Is Privacy Dead?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 5 October 2017
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We all do it: ask a search engine things we wouldn’t dare ask a friend, post our lives on social media, hit the ‘agree’ button on privacy conditions we never read. This is life in our online age. To get our favourite apps and services for free, we provide companies with the intimate details of our lives. Businesses we’ve heard of, and many we haven’t, make money off this data in ways we may not fully realise. And almost every week it seems there’s another data breech – Equifax, Sonic, and Deloitte have been hacked in the last month alone. Each time the private data of millions of people is compromised. Can we control who knows what about us? And are we comfortable with how much information we’re giving up and how it might be used, or mis-used? This week the Inquiry asks “Is Privacy Dead?”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the inquiry on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:05.0 | Each week we bring you four expert witnesses being hacked and private data being compromised. |
| 0:24.0 | U.S. Credit rating agency Equifax is one of the latest. |
| 0:27.6 | Last month, the personal details of 145 million Americans were hacked. |
| 0:34.0 | But if you like me, it probably doesn't sink in. |
| 0:38.0 | It all seems to be happening somewhere else, to someone else. |
| 0:42.0 | Then, last week, I typed my email address into a website which searches through data from |
| 0:49.3 | more than 200 website hacks to let people know if they've been a victim. |
| 0:55.4 | I click submit and up on the screen flashed some familiar corporate logos. |
| 1:01.0 | Those companies had all been hacked and my data had been exposed six different times. |
| 1:07.0 | It was a shock. |
| 1:09.0 | But I'm guessing I'm not alone. |
| 1:12.0 | Most of us are probably a bit blasey when it comes to our online privacy |
| 1:17.4 | Unaware how vulnerable our data is |
| 1:20.2 | Unconscious of how much of it we're giving to companies, |
| 1:23.5 | unsure what they're doing with it. |
| 1:27.0 | I'm James Fletcher, and this week we're asking, |
| 1:29.9 | is privacy dead. Part one, your database of ruin. I am carrying this little tracker in my pocket which we like to call it at the |
| 1:48.3 | American Civil Liberties Union a little policeman in my pocket. |
| 1:55.3 | The little policeman our first expert witness is talking about is something that many of |
| 1:59.8 | us carry, a smartphone. |
| 2:02.3 | It tracks us everywhere we go, but like a real policeman, it can often be |
... |
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