Breach Of Privacy In The 21st Century

As human beings and citizens of the world, everyone values their privacy. It is a right that is often looked over and taken for granted by most. Since the beginning of time, there have been concerns about individuals’ rights to privacy and their personal information remaining confidential. Our founding fathers had concerns about this which is why, “…this right has developed into

Privacy is, and should continue to be, a fundamental dimension of living in a free, democratic society. Laws protect “government, credit, communications, education, bank, cable, video, motor vehicle, health, telecommunications, children’s and financial information; generally carve out exceptions for disclosure of personal information; and authorize the use of warrants, subpoenas, and court orders to obtain the information.” (Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists: A Framework for Program Assessment, 2008) This is where a lot of people feel as though they have their privacy violated. Most Americans are law-abiding citizens who do not commit illegal acts against the country, they want to go about their lives, minding their own business and not having to worry about outside interference. The fine line between privacy and National Security may not be so fine in everyone’s mind. While it is the job of government agencies to ensure the overall safety of the country and those living in it, the citizens that obey the law and do not do anything illegal often wonder why they are subject to any kind of search, when they can clearly point out, through documentation, that they have never done anything wrong.

During the past decade, an issue has arisen from the minds of people, on which is more important? Privacy or national security? The problem with the privacy is that people do not feel they have enough of it and national security is increasing causing the government to be less worried about the people. National security is growing out of control which has led to the decrease in people’s privacy and has created fear in the eyes of U.S. citizens. “Twelve years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and amid a summer of revelations about the extent of the surveillance state built up to prevent others, leaders, experts and average Americans alike are searching for the right balance between security and privacy” (Noble). Americans should be able to live their daily lives without fear of an overpowered government or a “big brother” figure taking over. “According to a CBS News poll released Tuesday evening, nearly 6 in 10 Americans said they disapproved of the federal government’s collecting phone records of ordinary Americans in order to reduce terrorism” (Gonchar). While it is good to keep our country safe with security, American’s privacy should be more important because there is a substantial amount of national security, the people 's rights should matter first.

Modern Americans see privacy as one of the greatest freedoms. When Edward Snowden revealed the NSA surveillance program, the citizens of the United States were appalled by the extent of access the NSA had to personal information. However, according to Dan Tapscott in his essay, “Should We Ditch the Idea of Privacy?” we post just as many details daily on our numerous social media outlets. The majority of the information we freely post is not meaningful and does no harm to us by being public, yet there is a dangerous side to our open-book nature.

The personal rights that lead to a good life are important but the most important right is the right to privacy. People have been talking for years about the right of privacy. The use of computers made access to Americans personal data very easy. The government knowledge about people’s privacy and personal information can be a benefit to Americans but it also can lead to a serious damage. From the bright side, knowing these information makes it easier to pass social security checks, making medical

Privacy; the state of being free from being observed or being disturbed. Things such as credit card companies, ads on television, warnings on the evening news, and even locker searches at school all directly contradict the definition of “privacy”.

Privacy is what allows people to feel secure in their surroundings. With privacy, one is allowed to withhold or distribute the information they want by choice, but the ability to have that choice is being violated in today’s society. Benjamin Franklin once said, “He who sacrifices freedom or liberty will eventually have neither.” And that’s the unfortunate truth that is and has occurred in recent years. Privacy, especially in such a fast paced moving world, is extremely vital yet is extremely violated, as recently discovered the NSA has been spying on U.S. citizens for quite a while now; based on the Fourth Amendment, the risk of leaked and distorted individual information, as well as vulnerability to lack of anonymity.

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.

While I trust the government and support their policies, you, the federal government, have failed us Americans. When attempting to gain information for an investigation, nearly 22.1 million innocent Americans have been exposed to the public with their personal information hanging by a thread, according to the Washington Post. You politicians may assume that justice is served by providing victims with incentives of extra security technology, but the federal government should not be allowed to gain information from personal devices for their investigation. Furthermore, the use of malware to hack these innocent Americans is an invasion of privacy, ruins devices and their data, ensues lawsuits and their costs with unnecessary breaches, and may even put people’s lives at risk.

As we invest our lives into the allurements of the Internet, our privacy has stowed itself into the relative anonymity of vast city populations. But these precious moments of privacy, hidden in the over abundance of lives and routines, will soon be threatened by facial recognition technology (Frey 2016). Any negative connotations surrounding surveillance is reciprocated by the Orwellian dystopia which is popular for its pessimistic perspective. Although these visions of a restrictive surveillance state are just fictional ambiguous representations, their concerns should not be easily dismissed (Richards 2013). Subconsciously, derived from Orwell’s ideas, we recognize privacy’s role in the effort to avoid dehumanizing a country, however, according to Neil Richards (2013, 1934), “we lack an understanding of what ‘privacy’ means in this context and why it matters”. It is most critical that we address these questions now as facial recognition technology becomes increasingly prominent in our everyday lives.

This is an important aspect of society that continues to become more and more prevalent as time goes on. This causes us to feel as if our privacy as citizens is disappearing and

In today’s world, privacy is a massive topic of debate and worry specifically with the ease of access that the world wide web delivers in addition to the security that can be breached whether it be through a personal computer or mobile device. Topics of security and privacy range from trusting an e-commerce site with your credit card information, text messages and phone calls being secure, thieves stealing credit information, Facebook messages being shared, and if those worries are not enough what about our “Big Brother” the Government? The Government has become notorious for intruding on personal privacy, particularly with the recent foreign and domestic threats that the United States faces and has faced since the tragic events of September

There have been concerns about privacy of American citizens for many years but, ever since telecommunications advances mainly through computers, there has been a major concern in society. One contributing factor that affects privacy is the governmental legislations. The classic example of this situation was the implementation of the Patriot Act of 2001 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Computer technology was already a part of society during the implementation of this law and were available to consumers. Note that this was back in 2001, so computers were not sophisticated as they are today. One of the purposes of this legislation was to monitor the communication traffic via telephone and Internet lines which allowed federal agencies to collect such data if there were suspicious activities dealing foreign and domestic terrorism (Olsen). The issue of privacy invasion came into play within this legislation when the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) stepped in. Their claim was that this legislation or precisely, the attorney general at time, John Ashcroft, wanted to expand the methods of data mining to further extract data usage from the consumer users that would lead this type of surveillance techniques to go out of boundaries when it came

Privacy is something that is valuable, and gives trust to both sides. Everyone is endowed with some degree of privacy, right? The debate of the topic privacy versus security has been going on for a while. Most people believe privacy is more important, giving people the chance to be relaxed without anyone watching them, literally or figuratively speaking. Governments believe that security is more important, claiming it will help with terrorism and lower the crime rate. If we allow this to happen, then as an example, the government could monitor our phones conversations, what websites we visit, the games or programs we download, even where we go throughout our day by tracking us on the GPS unit in our smartphones.

Today, individuals are sacrificing privacy in order to feel safe. These sacrifices have made a significant impact on the current meaning of privacy, but may have greater consequences in the future. According to Debbie Kasper in her journal, “The Evolution (Or Devolution) of Privacy,” privacy is a struggling dilemma in America. Kasper asks, “If it is gone, when did it disappear, and why?”(Kasper 69). Our past generation has experienced the baby boom, and the world today is witnessing a technological boom. Technology is growing at an exponential rate, thus making information easier to access and share than ever before. The rapid diminishing of privacy is leaving Americans desperate for change.