The Pros And Cons Of Online Privacy

Privacy, a term that is reluctant in today’s modernized society who’s meaning is far from realistic. As the world congruently fosters a new way of living, through technology our lives as we know as our own is far from it. This paper will discuss the use of technology to research ones private information, the advantages and disadvantages of the public access of such information and the laws that promulgate such data.

Time Newspaper has learnt that it's not surprising that Internet companies have electronic dossiers that contain personal information for individuals who subscribe to the websites. Generally, these companies have obtained the information from people based on individual's visit to the website, sent and received emails, tagged photos, and searches people carry out. However, the extent of personal information known by these Internet companies has remained largely unknown as well who they provide and/or sell this information to. However, Internet companies continue to gather lots of personal information from different people who focus on carrying out online activities on a daily basis. Currently, it's estimated that these firms gather personal information from nearly 500 million users but are hesitant to provide this information to the other firms or individuals. As their unwillingness to share has attracted significant congressional inquiry, things could finally change in California following the introduction of a bill that may force companies to disclose the kind of personal information they have gathered and how this information is being used.

Over the past few years, the development of the Internet and the intrusive surveillance capabilities of these technologies have caused privacy to become a major political and social issue for millions of Americans who go online.  Companies employ a variety of tools to gather marketable information on American citizens.  Most of the use of this information is for personalized advertisement and to create databases of target audiences.  While these activities may appear to be nothing more than annoyances for a majority of Americans, there is the hidden danger of the loss of privacy.

Over the course of the past few decades, technology has been on a fast track to more advanced opportunities for communication. These developments have increased efficiency in society, however, it is evident that the basic values, such as privacy of personal information, are compromised significantly. Privacy is an essential element of a free society and without which, individuals would lose the ability to interact with one another in private. With the advancements of technology there is a clash between an individuals right to guard their personal information and the power of the cyber world to penetrate that information. Innovative technologies such as various forms of social media and surveillance are invading the freedom to said privacy.

Privacy, meaning the right to be left alone, has intellectual roots tracing back to the 19th century. On December 15, 1890, Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis had their article “The Right to Privacy” published in the Harvard Law Review. This article was highly regarded as one of the exceptional examples of the effect legal journals have on American law, and was the first of many future law review discussions. “It is our purpose to consider whether the existing law affords a principle which can properly be invoked to protect the privacy of the individual; and if it does what the nature and extent of such protection is” (Gregory, Kalven, and Epstein 1133). Warren and Brandeis stressed the importance and necessity for some form of protection for the private individual when the press is overstepping their boundaries and the indecency their gossip creates. Several decades later, in August of 1960, William L. Prosser published his article “Privacy” in the California Law Review. In this article he outlined the four classifications of privacy law which are as follows:

The online world has recently changed from being able to make a phone call in privacy to having someone being able to hear your every word, without you even knowing. Our value of privacy has changed over the years as we have somewhat taken for granted the privacy we originally had. Some could even say that we have arrived back in the future in ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, with the lack of privacy that we currently possess.

If a casual user of the internet were to Google a search for the word “privacy” as of June 2015, there would be close to 2 billion hits. Discussions of privacy, piracy and internet breaches are everywhere. The numerous Google hits show there is nearly universal agreement that (1) we have less privacy and more information than we used to, and (2) this is bad.Information itself is, of course, not bad, but as we have witnessed recently, even personnel record maintained by the United States government are subject to unethical hacking by all sorts of unscrupulous individuals and governments. Clearly, privacy is something that a great many people and businesses are concerned about. Whilenew information technologies (IT) have created the possibility of making lives easier or better, new IT has also created new conflicts with our existing business and personal norms, and laws and our traditional ethical principles. IT has even caused the creation of a new field“Information Systems Ethics” to cover these changes ( ).

Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis had published “The Rights To Privacy” which was an influential article that made a general common law right of privacy. Ever since the publication of the article, courts have relied on it in hundreds of causes presenting a range of privacy issues. Privacy is something that shouldn’t be taken away, imagine how life would be without us having our own privacy. There would be many people knowing each other’s business. There are times when people go through rough times and they need their own time alone. The rights to family, personal, and life privacy are one of the very important part of life because without it everything would be different.

In fact, these codes of ethics work in a kindred approach as with the ethical principles (Gillon and Lloyd, 2001). The principles are autonomy (respect others), beneficence (do good), non-maleficence (do no harm) and justice (treat others equipollently) (Beauchamp and Childress, 2001; Duquenoy et al., 2005). It is important to realize that these principles are the backbone of the sundry ethical theories (Ridley and Wickham, 1998).

The words, “Arguing that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say” were said by Edward Snowden who is a computer professional in America. Similarly, the essays “Tracking Is an Assault on Liberty,” “Web Users Get as Much as They Give,” and “Facebook Is Using You” from Nicholas Carr, Jim Harper, and Lori Andrews respectively points out that the internet privacy is good and bad. However, the articles by Carr and Andrews are based on the negative side of the internet privacy, which means that the internet privacy is not good. On the other hand, Harper’s article is based on the positive side of the internet privacy, which means that the internet privacy is good and scary, but people need to be careful of their own information and browsing histories, and websites. Jim Harper’s essay is more relevant and reasonable than the Nicholas Carr and Lori Andrews’s essays. However, Harper seems more persuasive to readers because he believes that the internet is good if people use it in a right way, whereas Carr and Andrews believe that the internet is not good at all.

In today’s world of ever-evolving computer technology there is a growing concern for online privacy. As suggested by Jason Noble, author of “US debates security vs. privacy 12 years after 9/11: The search continues for the right balance between counterterrorism efforts and individual privacy,” the concern of privacy online has evolved since the September 11th terrorist attacks, even though citizens are/were willing to give up civil liberties for a sense of national security. As the digital-age advanced into citizen’s everyday lives, their right to privacy was diminishing. As suggested by Sherry Turkle in, “How Computers Change the Way We Think,” younger generations are introduced to computer technology at a much younger age than ever before.

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.

Privacy concerns on the web have become an undesirable consequence that people face with cyber technology. The ability of computers to gather and store unlimited amount of information from the internet raises privacy issues concerning an individual’s informational privacy. A person’s right to informational privacy is the ability to control the flow of their personal information, including the transfer and exchange of that information. An invasion of informational privacy denies people the right to control who accesses their personal information. Many internet users are unaware that they are more likely to compromise their privacy when using the internet services such as search engines and social networking sites. The internet provides access to an incredible amount of information from all over the world. Some internet users use the internet exclusively as a source of information while other internet users use the internet to create and disseminate information for others to use. However, the vast amount of information floating on the internet would not

What is privacy? Many people are aware of the term but do not understand what it means. Warren and Brandeis defined privacy in 1980 as “the right to be alone”. Buchholz and Rosenthal defined privacy as “the concept of being in control of information that is available about oneself”(2002, Jan). Whereas most recently Boscheck determined the meaning as “one’s ability to isolate oneself from others and their views. To have no privacy means to be exposed, out of control and possibly open to coercion” (2011, Oct). The use of privacy term can be related to many other terms such as confidentiality, isolation, and secrecy.

Data is more pervasive than ever. In the new Hyperconnected World underpinned by the Internet of Things (IoT), people and things are increasingly connected. By 2020, there will be 50 billion networked devices. As individuals – whether on a personal level or representing their organizations – communicate and socialize more online and on mobile, a whole new collection of data will become available. This level of connectivity will have profound social, political and economic consequences.