President Donald Trump recently rallied against Apple’s goal
of end-to-end data encryption in their iPhones, saying that Apple “holds the
key to many criminal minds”. While his statements are true, they trigger the
question of data privacy and ethics. Should data privacy be forfeited for the
greater good of society?
Tech leaders around the world have started to make the push
for better data privacy, with companies like Apple putting data protection at
the forefront of their product advertisements. Governments have also started to
take the issue of data privacy seriously, with the European Union implementing
General Data Protection Regulation in 2018. However, our government doesn’t
want these data privacy rules to apply to them as it hinders their pursuit of
public safety.
It’s not all bad though. The NSA recently informed Microsoft
of a major security flaw in Windows 10, a stark contrast from their normal
methodology of keeping security flaws a secret while creating backdoors, in the
name of national security. This incident shows us that the government does care
about data protection, putting our security above their own agenda, but we as a
society still need to discuss the ethical implications of government access to our
data.
With the way things are going, it seems that our data will
be protected, just not from the government. We need to figure out where to draw
the line between data privacy and public safety because if we don’t, we’re ignoring
a massive issue that affects all of us and we will never feel truly safe.
Hi Annish -- Interesting and very relevant article! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to figure out how this issue is grounded in insights from the readings. I would have liked to see links for things that provide more info on the most recent Apple controversy and GDPR. I would also like to challenge your last paragraph a bit. Private companies may not necessarily be "hacking" into personal devices, but anyone whose ready a Privacy Policy for a company like Facebook or Google probably wouldn't say these companies are protecting our data either.
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