TED ALİAĞA COLLEGE / 9-A
Online
Privacy
Talha Arda BOZ
26
Governments, companies, economies; literally
everything in our daily life is all connected to
one point: The internet. Every day, millions of
people are using it all around the world and
it has become one of the most indispensable
tools in our world. Since the beginning of the
internet era, we have been connected to it in
almost every way. Every personal detail about
us, from what we had for dinner the previous
night to what our political ideology is possible
to be accessed. And there is no way we can
prevent this from happening anymore. That is
one of the reasons why we should never give
up on our right to online privacy.
In 2016, one of the biggest social media
platforms in the world was said to have
manipulated election results by using
personalized political ads and raising
funds. The social media giant was said to
be massively influential, not because it
was tipping the scales with fake news, but
because it helped generate the bulk of the
campaign’s $250 million in online fundraising.
Even more, in 2018, data-sharing deals were
exposed and 2.1 billion user’s information was
shared with other giant tech firms. If a single
company could accomplish this much with
such significant personal details; Imagine
what governments could do!
Today, there is a system called “Mass
Surveillance”. It is the network of monitoring
systems used by the government to supervise
the lives of citizens. In authoritarian regimes,
the internet can easily be used to blacklist
people due to their political ideas. Even
though an internet environment where you
can express your ideas and raise your voice
against anything freely is necessary, you
could never trust such a system in criminal
situations because your data could easily be
used against you and you would be treated
as a criminal while the only thing you have
done is thinking differently and speaking your
mind about politics or simply criticizing your
governance.
Considering all these facts, abandoning online
privacy would be a dark scenario for humanity
taking into account the pace of technological
development and its prevailing dominance
over our world. The internet service providers
must guarantee complete protection and
safety to the users by not sharing any
information with neither the governments nor
the private companies. We have to protect
our right to privacy and be completely secure
online.