Privacy and Integrity

The Ted talks on why privacy matters by Alessandro Aquisti and how our phones companies are spying on us by Malte Spitz were very interesting to watch. I watched Malte Spitz’s talk first and was incredibly creeped out to know that our companies keep our records of when emails and texts were sent and where we are the time. As well, it keeps the data that includes phone numbers and addresses stored for six months up to two years. I thought it was cool that Spitz filed a lawsuit against his German phone company to retain all his stored data. When he finally received a CD full of his information he said, “At first I thought, okay -- it's a huge file," he said during the TED talk. "But then I realized, this is my life. This is six months of my life […] You can see where I am, when I sleep at night, what I'm doing." This is pretty scary that strangers can keep these kinds of tabs on you. I’m glad to know that this isn’t the case in the U.S. The only way people can see your stored data is if the government or the police request it. With that said I will talk about Alessandro’s talk on why our privacy matters. I like when he says, “privacy is not about having something negative to hide. “ He made his point that it is so easy to gain access to people’s information now and match it to a picture. The situation where people took part in the survey and a photo of them was uploaded to the cloud was just downright jarring. But nowadays, it's just the norm. Almost everyone puts certain aspects of their life out there for the world to see.