Cameras on Gadgets and Your Privacy
Stephanie Semans December 4, 2012 English 101 Mrs. Tietjen Consumers will always disagree about whether the online marketplace is helpful or exploitative, but each individual has the independent responsibility to make the best decision. What comes to mind when someone says privacy? Places where no one can see anything, a place where you’re safe, well guess what, there unfortunally is no place like that. In the book “Blown to Bits” it explains that no matter where someone is theirs no privacy. 50 years ago, there were no cameras on the street corners or even laptops.
On the laptops today there are webcams hooked into them and some turn on the computer on without knowing. I know it’s happen to me before. Even leaving the classroom to go to the bathroom you’re on at least two or three cameras. Internet consumers go online for banking and don’t think about how hackers could steal personal information. Yes it’s convenient and always there but, digital users would rather risk information for easiness and accessibility. But in a way technology and cameras are also good because Hal Abelson says “After one of the assaults, a victim took out her cell phone.
Click! Within hours, a good head shot was up on the web and was shown on all the Boston area television stations. Within a day, Berman was under arrest and charged with several crimes”. (23) Technology isn’t all bad; it can be used for some good. So who’s to say that it’s neither good nor bad? Consumers can argue all they want about why it’s good or bad but no one has the right answer. Daniel Burrus of “is technology good or evil” says, “So it’s not about whether technology is good or bad; it’s about what we decide to do with technology matters”. CITE) Yes I agree that the privacy and security should be better and cause less heartache but at the same time it can be used for criminals and kidnapped people. For example, the other day my friend got her phone stolen and they pinged it to the locations it was recently at plus it could tell in a 400ft area they could narrow it down to and ended up finding it in someone’s car. Her and her family was happy that she got it back. Without the uses of technology today she wouldn’t have been able to find her phone or catch the guy on the transit.
Just imagine the police are reopening cold cases because of the technology to go further in on evidence and details then they did back some decades ago. Like I said I can sit here and say that privacy is good and bad but when it comes down to it, no one has the right answer. If someone has a bad run with technology and it’s done nothing for them then yes their going to say it’s bad and causes trouble, but someone where it has helped them out so much they might say it’s amazing and I’m glad I have it. Some examples of why technology is “good” are that the military is using it to help fly planes over the Middle East with cameras to spy.
Also, without technology today we wouldn’t be able to help treat cancer with chemotherapy. Some “bad” examples are that terrorists and criminals have the ability to create bombs and hack computer to steal personal information about someone. In Korea where the woman let her dog go to the bathroom on the subway and they took pictures of her and she was known as “puppy-poo girl”, “Blown to Bits” says, “the pictures wouldn’t of made it worldwide, but the thought that it was posted and stuff is bad enough.
The incident was captured by a fellow passenger and posted online. She soon became known as “gae-ttong-nyue” (Korean for “puppy poo girl”)… It is unlikely that the story would have made it around the world, and that it would have achieved such notoriety and permanence)”. (Abelson 23) Last night I was looking at the worldwide cams that are in the book and I looked up a highway near my house and it’s pretty cool because I never knew that there were cameras even hidden there.
So to actually see the roads in Maryland kind of freak me out, Just knowing that the satellites can take pictures of your house from space, there really isn’t any privacy at all. Citations: Abelson, Hal, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis “Naked in the Sunlight. ” Blown to Bits, Uppersaddle River, NJ. Addison Wesley. 2008 19-72 print Burrus. “Is technology good or evil? ” The Huffington post. Thehuffingtonpost. com, 24 Aug. 2012. Web. 03 Dec 2012. http://www. thehuffingtonpost. com/daniel-burrus/is-technology-good-or-evil_b_1826270. html.
