Even In Your Home, Your Life Is Not So Private

Due to technology, gone are the days of being left alone and isolated. Sure, if you want to go off grid and not use your cellular devices by all means go ahead, but you are still not as invisible as it may seem. Due to apps like Snapchat and Find My Friends, it is now easier than ever to see where your friends and family are at all times, which means that even when you don't tell people where you are they still know. It is an undeniable fact that your phone can track you in ways that it never has before, but so can your local police force.

Catherine Crump briefly spoke during her Ted Talk about how police officers are able to track the daily activities of many Americans. They do this with the help of license plate detectors that pick up the license plate numbers of cars that pass by and track where they are going. At first they only tracked the plates of cars that have been suspected of suspicious activity, but know, it is every car that passes by. The government now knows the habits and activities that Americans do everyday. In one example, a man went to his local police department to find out what happened when they tracked his plates. There were numerous instances listed and they showed where he was, where he was going, and who he was with. In one occurrence, the photos showed the man and his daughters getting out of their car. 

What does all of this mean? In short, it means that we cannot go anywhere without being monitored by some sort of external force. The privacy that was once known as total and absolute privacy now has an asterisk next to it which symbolizes that we will never be totally private again. In terms of my local police force tracking my every move while I am driving, I am certainly not a fan of it. Where I am going, who is with me, and what car I am in is no one's business except my own of where I am going and why I am going somewhere, and I am confident in my thinking that others feel the same way.