Real Test Question (Retell Lecture) – Technology Erodes Physical Privacy

So that creates tensions and that’s what I want to talk about. Because I think it’s important that we are, as a society, able to have an informed debate about how much privacy is enough but not too much, how much security is enough but not too much. Privacy, as a human right, that’s simply quoting the Universal Declaration. In the physical world, we’ve got all kinds of protections. There is evidence that we care about our privacy. We’ve got locks, we’ve got obscured glass, we’ve got lots, we wear clothes, we put up shutters. And technology continues to erode the privacy that exists in the real world, in the three spatial dimensions. Security cameras, automatic number, plate recognition take away anonymity. Long lenses, paparazzi, take away distance and the privacy that used to create. And body scanners are increasingly being used to see through for example. This process isn’t going to slow down and the new quantum technologies are actually being able to do gravitational sensing. And that’s advancing at a remarkable rate. And you can’t shield gravity. So some of the new quantum technologies are able already to see through walls. And there are technologies also for seeing round corners now using scattered light from lasers. Technology continues to erode privacy.