Big Brother is Watching!

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Photo: icanhasacheezburger.com

I found Parry’s Ubiquitous Mobile, Persistent Surveillance article interesting. The whole concept of the government or any other persons monitoring our interactions and communications on the internet is something that I know in the back of my mind, but something I don’t think about all that often (if at all). Maybe I don’t consider my internet interactions very high-profile. As the first chapter after the introduction in Parry’s work said, it’s not about specifically who gets monitored in depth, it’s the fact that technology is advancing and that we have the ability to look into the private lives of everyone.

The thing that I did not know is that these people who monitor internet connections can make up 99% of the data about a person with only 1% of actual information. The actual accuracy of this algorithm is not stated, but again, Parry makes the argument that that is not the focus of the situation; it’s that the technology is there, and that it will only improve over time.

We are at a point of no return when it comes to this problem. Almost everyone has some form of social communication on the internet. Facebook, Twitter, chat rooms, email; the internet is a part of our lives. It is a form of communication that is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the internet is crucial to communication for classes and for work-related activities. On the other hand, however, the way we represent ourselves on Facebook and Twitter, even our friends and followers, are all out in the open for others to interpret however they wish.

About ElizabethFinley

I'm 19 and an English student at WVU. I'm from Pt. Pleasant, WV.

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