I am sitting at Starbucks and lovingly sipping my hot coffee on a freezing Nashville afternoon. With music playing in the background, what a perfect place to blog about intellectual property and copyright laws, right? Wrong. When I attempt to access the Black Team’s Google “BlogSpot”, the website is blocked by my Starbuck’s T-Mobile connection; “This frame was blocked because it contains some insecure content”. Okay, so let me get this straight—I paid $10 for a public connection and now I cannot visit the websites of my choice such as Facebook, BlogSpot, etc.? But what if I am okay with this unsecure connection and am willing to take on the lack of privacy at my own risk? Nope, it’s still not allowed.
Privacy is important. From the standpoint of an individual environment, privacy is relatively easy to obtain. I lock my doors at night, make a private phone call while running errands in my car, close my window blinds when changing, and put a passcode lock on my phone to keep my nosy roommates out of my business. Microsoft word allows users to password protect individual documents. And Google now rates their user’s password on a scale from weak to strong at registration, to help deter hacking. I only lend as much information to others as I deem necessary, most often on a need-to-know basis.
3 comments:
Past a certain, somewhat obscure line of demarcation, attempts to protect shift away from being a blessing and into the territory of a curse. As the original poster points out, an undue amount of unsolicited protection is often offered by companies who feel as though their typical consumer may not be capable of protecting himself. I fully understand and recognize the need for this – every time I wish to perform some operation on my Windows Vista machine, I receive a warning regarding system integrity, and I am thankful for it. My knowledge of computer viruses and attacks is decidedly limited, so I am glad that Vista shows me the potential consequences of my actions. The key to this system is that I am able to say continue or cancel, placing the decision firmly on my shoulders. If the removal of privacy threatens only me, I should be allowed to do so. The notion that a corporation charges for a service it restricts without warning is absolutely ludicrous. In today's culture, personal responsibility is constantly being undermined – when we have arrived at a point where we are no longer able to work around the measures protecting us and chance exposure to "danger," we are either the President of the United States (and therefore the leader of the free world), or in need of serious policy change.
I agree that privacy is important and can easily obtain like having the password for any private systems or gadgets. We can see that everyone take their action on protecting their privacy from being interrupt by irresponsible "parties" but their effort seems like useless as there are still a group who want to gain benefit from others harmful. Here, we can relate privacy with freedom. Everyone has their right to the personal life without being interrupted by others. Our privacy is being interrupted in this online community. Anyone can access to our private systems or gadgets such as mobile phone, computer and so forth, if there are any secure connection to protect them. I agree with the T-Mobile's action which had blocked the access to certain website when there is no security guarantee. This action will prevent our privacy from being interrupted by others. We have to defend our privacy in order to protect a kind of dignity.
When it comes to the situation that was described in the post, there is a fine line between privacy and your personal freedom being taken away. I also often receive messages that say the same privacy statements described in the blog. They often warn me that a site that I am entering is unsecure or may harm my computer or my identity in some way. I agree that these messages can be helpful for the “computer illiterate” people in the world, but these messages give you a choice. You can either enter at your own risk, or frantically click cancel, as not to enter that specific site. It is in times when there is no choice at all that there appears that line between privacy and personal freedoms being infringed upon. It is understandable that sites want to protect their users, but ultimately it is their identity and up to them what they want to keep private. If they want to risk it, then it should be their choice. I feel that sticking up for simple rights such as these are important, especially in a society when everything is becoming so technologically advanced. If we do not stand up for having the right to choose our own privacy level, then that is just one more freedom that will eventually disappear.
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