Ted Talk Blog Post

 Link: https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_soghoian_how_to_avoid_surveillance_with_the_phone_in_your_pocket

    After watching Christopher Soghoian deliver his Ted Talk in Vancouver, BC in 2015 about “How to avoid surveillance… with the phone in your pocket” I was stunned by what he was talking about in the video. The first thing that really caught my attention was when he said that “our telephones and the networks that carry our calls were wired for surveillance first”. When I heard this I immediately began to try and think about all of the conversation that I have ever had with anyone and what I was talking to them about. If this is truly the case and I would be very surprised if it was not then complete strangers could not only listen into my calls but everyone else's calls as well. He also explains “telephone companies built surveillance features into the very core of their networks'' which if you ask me is very disturbing and creepy to say the least. One interesting thing that I learned from Christopher Soghoian's Ted Talk is that Silicon Valley tech companies such as Apple and Whatsapp have built strong encryption technology into their communication products that make it very difficult for governments to see their peoples own text messages or video/audio calls. When I heard Soghoian talk about how government officials are mad that these technology companies installed these encryption features into their products and automatically turn them on I was not at all happy and quite disturbed that this was the case. I think that instead these government officials should spend more time caring about politics than tracking/knowing every message that each and every one of its citizens sends. When he explains how British Prime Minister at the time David Cameron believed that all communications such as emails, text messages and voice calls should be available to governments, I agree somewhat with Cameron’s point of view. While I agree that the government should be able to have someone’s information if they see them as a danger to society, on the other hand, getting the information of a criminal would lead to the government being able to get everyone else's information because the dangerous people are just like everyone else in society when it comes to their technology usage. The scariest thing which I learned about is these backdoors that technology companies have to store everyone’s information so that no one can see it or so they think. Knowing that someone out there could potentially hack into these backdoors and obtain mine or someone's personal information without the technology companies even knowing is terrifying to say the least. I completely agree with Christopher Soghoian's point about how in the future it would be best for us to build networks as secure as possible even if it means making it harder for criminals to be caught and encryption will make wiretapping more difficult. I would much rather have this than live in a world where anyones texts or calls could be monitored by criminals, stalkers or other foreign intelligences because I believe that privacy is right that every human being should have.