Month: October 2019

Data has become so precious; some say it is more valuable than gold. Data is the driving force behind commerce and companies utilize it to reach out to more consumers and get them to buy their products. Data is not just numbers and statistics; it is also our personal information. Government want as much information as possible to gain the upper hand when it comes to controlling the people and making sure that their society is at harmony. By harmony, people following their rules, whether they are right or not.

I think that there is a fine line between individual privacy and national security. With more terrorism going on, both physical and digital, more security and surveillance have been put into place. Although I understand those who support national security, I believe that individual privacy gets more priority. People shouldn’t use ‘national security’ as an excuse to be able to get access to sensitive data. Yes, sometimes precursor to a terrorist attack might be discovered. But it just doesn’t make sense how the government has to go to such point to figure that out. Why can we start off with something less technologically advanced? Like guns. It doesn’t make sense how we don’t even have strict gun laws and we are trying to go after people’s data for national security sake.

Individual privacy is very crucial. Although people these days tend to give out their personal information to Facebook and Google unknowingly, I feel like once they know what they are revealing about themselves, they would be more cautious about their information. I have been raised believing, don’t trust anyone else except for yourself. I feel that I am the only one who can trust myself with my own information. Everyone else should keep their information to themselves. Although national security is important, human beings are bound to make mistakes. Furthermore, a government official is not going to be super careful about a random person’s information.

For example with the Apple case, Apple itself is the one who is going to care. Why? Because it involves their own products with their own business image at stake. The government and laws? Money and greed trumps everything. The backdoor can be misused and if the access is somehow given to other countries, then our national security could be further compromised.

Just as how the police or federal agents need warrants before entering houses, there should be some sort of ‘warrant’ system for data as well. People need to be notified if the government is going through their personal information. Just like how we have freedom of speech which means we have the right to say anything we want and voice our opinions, we should also have a right to withhold information, unless required under a legal requirement. I am all for the government try to get information for us. But there needs to be a strict system; not NSA just storing all our information.

If we don’t have more control of our privacy, who knows if Big Brother might come out to be real? … There’s already smart home devices that could be hacked.

Accidents happen.
No human beings are perfect. We learn from mistakes, and that’s how we improve.

Mistakes happen a lot in the engineering industry. Sometime we make hypothesis, and it might turn out wrong. The engineering and technology industry has room for mistakes and accidents. However, it shouldn’t occur in production and public stage, only in testing and prototyping phase. In engineering, we has various testings for a reason: it is so that such potential accidents do not happen in the real world. If technical accidents happen in the public, it is the fault of the leadership for failing to be cautious and detailed 100% of the time, especially when some executives decide to overlook small mistakes that could turn out to be big.

There might be moments when someone knows that there is a mistake and that if a product might be harmful to the user, but the higher up decides not to disclose the information. I don’t blame the executives; sometimes it is hard to admit problems as the company and the brand image might be tainted. For example, Samsung had a explosive battery failure with the Galaxy Note 7 and device protection issues with Galaxy Fold. Instances like these hurt the company. However, they eventually admitted to their mistakes and recalled the devices. Yet, there are companies that might not do these acts, and it could be people in the lower positions who are aware of the problems to speak out. Sometimes, they are not obligated to speak out. They should be obligated to know the impact of the issues and act upon their moral values. If it is a small glitch that is not harmful, it doesn’t need to be pointed out to the public. However, if that small glitch can kill several hundreds of people, then by all means, they should speak out.

In the case that they are silent, I am sure that by their conscious, they are feeling guilty. Even people are have witness a crime but didn’t say anything could be arrested. Engineers should think what would they do as if they or their close ones were the ones getting negatively impacted by the engineering disasters. Whistleblowing to a certain extent should be deemed heroic IF it was something serious. Whistleblowing furthermore should be done in such way more damage is not created. For example, revealing national security could impact our nation from our enemies. It could also get messy if the ‘mistake’ was purposely carried out for a greater good. For example, the military ‘accidentally’ killed 10 civilians. But what if from those 10 people was a terrorist who could have killed 1000 people. There are different levels of worthiness for whistleblowers. I would say whistleblowing however should be done when the impact of the benefit is twice as much as the impact of the damage. I don’t blame people who can’t whistleblow for things that have similar levels of benefit and damage, especially when their career is at stake. Particularly for the older people who have families to support.