Privacy – FCS World Press

By Twyla Zhang

Since the era of big data came, with digital technology, our daily lives are much more convenient, but this happens at the expense of our privacy. During the pandemic period, people’s privacy has become an issue again.

On December 8th, Chengdu, the capital of southwest China’s Sichuan Province, reported four new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and one asymptomatic infected person. Once the first case was confirmed, all the five surrounding regions were under control and started a new round of testing. Since December 8th the neighborhood where the first case and surrounding ones were found upgraded to a medium risk area. However, despite such strict and rapid prevention measures, the virus continued to spread. Until 6 pm on 12th, a total of 11 confirmed COVID-19 cases and two asymptomatic infected cases had been reported in Chengdu. A total of 2.17 million people have been tested, and 12 have tested positive. Nearby residents were asked to self-quarantine.

Intended to remind people to do testing if they have gone to these places and pay attention to avoidance, the government published the scope of activities of those diagnosed with COVID within the past fourteen days. Among infected people, one girl’s trace attracted significant attention from the public, as she went to several bars, movie theaters, shopping malls, and other public places. Thousands of people left negative comments and attacked her. Moreover, some extreme people even dug up and spread the girl’s ID number, home address, pictures, and other private information online. This is not the first time that such an incident has happened. Several months ago, when Beijing had another pandemic outbreak, all the private information of the first infected people were disclosed and published online by some people, including his work place, his love story and so on.

Repeated information disclosure should ring an alarm for anyone who benefited from the big data—-everyone’s privacy might become commercialized. The fact that Facebook has been questioned in the US and worldwide in 2018 was the first time to raise global attention on the prevention of personal information leakage. While Congress was arguing and investigating whether Russia interfered in or interfered with the US election, Facebook has been revealed to have leaked the personal information of 87 million users to a British company. Facebook claimed the user information was obtained “improperly” by a third party. Facebook co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, appeared in person, apologized, and pledged to avoid such incidents in the future. However, this promise has not been kept. Countless news about Facebook information leakage has been reported in recent years. For example, in 2019, more than 400 million Facebook user phone numbers were exposed. Although national laws worldwide prohibit selling personal information, due to current business models and brutal industrial competition, network enterprises, including e-commerce giants, secretly make money by mining and selling user information. The more privacy in the hands of users, the bigger the market and the higher the profits. One Chinese blogger has experimented: in a black market selling privacy, with about 75 dollars, anyone could acquire a stranger’s name and ID number. The higher the price you pay, the more private information you could obtain, including families’ ID number, current location, hotel booking information, and so on.

It is a common understanding that privacy is a fundamental right of citizens. Privacy is a personal freedom taken for granted in modern society. Protection of privacy is to protect human dignity and the only world in which we live. However, as new information technology develops rapidly, and the “Skynet” of information technology is placed, privacy seems to be public.

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