Our Right to Privacy

A is a regular twenty something in his first job. He graduated last year and has been around for seven months at this company. But A has a "secret". He has a camera attached to his person at all times. It records everything.

This is the plotline of a movie I just watched called The Circle starring Emma Watson and Tom Hanks, in which a system is developed that potentially shares every aspect of your life-personal and professional with the world.

Let me press pause here for a second.

Imagine every email, every phone call, every photo, every video, every movie you ever watched-all of it available worldwide. How would you like that? Before I go any further let me add that I have a twitter, Facebook and Instagram account on which I am quite an active user. However there are certain tools that ensure that some privacy is given to me (although all my posts are set to Public on Facebook and Twitter), and I want to thank the sites for allowing me that.

Privacy is a very  important thing. It's like the clothes you wear. Without it, you're basically in your birthday suit all the time. 

Facebook gives us a platform to share and it's amazing to see posts from all your local and international friends and your family on it, but there's a dark side. Do you really want to broadcast your life- all of it-like that? The answer is obviously "Hell no!"There are some things that are too personal to be out there for your college mates to see. An individual has a right to privacy and without it they are nothing.  The first thought (and it's still in my head) that I had after watching The Circle was "I am deactivating my social media!" and I logged on to Facebook to do just that.

Truth be told were it not for this blog that so many of you wonderful people support, I would perhaps seriously get off social media.

I think it's time we thought about what it is we share with our friends. Only close people deserve to be in your private space. You might wanna check your posts' privacy. Perhaps it's time we got off social media coz let's face it- do we really care about what Fred thinks of our pyjamas?

I don't have anything else to say so I'll just wrap this up with a friendly suggestion- as it is said "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? " or "Who watches the watchmen?"

Because people are watching you know. Be careful and stay safe.

The Bilge Master