Overtime, the rise of the internet and all its wonderful assets has truly proven to be both a gift and a curse. The internet environment has proven itself useful in plenty of ways. With the establishment of the internet people are able to instantly communicate and share information across the world. While many great things have derived from the internet and its capabilities, one of the biggest concerns society now deals with is the issue of privacy. With the ongoing usage of the internet and all its developing social networks, who is to say when enough is enough?
Websites dedicated to social networking, make it easy for anyone to upload or post just about everything and anything for the world to see. This creates a sense of constant surveillance, because while people continue to broadcast personal content, others continue to view it and make their way into other peoples’ lives.
Smart phones are another technological upgrade which has become very popular after the internet. These devices make it possible for people to take pictures, videos, and navigate the internet from almost anywhere. This also provides the capability for people to invade other peoples’ privacy at any moment.
“Sousveillance” is a word invented by Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto. The word is meant to describe or represent the ongoing issue we face with these new technologies, of constantly being watched from somewhere. According to him the reason why “sousveillance is such a problem is because it is not under control and there is no obvious or known method to bring it under any control. The age of sousveillance
Another ongoing issue pertaining to the internet and privacy is the fact that certain websites have the ability of tracking and keeping record of consumers’ actions on the net. These online companies keep a record of the things we do, to then promote and advertise the things they assume we would be interested in. However, the biggest problem seems to be that most consumers are completely unaware of this, and that it is being applied on them.
An article titled "Take my Privacy, Please!" by Ted Koppel, raised another valid argument back in 2005 in regards to this issue. The article mentions that unfortunate things happen all the time, and mentions numerous cases where big companies lost track of very important customer information. “We cannot even begin to control the growing army of businesses and industries that monitor what we buy, what we watch on television, where we drive, the debts we pay or fail to pay, our marriages and divorces, our litigations, our health and tax records and all else that may or may not yet exist on some computer tape, if we don't fully understand everything we're signing up for when we avail ourselves of one of these services.”
These questions continue to be a huge concern. Reality is that the world we are living in is completely shaped around surveillance with almost everything we do. The worse part about it is that the ones in power aren’t keeping the consumers educated, while the consumers themselves don’t make an effort either. This is an issue only time will solve by enforcing the necessary boundaries between personal privacy and constant growth of technology.