Tracking Humanity

Jeroen van den Hoven argues that privacy will be compromised due to RFID chips and nano-technology. Public privacy is not as discrete or confidential as private privacy. Concerning public privacy, there is a limit to how private things are going to be. For example, in a public place like a grocery store (Walmart, Target, or Kroger) individuals are always surrounded by others. This means that individuals are more likely to be watched by other people in society.  Concerning private privacy, the likelihood of being watched is not as high. For example, if you’re in your home alone, you are not being watched by others in society. It is just you and your surroundings. With the RFID chips, concepts of both public privacy and private privacy will take on whole new meanings. There will be no such thing as true privacy for anyone anymore. These RFID chips will result in people carrying around tagged items such as chip cards, identity documents, and other things of this nature.

 These chips will allow information to be read and identified from a distance. Those who read this information may even have the ability to be hidden from the line of sight. These chips and this nanotechnology will make it easy to trace people wherever they are located. This, in itself, is an invasion of both public and private privacy. People will not have the ability to truly be free. People will never have the ability to start fresh because they can always be easily tracked by others. It may be a good idea to chip your dog or small child in case for fear of them being stolen or lost, but is it really a good idea to track individuals and monitor their activity throughout the course of their life? Privacy will be breached in the case of RFID tags because humans will become tagged objects. RFID chips will offer up numerous security and accuracy problems concerning privacy due to ability of radio signals being sent and read by anyone. RFID sensor, tracking, and tracing would change our society into space for information to be continuously generated and accessed. Informed consent offers little relief. Despite people choosing to give consent or not, individuals can still “skim, spoof, and sniff” information stored on RFID chips which can be accessed by unauthorized readers. This is still a major invasion of privacy, even with the option of informed consent. The fact is we will not know that we are being monitored, tracked, or traced and this is the problem. Personally speaking, violations of private privacy seems to be the most harmful. Private privacy is the most personal form of privacy. Simple things such as online shopping, buying clothes, driving, etc will become tasks that are recorded, stored, and saved. The fact that the small time we have to ourselves will be open for others to probe and analyze is something I consider to be far worse and more harmful.  The breach of private privacy is more harmful because it can cause change in who a person truly is due to fear of being watched or monitored by others. This fear can influence decision making, beliefs, and other things such as this. This ability to essentially change a person and change their ability to truly be themselves through monitoring/tracing is what makes the invasion of private privacy the most harmful.