Tag Archives: Online privacy

The power of metadata.

The  article about the power of metadata strike me the most this week out of the three articles assigned. I tried the Immersion program that was created by Deepak Jagdish and Daniel Smilkov two MIT students. I was very surprised with my results. I could not imagine other people looking at my information. As the creators stated after using the program you will reflect on your past life. By accessing my email I was reminded of several big steps in my life, personal and professional . A big black circle stood out the most in my data report. This was something I haven’t thought about in years. This data collection even showed me when I first made that email address.

After reviewing my report I asked myself; how can top, influential leaders and members in our society insist that metadata is not important? Looking at my results after running that program, I find it unfathomable that they can firmly say that the collection of such data of individuals does not map out private lives. How can they voice that swooping this sort of data from the public is not intrusive and illegal? After looking at my results it seems like my entire personal and professional  life had played over right before me after as little as five minutes. Looking at my email data showed me the absolute power of metadata.

Go public or go home

In the reading The Future of Privacy: Other Resounding Themes by Lee Rained & Janna Anderson there are many point of views about the future of privacy. One of the themes that was right on the money is where it says, “Living a public life is the new default…It’s not possible to live modern life without revealing personal information… .” If we take a step back and look at social networks like Facebook, instagram and twitter etcetera it’s clear that the very foundations of these services are built on giving up personal information to enjoy the full experience that is offered. In a more extreme case as mentioned in class, certain apps require that you give up information in order for you to even use it. So in a sense you don’t really have a choice, you either go with the public flow to enjoy what modern inventions has to offer or live like an island spending tons of energy “trying” to be private.

The new generation of the human race live and breath being public, and so it has become ingrained in us to the point where we only feel threatened when government enters the equation. Privacy has always been our right, we just never use it.