Privacy and Posting and Pictures

 Privacy and posting and pictures

We are learning that our phones and online apps pick up lots of information about us: what we like and what we do—even where we are located and going.  In this post, I’m prepared to take a risk and  post this photograph I recently took (my phone cam knows when!)  

I took it while on a walk. I wonder if the computer can pick up my coordinates and know my exact location in this photo. There’s a small figure in the pic—you can see it if you look carefully. Can the computer tell who that is?

Questions like this would never have occurred to me last year. I thought we had more freedom to guard our privacy by following some sensible self-censorship. I think we are all learning to fear that once we are hooked into technology, performing with it, everything is open to being known and perhaps exposed.  Having “nothing to hide” has taken on new meaning—rather than meaning we have a clean slate, it seems to say that we literally are left with nothing hidden or private.