Internet Data

The news lately has been filled with stories about the United States Government taking their citizen’s Internet and phone data to gather information on them. I even found a movie trailer for a documentary on this exact problem.

 

Although I understand the benefits the government and companies can gain by knowing this information about its populace, I think that gathering their data without asking permission is wrong and an invasion of privacy. I also think that because these technologies are relatively new, there isn’t a lot of laws and restrictions guarding the interests of the users. Before regulations can catch up, the government is taking advantage of it and using this information to look after their own interests instead of the popular interests of their nation. Another problem I had was that they were using this information to stop things like protests, which prevents their citizens from their right to have freedom of assembly.

I saw recently that the government of France is implementing laws on companies gathering Internet information and demanding these companies, like Google, ask permission before taking any of their user’s data. I think this is a step in the right direction because I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t have a problem with it if they knew what the companies were taking and why. In the end, using technology today is inevitable, we even using it to create these blog posts, and because of this there needs to be serious deliberations on how to handle the use of the data it generates.