The Eternal Value Of Privacy

"_ÑŒ_ÑŒ Living in today_Ñés age, a technological advanced era in which billions of people who have access to the internet and at the touch of their hands or a click of a button we are able to access thousands upon thousands of websites that can bring us to an information overload of anything we may desire or need. We may also access these features through our cell phones, but did you have any idea that the government also can look through our personal information? Whether it be personal or whatever we were to look up, they have the ability to find anything that we do, but should it only be if they have a good enough reason to be looking for specifics? For example government is obligated to listen in on private phone calls through landlines , texts on cell phones and even check through social medias. The government is allowed to track the time date and the location of

Greenwald does an exceptional job of diving into the meat and potatoes of the issue, and gets right at its core with an essential question we need to ask ourselves in our growing digital world: “Why does our privacy matter?” In his TED Talk: Why Privacy Matters Greenwald explains how the Internet, which has been hailed for the liberation it brought is now being used as a zone of mass discriminant surveillance (Greenwald, 2014). It seems as though whenever the topic is brought up most ignorant people immediately assume that if the government is watching, it is okay as long as you don’t have anything to hide. With this train of thought comes the idea that there are clear lines between “good” people and “bad” people in this world, and its essentially okay for a computer to determine whether or not someone is good or bad based on a collection of phone records, Google searches and associates on social media. The group of those saying that there is no harm done in the breaching of ones privacy are those who have accepted that they are in no way shape or form a threat to our government in any case. To me, that is something that is simply unacceptable in a functioning democracy. If people are so willing to give up every aspect of their daily lives to the government, it becomes easier to track the exact schedules and routines of certain individuals and on a grand scale, the impending results can be more than scary. Greenwald explains that there has been many studies held that prove that when humans know they are being watched, their behavior dramatically changes compared to if they think they are alone. After someone realizes they are being observed they quickly start conforming to their surroundings because they’ve become imprisoned in their own minds for fear of

Very soon, we may live in a world where the government knows everything about us. In the novel 1984, that’s exactly how life was. In 1949, George Orwell wrote about a man named Winston, who was trying to rebel against a dystopian society, in which the government was manipulating its’ citizen. In the novel, the people were constantly being monitored by the government. Anyone who was caught rebelling against the government was sent to prison, tortured into loving the government and its leader Big Brother, and then was killed. Orwell wrote 1984 as warning to everyone in the future. He believed that our world could easily turn into this. Government monitoring, lying to the public, and influenced conformity are all things that are relevant

throughout the years, many people have thought the question, should governments and banks have the right to collect and sell private citizens' data? There have been many thoughts and perspectives on this. Some people believe that the government has the right to gather and distribute our personal information, and others firmly think the opposite, that it is an infringement on our personal privacy. The two articles have both the positives and the negatives of this idea, but are written in contrasting views. The first article, by David Sirota, "In These Times", mostly focuses on how it is the duty of the government to survey us, not only for our safety but for others safety also. The second article, from RT, sees things on the more negative

An experiment has also been conducted to see how the general public thinks of this issue. The results came with a shocking 60% disagreeing with the government’s doing. When asked about why they disagreed, they said it is absurd and it is an invasion to privacy. Though the remaining 30+% may support the government, it is generally agreed that something has to be changed to stop the government constantly watching over everyone’s private information.

Everyday our government plays a crucial role in our lives, including how we interact and communicate with others on the web and through social media. In recent years, governments have gained too much access to our personal lives by collecting our metadata. Several countries like the United States, Britain and Australia have all been known to be at fault for invading its citizens’ privacy by collecting involuntary information.

After 9/11, the advanced technology accelerates the National Security Agency (NSA)’s ability to conduct live surveillance in order to closely track targeted individuals in the name of anti-terrorism, which, as a result, violates citizens’ rights to freely live their lives and intensifies the distrust between the government and citizens. Soma et al. in their article “Balance of Privacy vs. Security: A Historical Perspective of the USA PATRIOT Act,” point out that in the modern world, surveillance has advanced from “static telephone wiretaps to interception by filtration software…and eventually, …to real-time automated surveillance of voice-over-internet communications and continuous tracking of individuals by their own cellular phones” (285). It seems that technology makes it possible that the government can have access to any individuals’ private information at will without their permission. Edward Snowden, who is a U.S. former technical contractor for the NSA and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who leaked details of top-secret U.S. and British government mass surveillance programs to the press, in his article “How the National Security State Kills a Free Society,” mentions that

I think this is one of important topics in New Media because it is surrounded by controversy. On one hand, surveillance system is essential for national security purpose. On the other hand, it may violate the right of privacy. For that reason, the famous argument "nothing-to-hide" is wrong because everyone has the right to be left alone, and control his own information. Then the topic mentioned probable problems resulting from privacy violation such as information aggregation, exclusion, secondary use, and distortion (Solove, 2011). This topic can be used to advocate for human rights in privacy and keeping their information for themselves . To correct this harmful unfair situation, advocacy campaigns must be announced to educate people about their rights on one side, and to impose clear written regulations about how will this process be managed on other

