50
and retailers (Amazon, Target etc.). The overall result of the question set reveals that over 66% of
people are more concerned about handing over such information to such bodies or organizations.
The next set of questions was to investigate the bright side of surveillance, the one which helped
government and businesses to fight/control crime. Although a clear 84% of poll participants thought
it was right or ‘about right’, 16% still found it inappropriate or
thought such surveillance
compromised their privacy.
Another set of questions was to find the ‘Snowden effect’, and actions people took in response to
NSA’s revelation about monitoring each and every aspect of your digital communications – phone
records, calls, messages, email – everything. Surprisingly, 74% of people did not take any action to
prevent from being tracked! However, of those who did attempt to save their online faces, 42%
went for browser’s ‘do not track’ options, 29% deleted/edited something they’d posted earlier
online, 17% encrypted their communications, 14% used anonymization services (such
as Virtual
Private Network), and 13% camouflaged this online/social profiles.
The last set of questions was the most interesting – they asked people’s own tracking habits. They
were meant to gauge the positives of tracking technologies, such as those used by parents to watch
out their children whereabouts, or those used by caregivers to watch their patient’s statuses, or those
used to find one’s spouse’s location. Except for the children monitoring of online usage in which
60% respondents agreed on the fairness of tracking technology, but 90%+ said ‘no’ for any type of
unwarranted tracking.
In sum, until a clear line between good surveillance and bad surveillance is drawn, people would
keep discrediting any of the effort to use surveillance. The ease of sharing information provides
opportunities for crimes and abuses. While it may be impossible to entirely eliminate the risks, if
people followed reasonable guidelines
to protect important data, they could greatly reduce these
risks. The benefits of being able to do such things as bank online, keep medical records updated
almost instantly, and share the thrills both big and small of everyday
life with friends outweigh
these concerns.
(See
more
at:
https://www.fastcompany.com/3012652/tracking-the-nsas-secret-surveillance-
programs
;
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-fbi-
boston
;
https://ac.els-cdn.com/
)
