“Why Protecting Privacy Is…” Reading Response #2

I believe the title “Why Protecting Privacy Is A Losing Game Today-…” does a good job of briefly outlining
the message in the article. The main argument of the article says that in today’s world with billions of
people and billions of electronic devices capable of internet use where personal information if often
stored, there have been multiple instances where large corporations have either purposefully or
accidentally released personal information of people in some form. The losing battle is the amount of
information that is being generated every day that the people must deal with, and the legal system that
cannot keep up with how to control and govern the huge amount of people and their information. As a
result of these instances, many people have pushed for more privacy policies to prevent situations like
the ones explained in the story.

I agree with the story and agree that the law needs to catch up to this “game”, but I also believe that
these large corporations need to take better responsibility in keeping track of their customers
information and privacy. The legal system needs to develop methods to keep better and stricter tabs on
the privacy policies that these corporations have, while the corporations need to be more honest with
their customers or users by actually protecting private information they input. For instance, I could look
up some of my friends on the internet and find more information about them than they may be
comfortable knowing, without knowing that information is out there about themselves. Or how spam
calls have become a lot more common, and I know people (including myself) have not authorized
information like my phone number to be accessible by these fraud companies. Now I have heard about
small instances where people have had identities stolen, accounts hacked, etc., but I am curious to know
why an average teenager like myself with a phone and social media accounts have not heard about
these “huge” instances like Cambridge Analytica, Snowden, and Equifax. These breaches of information
have affected hundreds of millions of Americans and it makes me wonder, why would they not make a
larger deal about this? If the information that people put out to only be kept private is getting leaked,
why are people still trusting that their information is still private or why have they not stopped putting
out information entirely?

The article was a little difficult for me to grasp at first, being loaded with information and words (I prefer
short and sweet). However, after I was able to grasp the message of the article it really made me think
and wonder about this process we go through all the time, and rarely question it. Even though this
article may not have been the most interesting, it helps me open my eyes and slightly change my
perspective to next time I might think about something like this, and think deeper than I normally
would.