By Har Sinai Temple
Hopewell Twp. – Protecting your privacy in an age when a cell phone can serve as a tracking device for everything from your shopping habits to your physical location will be the subject of an Oct. 28 appearance at Har Sinai Temple by privacy advocate Grayson Barber.
In "Privacy and Technology: How Much Privacy Can We Expect?," Barber will address the far-reaching intrusiveness of social media and offer suggestions that the average person can use to protect his or her personal information. Her topics will extend to government surveillance and data mining while explaining how something as common as a cell phone can be used to track you in a mall.
A question-and-answer period will follow Barber’s appearance at the 10 a.m. event that is open to the public free of charge. A 9 a.m. morning coffee hour will precede the talk at the temple located at 2421 Pennington Rd. at Denow Road West.
Based in Princeton, Barber is an attorney and privacy advocate who serves on the advisory board of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and works as a volunteer attorney for such groups as the ACLU and the Privacy Rights Clearing House.
In the days preceding her appearance at Har Sinai, Barber will represent the Electronic Privacy Information Center as a "friend of the court" when the New Jersey Supreme Court hears oral argument in a case dealing with cell phone tracking.
According to Barber, the Federal Trade Commission is looking into Facebook’s position that people have no expectation of privacy on the Internet "as a kind of consumer fraud" when it makes personal information available despite a member’s expressed desire for privacy on the site.
"The Internet is such a rich part of our everyday lives, but now so much can be gleaned from cell phones. The more sophisticated the cell phone, the more that can be gotten from it," Barber explains.
She points out that a person’s Social Security number should be the most guarded information because it is linked to so much personal data.
Do you put your social security number on your New Jersey car registration renewal notice? If you use an outdoor MAC machine, does that make it a public transaction? Do police need a warrant to tap your land phone? These are just a few of the questions Barber will address during her appearance at Har Sinai whose Arms of the Temple is sponsoring the event.
For more information, call Har Sinai at (609) 730-8100.

