There is always someone watching

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“I always feel like somebody’s watching me!” This is the hook from a song by Rockwell in 1984. It is twenty years later and these words still speak the truth, but have a much deeper meaning. Today you can’t make any moves in this world without someone possibly knowing what it is. In general, privacy is the right to be free from secret surveillance and to determine whether, when, how, and to whom, one's personal or organizational information is to be revealed. The development of social media outlets and the advancements in technology today are making privacy an outdated concept and a thing of the past. The question now becomes how far is too far and have we lost our basic right to privacy in the name of advancement. The idea of privacy in this ever changing world of technological advancement is slowly becoming a thing of the past. Everything from cell phone equipment with video camera, to camera on stop lights, to people being able to steal your identity over a WiFi connection, to stating every move you make in your daily life on Facebook, it now seems that nothing is off limits.
We live our lives through our cell phones and handheld devices which makes every moment of your life able to be put on display in real time. One of the newest products to enter the realm of sharing every moment is the Google Glass. Google Glass is a wearable computer with an optical head-mounted display that is developed by Google. Google Glass displays information in a Smartphone-like hands-free format that can communicate with the Internet via natural language voice commands. This pair or glasses basically conveys all information you see with your eye to a Google cloud where it is stored. Such data, knowingly and unknowingly, collected and bandwidth pe...

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...an be exposed and there is literally nothing I can do about it. I watch television shows about people who go off the grid on purpose. I used to think they were crazy hicks, but I think they may be onto something. If staying off the grid means I can live my life in peace and not have to worry about being in a government data base or not have an embarrassing video uploaded to Facebook without my knowledge, it may be a sound idea. When the power of choice is taken out of your hand scary things can happen. Technology will continue to advance and there will be new gadgets for us to use in our day to day lives, but I hope that we as people can develop a better sense of self and know when to say when with the invasion of privacy. In the words of Rockwell, “Can the people on the TV see me, or I am just paranoid?” Truth be told, they probably are and we don’t even know it.

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