Every time, I’m scared to even read the press. This headline recently struck me: “A technologist will implant microchips to its employees,” and immediately I thought of a chapter of the Black Mirror series, in which the characters had implanted chips in the brain that recorded everything they said and did so that you could “rewind” the memories. Imagine what would happen if we could not forget anything. Anyway, I again questioned where our privacy is with so much technological progress; but the truth is that I have given it for lost a long time ago and you if you use a Google service, I imagine that too. What happens to the privacy of the chip carriers? According to the company, there seems to be nothing to fear, “all the data that is handled is encrypted, and the microchips cannot be tracked by GPS because they are similar to those of a credit card.” They say that, but the information is stored somewhere, right? And what happens with the disconnection? A card can be deactivated or left at home, but this chip is “always on.” Also, when it comes to software, who assures us that the next version will not introduce new code that allows, for example, user tracking?
I recently watched the film “The Circle” with Tom Hanks and Emma Watson, and wanted to delve into the intricacies of privacy. The plot focuses on a company, called The Circle, a kind of social network that continually collects information, videos, conversations of all its employees and even installs cameras inside and outside their buildings in places and cities where it is illegal to do so. The amount of data (big data) it manages is enormous, and allows its owners to be informed of almost everything: the private life of its workers, politicians, companies, with the consequent pressures, blackmail, etc. who can exercise. That is, something we already have with the information we provide to some companies and the messages and photos we publish on social networks. They are based on biological aspects of each person, like their facial features, fingerprints, pulse, voice or iris, which allow the recognition of users. Although Wikipedia says that “facial recognition is light years away from the fingerprint,” that does not reassure me.
Right now, numerous companies and people have sensitive data of mine and yours. From addresses, telephone numbers, bank account, companies where people work, academics, employment and even medical records; and if my contacts are investigated in social networks, one could find out who is a relative, an ex-boyfriend, a lover, a friend, perhaps even the political party I sympathize with … Banks, training centers, electricity companies, gas, telephone, etc. they have a lot of that data. They force us to give them to hire their services. With this brief technological review, I wanted to express that technology effectively makes our lives much easier and saves us time in negotiations (it also makes us lazier), but in exchange, we are sharing information that previously only we knew about and is now being stored and treated by many Business. Surely, if we are not famous, nobody will interest the least that comes to light, but we all bother to know where we are, what was the last product we bought or city we visited, how much we spend on this or that, etc. It is the realization that “we are not alone,” that there is always someone who sees us, who records us and who can remind us of what we have done. It’s undeniable that technology has permitted us to evolve and make our lives easier, but have we taken it too far?