebook usage. That made me laugh a little bit. I wonder what it would be like to live in a museum. It must be fun for awhile, but then pretty lonely.
The funny thing about privacy in this day and age is the youth is almost striving to have there private information and actions be as public as possible. Social Networks like twitter and Facebook are the catalyst for the presentation of this information. So its not surprising to see people competing for a spot to live in a glass room for a month. Although it creepy, I assume lot of people wouldn't be effected by this. It is also interesting to see how the government is almost require to have more visibility with the private (or not so private) information of its employees. Also since information posted to Facebook isn't necessarily your property anymore lots of pictures and video can come back to haunt you. Beware of what you post should be all college students motto's at this point.
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