How People Turned Technology Into A Monster

 

Click here to read a Forbes article on the dangers of technology to our children's future. 

Technology is an overwhelmingly big industry that is constantly evolving. In fact, technology does more than we all realize. Aside from delivering us our daily news, social media, and hosts daily phone calls it also tracks our information, records our phone calls, and even tracks our whereabouts. 

Catherine Crump describes in her Ted Talk video that the police use technology to stalk us. Every police vehicle is equipped with license plate intake technology. Essentially the technology takes pictures of a vehicle. It takes the license plate number and registers it with the person registered to the car. If you own a car or multiple cars there is most definitely a file on you about your car. Every time you have passed a police officer’s vehicle it takes a picture of your car, and you license plate matching it with you. The best part is, is you probably had no idea this file, or this technology even existed. 

Darieth Chisolm tells her story on how technology negatively affected her life in her Ted Talk. She explains how a former lover took photos of her in the nude and posted them without her consent on the internet. This type of abuse is called revenge porn. Unfortunately, there are no federal and very few state laws that makes this offense a crime. Posting anything out into the dark web that is or is not consented to is altogether horrible, but it happens every day. 

These issues should affect everyone. I feel discouraged and shocked to hear, that police cars are equipped with technology to not only take pictures of my license plate, but my car as well. My personal rights feel violated when I think about how much control technology gives the government to spy on citizens. Many of my friends put covering over their cameras so that no one can watch them. I worry about the older people in my family as most of them do not know how to use technology and may not understand how giving their information out can hurt them. 

The biggest problem with the fact that our devices are so easily traced and hackable is that most of the tracing and hacking is coming from our own government. It has been known for years that the government has been tracking and hacking into our devices to watch us. As much as we want to beg our country to protect us, it is them who is also doing what we are seeking help on. 

Some useful tips about protecting yourself is to never save any information. This includes any personal information birthday, credit cards, banking information, etc. Another thing is to create a fake email to send any fake or spam email too. Only give out your real email when it is some legitimately sending you something. Lastly, protect yourself and others by education yourself on the dangers of technology. Learn about how to prevent scams and how to limit your digital footprint.