Privacy Has Become a Luxury, Not a Right

The TED Talk "How To Avoid Surveillance... With Your Phone In Your Pocket" by Christopher Soghoian raises the significant issue of major privacy breaches within telecommunications by the government. These breaches come from surveillance that has been wired into the core of our telephone networks. Soghoian furthers that they are also wired for surveillance first. The difference that separates telephone companies from Silicon Valley companies is that the Silicon Valley companies have grown to build strong encryption technology to counter said surveillance. Does this mean we are safe?

Soghoian argues that after "100 years of being able to listen to any phone call," governments are not happy that they are being locked out of people's private information (Soghoian). He posits that tech companies have democratized encryption and privacy, something that governments are upset about because these features are built into Silicon Valley smartphones by default. While surveillance of communication can be beneficial for national security, it comes at a cost.

This surveillance feature built into many forms of communication is something that compromises the integrity of entire systems when breached. These systems connect millions of individuals and can hold important private information. This is also the problem with backdoors. With backdoors, there is no way to control "whether it'll be used by your side or the other side" (Soghoian). To prevent the bad guys to accessing our information, the good guys' operation must also be restricted. The alternative to this is mass surveillance and authoritarian ruling. 

In order to protect your information, try to use an application that has enhanced encryption. Apps such as iMessage and FaceTime owned by Apple and WhatsApp owned by Facebook provide protected services that make spying on communications extremely difficult.