In the debate over spying now raging throughout the country and the world, even the president overlooked a remarkable phenomenon mentioned previously on In the (K)now blog: that we ourselves are, through modern technology and the internet, voluntarily surrendering our privacy – many times unaware that we are doing so – on an unprecedented scale.
I blogged about this today in detail in “Debate over surveillance omits one crucial aspect"
The New York Times’ revelations in 2005 that the Cheney administration was illegally spying on Americans should have been a wake-up call to all of us that our electronic communications were being monitored.
Since that time, I have taught this topic to my journalism students every semester.
But in the past eight years, Facebook grew to more than one billion users, Twitter emerged as a major venue for revealing personal information and other web channels for disclosing your current whereabouts, what restaurants you like, you favorite hotels and innumerable other personal details have blossomed like weeds in a garden.
GPS tracking in our phones allows anyone to know where we are and where we have been.
We give permission to Google maps and other apps to know exactly where we are, where we are going and how we are getting there.
We need to think more carefully about what we reveal and to whom.
We can take it for granted that our own government has the means and resources to know everything there is to know about us. But there also are steps each and every one of us can take to limit how much is so readily available.
Everyone should start right now