Ethical Dilemmas

One may agree that technology is the reason as to why individuals feel as if Big Brother is watching them constantly, and some ways to support this include personal privacy of individuals, psychological manipulation, and tracking devices on multiple types of electronics.

Individuals should be allowed their privacy in all manners of lifestyles as long as their actions are deemed legal within the realms of their culture. Due to the exponential development of technology over the past century, the personal lives of women, men, and children alike no longer are granted the luxury of possessing a private life. Cell phones, gadgets that track location, cameras, recorders, wireless signals, smart watches, and other items of technology saturate the lifestyles millions of Americans. In my own experience, my Google enabled cell phone, tracks my location in “real time”; meaning, at the arrival of a new location, I am bombarded with notifications that alert me of nearby restaurants, updates regarding news in my general vicinity, and traffic conditions on neighboring streets. Although this information sometimes serves a useful purpose, I often times worry more about the information Google possesses about me and my whereabouts than the closest Applebee’s in my area.

Authors Maass & Rajagopalan talk about trackers on the devices we have, in their article “That's No Phone, That's My Tracker.” The authors are informing the readers about what's going on with our devices and how technology is not only our friends, but something like an enemy as well because, what citizens are failing to realize is that in today's society we are being watched whether we like it or not. We could just simply walk into a liquor store, supermarket, or mall and are being watched by store clerks, and security cameras. There are even undercover police cars, and policemen that secretly are watching. This topic always ends in debate because some feel that surveillance is an invasion of privacy, when others feel it's for our protection and safety. Even though I am a person that values privacy, I agree with surveillance as long as it is used for good

As technology becomes more and more popular throughout all parts of the world there is an ever growing concern for individuals safety. With everyone carrying around a smartphone nowadays it is much easier to access everyone's location, especially the government. In fact there are many cases in which data was used from cell phone companies to capture criminals. Some people may argue that this is helpful to bring many criminals to justice but is also a huge invasion of privacy and should be looked into further.

Another issue that this case raised was the topic of “expectations to privacy in the midst of technological advancement”. As technology advances in capability and decreases in cost we should reduce our expectation of privacy. It was argued that before GPS and similar electronic technology, month-long surveillance of an individual's every move would have been costly exceptionally demanding, requiring a tremendous amount of resources and people. As a result, society's expectations were, and still are, that such complete and long-term surveillance would not be undertaken, and that an individual would not think it could occur to him or her. The advent of social media where the number of friendly connections can multiply exponentially, and where

The new digital age technology allows systems to create and store digital records of people's movements through public spaces. This isn’t something that we can stop and for directionally challenge people like myself, I wouldn’t want to stop these services. As there are a number off added benefits with new digital features there are also added threats. The threat I am analyzing today is locational privacy. We need to demand that these systems are built with privacy as part of their original design.

There is a report that compared with “position-based services,” people pay more attention to “location-tracking services” related to their privacy issues (LaRue, 367). Because location-tracking services can track your location information, position-based serves help you get directions of your destinations(LaRue, 367). However, when people have the demand for position-based services to get directions for local buildings, meanwhile, the inevitable consequence is the location-tracking service could trace our movements. According to the Official U.S. Government information about the Global Positioning System (GPS),

On the other hand, some polices and agents use these technologies for personality. They can search their friend information such as email, phone, text, or call. In one research, some police use these technologies to track their friend and family. People will get more "Examples of data-gathering abuses" byJohn Kelly in the USA Today:

Technology has advanced at a so fast a pace that the laws used to protect it citizens don’t apply to the way the technology is being used. The Federal, State and local governments are using technology to snoop on it citizens and it is wrong. The criteria that is used to measure this invasion are no consent from its citizens to track their movements, searching third party video cameras without a warrant, criminals using collected material after stealing this material without citizen permission for personnel gain, and unreasonable intrusion on the seclusion of citizens.

This relates towards Big Brother because it finds what people do and allows companies to know this information and gear products towards what society wants. “Thanks to the explosion of GPS technology and smartphone apps, these devices are also taking note of what we buy, where and when we buy it, how much money we have in the bank, whom we text and e-mail, what Web sites we visit, how much and where we travel, what time we go to sleep and wake up- and more. Much of that data is shared with companies that use it to offer us services they think we want,” (Maass and Rajagopalan). The relations between what is happening now with this and what happened in the world of Big Brother is that people are being watched right now and their patterns are being tracked just like in Big Brother but not as

Futuristic security methods such as Global Positioning Systems or GPS pose a serious question for some individuals. Those serious issues include liberty and also security. These topics need to be discussed when considering the use of these security methods. Some individuals may believe that the use of these devises leads to the loss of personal privacy and may interfere with an individual’s civil liberties. I agree with this statement to an extent. Without having an extensive background on the matter I could still foresee individual complaints regarding being monitored. For example questions arising with day-to-day activities that would never have raised an eyebrow before. However, in some extreme circumstances certain individuals have forgone

When discovering the facts behind tracking it becomes understandable why an individual may disagree with the capability of the goverment knowing your every move by installing softwares in popular handheld devices. Many people disagree with the actions of these particular softwares and tracking systems, due to the fact that this is an invasion of our privacy and also violates our constitutional rights as a civilization. Although it is easier for an individual to see the negatives of these programs they can also become beneficial in our everyday lives and in serious circumstances. The article touches on two broad catergories of tracking, behavioral tracking and locational tracking. Both forms of tracking have major benefits as well and have

Technological advances in analytics and mobility have accelerated entirely new business models, from social networks to the ability of enterprises to create complex supply chains globally. The impact of innovation in analytics and mobility continues to also raise the paradoxical question of personal and corporate ethics as well (Sollie, 2007). With advanced analytics the traceability of transactions for entire groups of people down to each specific person are now possible. Mobility advances have made it possible to track the exact movements of a person through their daily routine, or as they travel globally. These developments have made it possible for advertisers to know what a person has purchased, when, where, for what price and potentially for what purpose. Never before have the personal liberties of the public more at risk due to the onslaught of technological innovation (Koukal, 2007). The responsible use of technology, to ethical standards, is critical for the personal freedoms of the public (Martin, Freeman, 2004).

However this new emerging technology is not without it’s issues, privacy being the biggest one of them. Ethicists and the public at

“The fact that mobile devices are increasingly equipped with GPS sensors and that their market shares are on the raise has led to a completely new problem: the analysis and exploitation of geo-data. This exploitation has become possible because the functionality of smartphones can be enhanced through downloadable applications. Today’s indisputable availability of geo-data and the possibility to allocate individual devices to specific persons allows advertisers and investigative authorities to enter a new dimension when it comes to profiling – a field that promises high profits over the next few years (Working Party, 2011). Yet, users have little awareness of the consequences these profiling processes entail; on the other hand, many perceive their basic right to privacy as something negligible (Lyon, 2003). However, manufacturers and service providers rarely