A Brief Note On Defamation And Privacy Are Real Risks

In the twenty first century, everyone is gluing their eyes to bright screens, and keeping their minds and mouths shut. The public mindlessly releasing information through dangerous domains, like the Internet, poses a great issue. Citizens do not realize where their information can be used and why it is used. This unfortunate circumstance is seen in Peter Singer’s “Visible Man: Ethics in a World Without Secrets.” Although there is a sensation of isolation for the public in this century, there should still be a great amount of openness when it comes to social and political events that involve information, and the ways that data is collected for these purposes.

Today, we can find tabloids and magazines on shelves of supermarkets or kiosks with pictures of celebrities or occasionally normal people who do not realize that they were photographed while they were in their home or enjoying their vacations. The motivation for those photographers who take those photos are probably the same which motivated Darwin Bonaparte to film John in the novel “Brave New World”. They aspire to be famous and wealthy. They are truly selfish, irresponsible and materialistic. Indeed, they gravely violate the right of those people to have privacy. For example, an article published in the USA Today mentions and presents different opinions about it,

Rosen portrays our society as completely exposed, giving up all privacy to join, and fit in with the “naked crowd”. Rosen claims that we willing give up all power of privacy in order to fit in with society and be accepted as someone that can be trusted through exposure. He claims that image is the key to establishing trust, not through a relationship or conversation. His thesis presents his views on the subject, “has led us to value exposure over privacy? Why, in short, are we so eager to become members of the Naked Crowd, in which we have the illusion of belonging only when we are exposed?”(Rosen) he states that we value exposure over privacy, and will give away privacy to fit in.

In the essay, “Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’”, published on May 15, 2011, Professor Daniel J. Solove is trying his best to convince his well sophisticated audience that the issue of privacy affects more than just the everyday people veiling a wrong doing. His argument focuses around ethos, and a lot of it. Although there are some logos and pathos, they aren’t as nearly as strong as his ethos. In the type of society that we live in today, privacy has become more and more broad. Everyone sees it on an everyday occurrence just about; including on social networking sites, HIPAA forms, or even with people just simply observing

With new technology rolling out onto the market seemingly everyday, the privacy of many is disappearing and has even become nonexistent. With many scandals over the past few years, government agencies have been accused of using these new communication resources as means to keep a watchful eye over their citizens. This is the very topic discussed by Peter Singer in his essay “Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets”. Singer discusses the benefits and pitfalls that have come from these communication innovations, going in depth on the tactics and resources used by civilians as well as governments to keep track of each other. Singer presents strong premises that argue for the conservation of the individual privacy rights while also arguing for governments to become more transparent, creating an overall controversial element to his essay, as he is only half invested in transparency as a whole between civilians and the body that governs them, that comes off as somewhat unconvincing as the two arguments contradict each other.

“While individuals may not have an expectation of privacy in public, they do have an expectation of anonymity. A person expects to be able to walk down the street and blend into the crowd. There are many public settings in which a person does not expect to be recorded, even if they could be casually observed. Some of these settings could be sensitive, embarrassing, or incriminating…” [3].

As a growing topic of discussion, privacy in our society has stirred quite some concern. With the increase of technology and social networking our standards for privacy have been altered and the boundary between privacy and government has been blurred. In the article, Visible Man: Ethics in a World Without Secrets, Peter Singer addresses the different aspects of privacy that are being affected through the use of technology. The role of privacy in a democratic society is a tricky endeavor, however, each individual has a right to privacy. In our society, surveillance undermines privacy and without privacy there can be no democracy.

Technology is constantly upgrading everyday and it creates unique challenges for individuals privacy rights while there are regulators looking to preserve both privacy rights and technological innovation. For awhile now society has been struggling on how to balance privacy rights and emerging technologies. For example, early as 1890, Newspapers and Photographs were on the rise and legal scholars called for added privacy protections, including enshrining those rights in criminal law. As people have a right to protect their privacy, it is still a struggle while promoting innovation in this fast increasing technology world we live in today.

Libel and invasion of privacy are two very important issues dealing with broadcast media. The two are very similar but different from each. Libel deals more with what was actually printed or broadcast, where as invasion of privacy deals with how the information was actually gathered. Both have laws to regulate and influence what kind of information is gathered and, how it is actually obtained.

Warren and Brandei had mentioned that “cameras and other devices are capable of capturing information about a person without a person’s consent”. This appears in day to day situation in everyone’s life. For example when we walk on the road, people might be capturing us knowingly or unknowingly we might be in that picture while they were trying to capture something else. Celebrities are the one of the

The 21st century is an age where people publicize information everywhere. People are constantly on the internet to receive the latest news. Consequently, millions of people are on social media every hour of the day. Anyone with an internet connection and basic computer literacy can directly publish content on social media for the world to see. People used to be limited to newspapers and television to receive the latest news, now many people are online posting the latest news ("Defamation Dragged into the 21st Century? | Keep Calm Talk Law", 2014). Millions of people communicate daily through the internet, share ideas, opinions, and thoughts, so it’s not surprising that some of the criticisms posted are the most constructive. Verbal arguments

Sedwick defines False Statement of Fact as, “If a statement is true, then it is not defamatory no matter how offensive or embarrassing”. She also adds, because opinions are not facts they are protected. A statement of fact specifically and clearly written is best. Sedwick then defines Of an Identifiable Person as, to claim defamation the fictional character must consist of ample identifiable information depicting the target that would lead another person to identify the target, besides the target

As for the activities and experience of human beings, the concept of privacy and publicity can be

In general, libel is defined as statement that is published through a certain type of medium such as books, magazines, and newspapers. In another form of understanding, libel is a source of defamation in which it is done through written statement, printed words through books, pictures and illustrations, and other forms of words that can last in a long-term. Objectively, libel is done to harm a person’s reputation that in turn will result the victim to avoid these people.

Online harassment is turning into a larger and larger global issue. It is no longer that of children being too harsh to their peers, or celebrities being attacking for some tid-bit they said off handedly. Though both of these still occur, the scale has broadened to a point where it is felt laws must be enacted to combat this. Like the world around us, the online assault of these people is personal, using images and degrading comments based from gender and race, arbitrary and unchangeable characteristics of people. Some may say online assault is an issue of freedom of speech and how it is abused, others may say it is a criminal issue and should be treated as such with laws and regulation, another may say it is an issue of inequality that we all must combat. But beyond oppression of minorities, in what ways is online harassment gendered?