The widespread use of information technology, automatic data processing techniques, the formation of global information systems, access to which can be virtually made by any person from anywhere in the world – these are the real characteristics of the gaining momentum digital era. On the one hand, the benefits of free access to information directly provide the realization of one of the most important democratic rights to freedom of information to citizens. The management of large-scale automated databases not only significantly optimizes the various processes of preparation and decision-making but also facilitates citizens’ access to the digital market – from the use of credit cards to the formation of a biometric portrait and projection of possible diseases. On the other hand, the widespread use of personal data by public authorities, businesses and social organizations significantly increases the risk of intrusion by unauthorized persons in the private sphere of a person, creating an infringement threat of one of its fundamental natural rights – the right to privacy (Bygrave, 2014).

In the end, the Internet has been a medium facilitating them to form a set of unique mechanism and system, on which they train their staff and contact partners. There is no denying that online network has served as their tool to overturn the government. In addition, when the Internet surveillance technology can be used to detect criminal activities and terrorism, but there are privacy concerns (Dinev et al., 2008). To make it further, the existence of Internet has also posed threats to the rights of privacy, one of the basic human rights. (Martin, 2014), a columnist with The New York Times, observed that the US government’s attempt to create an all-encompassing, all-seeing, database of its citizens is an “attempt to create an Orwellian ‘virtual, centralized grand database,’ which could put a spyglass on American’s every move, from literally the way Americans move to their virtual moves, scanning shopping, e-mail, bank deposits, vacations, medical prescriptions, academic grades and trips to the vet”. For instance, in June 2013, an American technical analyst, Edward Snowden exposed the PRISM, official name as “US-984XN”. This program was an electronic monitoring system initiated by NSA since George Walker Bush was in the office. According to the documents released by Snowden that NSA had been accessible to large amounts of personal chatting information, storage data, voice messages, file transference, individual

Since the industrial revolution, society has continued to grow larger, and more interconnected than ever before. Aiding in this process has been the advancement of technology and ideas. With the extensive advancement of technology, an equally sizable debate on its ethical implications has developed. In recent years an ethical dilemma has arose pertaining to the use of government surveillance. While the increased surveillance of citizens by the government is beneficial to the safety of society, the government might infringe on citizen privacy rights.

Although Apple has not created such tool, the development of technology in the modern society has already expanded the government’s ability to profile any given person under surveillance by gathering and analyzing his/her private data. The severe consequence of mass surveillance is that many innocent individuals have been wrongfully profiled and interrogated. Once their private information is gathered by the government, it can be shared and used widely for unstated purpose without the public knowing. Although government’s surveillant activities, in many cases, keep civilians’ lives safer through the eliminating terrorists and criminals, it puts their safety in danger in another way that they deprive individuals of their right to privacy, making their private information expose to the risks of being distorted and secondary use by the authorities without their consents and creating a power imbalance between civilians and the

The right to privacy, via electronic transmissions to include the internet, is an ever present issue that does not and most likely will not ever have a solution that will not only satisfy the wants of citizens but the security needs of the nation. When issues of privacy arise we refer to a non-evolving, interpreted document called the Constitution written over two centuries ago. In order to maintain national security, citizens must surrender some privacy for the good of the nation and themselves. If privacy takes precedent over national security, then our nation becomes susceptible to attacks both electronic and physical in nature. But if a fair and proper agreement between the need for privacy and security can be reached, then it is

The government, that is responsible for protecting citizens, has the power to spy and monitor people. Sometimes, surveillances are useful for catching criminals. Oftentimes, over monitoring individuals may violates personal freedoms and sometimes the government over exceeds its boundaries to obtain personal information. There are four types of privacy-related activities that a federal, state, and local government can have control over. The first activity deals with collection of information of individual citizens. After the collection of this information, a government may store, manipulate, or use this data against someone. Third, this collected information may spread to other agencies. Finally, sharing personal information may disrupt someone’s daily activities and solitude.

The value of personal privacy in American society is something that seems to dwindle every day. We have access to wonderful technologies such as personal assistants, social media, and much more; however, most of these great items empirically come at the expense of one’s privacy. As a simple example, Eric Boughman, a contributor for the Forbes Legal Council, wrote an article stating that while the Amazon Echo is an amazingly practical device, it is always listening to conversations and may even be storing them in the cloud. (Council, 1) Boughman analyzed Amazon’s privacy policy, finding that Amazon does indeed store voice recordings and other personal information on a cloud server, and while this data is able to be deleted, Amazon does not recommend deleting it, as doing so may “degrade the experience”. Personal assistants are far from the only case of privacy being infringed due to technology, and we believe that this is a major issue. The tech industry will continue to pump out devices which close the gap between the virtual and physical worlds, and as they continue to do this, the value of our personal privacy will continue to take a toll. It is for this reason that we will provide the foundation for a new privacy law to be enacted in America, allowing Americans to submit requests to have their personal data removed from a server when they feel it has been misused.