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Raynan Reyes

Mrs. Steiner

English

10 December, 2019

Privacy? Not with this New Technology

Technology has advanced so much that it is invading people's privacy and their safety

without people realizing. Stated in Max Whittaker’s article “High-tech school monitoring: safety

vs. privacy” he states “This is a technology that is very difficult to limit and to secure” Over the

years, technology has evolved but sometimes new technology isn’t good. Many people think that

new technology is not always a good thing especially because of the news that has been going

around that this technology is actually being used to track and store things you do. Although

some may argue that public safety is important, however personal privacy is more vital because

companies are starting to use smart hubs to spy on people and school technology is advancing to

track their students.

To start everything off, personal privacy is more vital because companies are starting to

use smart hubs to spy on people. Smart hubs are not only used to assist your daily living, they’re

actually using them as a spying device by listening to your voice at all times and putting your

voice files into a cloud. According to the article “Shhh, Amazon’s “Alexa” could be listening to

our conversation” Associated Press tells people how Alexa is always listening and how Alexa is

evolving by being used in more everyday household appliances, they also state that it is taking

someone’s privacy to an extent. By gathering everything thing from the article, it shows that
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Alexa is listening to your everyday life, some may say that if you don’t do anything wrong then

you won’t get in trouble, sometimes that isn’t always the case things may be legal now but you

never know in the future it might become illegal and put against you without you knowing.

Alexa is starting to evolve due to the fact that they are starting to expand their smart hub by ,

putting them into ovens, washing machines, and a refrigerator, this just shows that if you have an

Echo dot in your room and you think you shouldn’t worry about Alexa listening to you just

imagine Alexa listening to everything you say no matter where you are in your house, your

privacy will get thrown out of the window. Alexa stores your voice files into a cloud and it will

stay there forever, we don’t know why they are listening but it is definitely not necessary, another

thing that is scary is that we were never told that we are being listened too, if they weren't doing

something fishy they would just tell the people, Alexa can be a major privacy issue whether

you’re a good person or not.

Secondly, personal privacy is more vital because school technology is advancing to track

their students. In some school’s RFID, and retina eye scanning is now being used to check

students in and to see if children made it to class or not, the problem with this is that students are

being tracked by little chips in their ID, they can be tracked almost everywhere and it is a major

concern for some people. For example, in the article “High-tech school monitoring: safety vs.

privacy” Max Whittaker provides information about how kids are being taken and collected from

them without their permission, Whittaker states “The laws reflect a growing worry among

parents and lawmakers about the new technology. They are questioning how it’s being used,

what student data is being collected and stored, and how the information is protected.” This
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shows how this new technology is being used to take students personal privacy without their

permission, they use it not only to track people but to store what they do, so if you do something

bad they will have it somewhere in a cloud where someone could simply take a look at it. It also

shows how parents are also concerned about it, matter of fact, in the article it also states that this

technology was being used without the students parents consent, this just provides another reason

why people should worry about this, a school cannot be taking this much information from a

student without even telling their parents about this. This technology is not needed, if a student

has to buy lunch they should just use a regular student ID with a barcode on it, you shouldn’t

mess with something that was already perfect, students are starting to use fingerprint readers and

retina scanners to get around the school, technology is evolving which is good, but this

technology is not necessary at all.

Although it can be argued that public safety is important because people think this

technology is protecting them, however personal privacy is more important because they don’t

know what this technology is capable of. According to the article “High-tech school monitoring:

safety vs. privacy” by Max Whittaker someone has said that once they collect the information

from you there is no rolling back. If you think you’re okay because you’re innocent and you

don’t do anything bad, just remember that people make mistakes and one mistake can ruin

everything for you, if you have an echo dot in your household and you say something you didn’t

mean to, then you can’t do anything about it, it will be in that cloud forever. If you had to use

fingerprint, or eye retina to get into a school you know that there is too much technology taking

place, your eye retina can be used for some important things and giving it to a school casually
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will give you bad thoughts about it in the future, the school will always have your retina or your

fingerprint with them, if someone breaches and takes that data who knows how much power they

will have in their hands. Remember that technology isn’t always a good thing, your privacy is

being taken away from you with every second of your life, this stuff isn’t a joke, your privacy is

being stored in a cloud and people do have access to they stuff and they can put those things that

you’ve done against you, it won’t be a good look towards you especially if you’re prone to doing

bad things.

Technology has advanced so much that it is invading people's privacy and their safety

without people realizing. The echo dot is always listening to your regular conversations and

people don’t even know about it, schools are becoming more technology advanced and are

starting to use retina scanners and fingerprint scanners which gives away your privacy majorly,

and our data is always being stored in a cloud, once we do it we can’t go back it is permanent.

Personal privacy is something you should take seriously, don’t take it as a joke or else it will

come back at you without you even realizing it.