Emily Kemper | The Chronicle
In an age of constant surveillance, from Meta glasses to blindly clicking “accept all cookies” without a second thought, our privacy is constantly being eroded. Our personal lives aren’t confined to the walls of a house or pages of a diary, they become public through the posts we like, the sites we visit and the information we search for. Even in person, cameras of all kinds (license plate readers, cell phones and wearable recording devices) are out and ready to record every moment of our lives. It might not be possible to escape surveillance in 2026, but staying informed about who is watching and how is vital to protecting your privacy.
Devices we have willingly brought into our lives like Echo Dot, Ring doorbells, dash cameras and, of course, our cell phones improve everyday life in many ways. And not just the convenience of a personalized Instagram feed: more cameras means more documentation of crimes, accidents, and police injustices. But even the most noble of causes can’t justify the rapid increase of surveillance in our everyday lives.
This year Amazon’s Ring aired an advertisement during the Superbowl for the smart doorbell’s new feature Search Party. In the ad, the AI-powered tool scans footage from other Ring doorbells in the neighborhood to help a family find their lost dog. The ad received heavy backlash as customers worried the technology could be used to track people as well as pets, and users had to manually opt out of the new surveillance feature. While I doubt anyone would want to stop a family from finding their pet, these devices expose the tension between rapidly improving technology and the expectations of privacy most of us still hold.
At the very beginning of this school year I was shocked to hear another new device, Meta glasses, being discussed when teachers set their AI and technology expectations. Sure, I knew the wearable recording devices existed, but I had no idea they were common enough to be a cheating concern, even a minor one. Devices like this, where proper use and knowledge of privacy laws falls solely on the customer to be aware, have major potential to be used improperly. 12 U.S. states require that every person being recorded in a private area gives consent, and making sure every individual does so when the recording device isn’t easily identifiable, like a phone, is completely up to the individual. Personally, I don’t trust that every person with a pair of Meta glasses or even just a cell phone will do the right thing. Instead, I suggest you take matters into your own hands by learning your rights: who can or cannot record you, what you can or cannot record and what spaces you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in. We might not be able to escape surveillance, but we can inform ourselves about it.
Online surveillance is another area raising privacy concerns. While it is a given that social media and other online platforms track some personal details about you, data brokers may know far more about you than what you’ve ever shared online. Data brokers find information to sell to ad companies based on inferences drawn from your online activity: sites you visit, people you talk to or information you search. From this information, they can discover aspects of your identity you never actually stated online. Additionally, according to a 2023 study by Pew Research Center, 77% of Americans do not trust leaders of social media platforms to publicly admit data misuse, so even the few protections that are put in place for our data don’t have much public faith. Rather, it is up to individual users of any of these technologies, from smart doorbells to YouTube, to be aware of how these technologies affect their privacy.
But why does any of this matter if you don’t have anything to hide? Because privacy isn’t just about hiding secrets or wrongdoing, it is about protecting your right to determine who knows what about you.
When I was about seven or eight, my mom made an offhand comment that someday you wouldn’t even have to write out comments, because Facebook would just automatically post what you were thinking. And it horrified me, not because I thought my thoughts needed to be kept secret, but because I wanted to control who gets to know what I think.
My mom had to spend the next few minutes convincing me it was just a joke that could never happen. But with each passing year, I worry we are getting closer and closer to that dystopian movie future. Maybe Facebook will never actually be able to post a comment without you clicking a few buttons, but our rights to decide what we let others know or not know about ourselves is being compromised. Even if we can’t escape the cameras, being aware of how you are being tracked puts some of the power to protect your privacy back in your hands.
