Opening up our "Surveillance Society"

Modern technology has all but destroyed the concept of privacy in a modern society. From police cameras, to data collection, to sharing of personal data within private corporations, it almost seems like no personal information is, well, personal anymore given how much it gets spread around. Even corporations like Facebook maintain that they do give out your private information to other companies, such as advertising firms, schools, or possible jobs you might be searching for. In other words, it's hard to say these days what is private or not anymore, and to what extend privacy in the modern world should be protected, and how much it is currently being infringed upon. However, over the course of the next month or so I will be doing a significant amount of research into this aspect, with a central focus into Boston's own issues with it, though I will be exploring the larger concepts as well. My goal will be to look into the levels of information gathering that occur without our knowledge from day to day, what laws are currently in place to help protect us, and what we should be doing should our personal privacy turn out to be too public. There are certain moral rights everyone should have, and in certain ways modern society, sometimes called, in this context, surveillance society, blurs these expectations. I don't yet know enough to make a judgment about what to do about this issue, but as I learn more I will come to a better understanding of our own privacy, and how we can help protect it from abuse in this technologically changing world.