Privacy used to be something people lost by accident. Today, it’s something we give away without even noticing. At Bakersfield College’s latest Renegade Roundtable, professors and students unpacked how apps, algorithms, and surveillance have blurred the line between public and private life and why the consequences now stretch far beyond social media likes.
One panelist shared a memory of a sixth grader pulling up a teacher’s house on Google Maps
during class. What once felt invasive now feels normal. App tracking, data broker sites, and quiet location updates have made it easy for anyone to be found. “Anybody can be a celebrity online now,” one attendee said. “That complicates what ‘private’ even means.”
The conversation shifted to the risks in our own community. Activists described the fear of
accidentally exposing others in live streams or protest footage. A single photo metadata included could put someone at risk of being targeted, profiled, or even detained. “I don’t want to be the weak link,” one participant said. “I don’t want to be the reason someone gets swooped up by ICE.”
These concerns extend beyond protests. Once someone has your image or information, you lose control of it. The panel pointed to the 2023 actors’ strike, where performers fought to prevent studios from scanning their bodies and voices and using AI copies forever. Even extras workers making minimum wage feared being replaced by digital replicas created without consent or fair pay.
Pew Research’s statistics show how widespread the problem is. In 2024, more than 3,100 data breaches affected 1.35 billion people, including students. They found that 71% of Americans worry about how the government uses their data, while over 80% believe companies will use information in ways they never agreed to.
Tech evolves far faster than laws. Many U.S. privacy standards still rely on 1800s definitions,
while companies collect detailed data locations, habits, biometrics often without users realizing it. And with AI systems trained on everything from our faces to our movement patterns, the concept of “opting out” becomes less realistic.
In the end, the Roundtable made one thing clear: privacy isn’t just about what we share. It’s about what others can do with the pieces of us we didn’t even know we gave away.
