The Pros And Cons Of Privacy

Over the years, there has always been a lot of controversy surrounding the topic of whether or not the government should be able to monitor our activity on the internet. This especially become a huge debate more recently simply because of the many terrorist attacks and dangerous events that we’ve encountered. Many believe that if the government was given more insight to what the people of this country looked at on the internet, then they would be able to prevent many horrible things from happening. On the other hand, however, others feel that this is a violation of personal privacy and therefore should not be allowed. The government already monitors our internet usage but they are thinking of increasing what they monitory which has lead to many differing opinions among the people of the United States of America.

While interpreting Should We Ditch the Idea of Privacy? by Don Tapscott, I had found that this article was my favorite. When it comes to choosing is one should stay private or keep their information public, I feel like that is up to that individual one hundred percent. In Should We Ditch the Idea of Privacy? Tapscott went over how many people should be more open and post more information on the internet to allow others to get a sense of what is going on. He believed Facebook is a “leading social-media site that promotes information sharing” making everyone’s life an open book for everyone to read and learn from. Additionally, to help is one is struggling with any mental health issues. Tapscott believes that by sharing personal information can

The internet is a vital part of our lives, but what if I said it was a completely public one? Privacy is a rare commodity in today's world. As Nicholas Carr writes about in his essay “Tracking Is an Assault on Liberty,” corporations pay close attention to citizens. The most frightening part is that this practice is perfectly legal. Even recently the government stripped more of our privacy away. In the beginning of April 2017, President Trump repealed regulations by the Federal Communications Commission that would have forced internet service providers to gain consent before selling data collected from their customers. However, corporations aren't the only ones capturing data from internet users. The government is also making use of these records.

The topic of this paper is privacy. It will talk about the ethical and legal reasons for maintain privacy. The audience for this paper is high school level teachers in a school with one-to-one devices for every student.

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.

With social media growing there seems to be a lack of privacy. Everyone posts where they are and what they are doing and then everyone that follows reads the post and knows that is happening like they are there in person. In “Should We Ditch the Idea of Privacy” by Don Tapscott mentions the author of Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand, who said “I’d be totally happy if my personal DNA mapping was published” (Tapscott 118). It is mind blowing how open many people are on social media. By, metaphorically, releasing one’s DNA mapping anyone has complete access to creating a clone. Unless someone has a couple thousand dollars laying around ones DNA mapping is far fetch, however by posting the street one lives on, on a public site is just as bad.

We think that by going to Incognito Mode on Chrome or to a Private Browsing Window on Safari, all our browsing history will not be recorded. That seems a bit hard to believe – what stays on the net stays on the net. You have already made a digital footprint and you cannot erase it. Therefore the government will have the liberty to see what we have searched when really, we do not want that. These days, the Internet has heightened censorship than in previous years due to exponential growth in globalisation, enabled by communications technology, global markets and transport technology. Indubitably, cyber is integrated within our economy and consequently, it affects the political landscape. The government must regulate Internet traffic, but not without invading our privacy. Somehow, they need to be conscious of both parties. They cannot abolish our basic right of privacy but at the same time, they need to keep us citizens safe by monitoring the political landscape. Privacy is something that we all hope to seek, but there would be no ways of achieving this if they do not balance these two

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.

Look at USA today versus 30 to 50 years ago. As time goes by our nation is becoming more of a "Big Brother", mainly because technology is evolving and advancing. Yes, loss of personal privacy is worth the price of safety to a certain point. First of all freedom is not free. It comes at a price, if you want to be safe the price is less privacy. You cannot have both. A lot of what the federal government does to keep up safe is based on intelligence and surveillance. In life today, it is hard to live off the grid in America. Think about it, where ever you go you are being watched or tracked. Cell phones, GPS and newer cars can be tracked, cameras are everywhere even on the highways and traffic lights. Also, millions of people use social media

Privacy is having seclusion from others, where one can be in solitude. Having personal privacy, like most things, have benefits and faults. Recently, Edward Snowden leaked private government documents for the world to see; once this news was discovered, he moved to Russia because Russia does not have extradition laws. A debate on the importance of privacy flustered. Personal privacy is important to have because certain information shared can ruin relationships between others, having privacy is having freedom, and privacy gives one a sense of autonomy and security.

The concern about privacy on the Internet is increasingly becoming an issue of international dispute. ?Citizens are becoming concerned that the most intimate details of their daily lives are being monitored, searched and recorded.? (www.britannica.com) 81% of Net users are concerned about threats to their privacy while online. The greatest threat to privacy comes from the construction of e-commerce alone, and not from state agents. E-commerce is structured on the copy and trade of intimate personal information and therefore, a threat to privacy on the Internet.

In 2013, 71% of the US population over the age of three used the internet. Our everyday lives are typically filled with technology and internet, but how much of it is being monitored by the government, and how does it affect our privacy? Our entire lives are completely wrapped around internet, all the way from posting what you ate on Instagram to paying your bills through technological systems, such as PayPal. As the internet becomes an almost necessary part of life, privacy becomes even more likely to be violated and be misused by crooks or other immoral business corporations. This topic obviously deals with legal issues and normalities, bringing up how the issue of security should be addressed by the government with the least amount of privacy invasion. There are many who say that there needs to be a lot more government monitoring and tighter security, while others say that the government and other internet securities need to back away completely and keep out.

Our public, both worldwide and national, depends intensely on computers in innumerable aspects of its everyday operation. This improvement in technology makes it easy for the cooperations to collect people’s personal data through their online activities. People pay more and more attention to Internet privacy, They do not want their data to be unauthorized accessed by anyone at anytime. The United State government issued the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to solve this online privacy problem. In United State, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act develop quickly, but still, require further revises.

Nowadays our society is made of people who fond of showing themselves off in any occasion, in a gamut of ways, from social networks such as facebook, twitter, and the most recent instagram, to wearing nothing at all in order to look amazingly cool and “way-to-go people”. I’m not buttoned-down, absolutely, and I don’t want people to bundle up. It’s no use. People have the right to dress as they want. It’s just a matter of outlooks.

Most people think of their privacy as one of their most prized possessions. In the world today we are finding ourselves having less and less privacy with the increased use of the internet. When someone goes online their private information can be stolen by hackers and grifters but it can also be taken by companies like Google and Facebook legally. A bill was passed in Washington that gave companies even easier access to people's private information. In this composition I will talk about the legal and ethical parts of it and how this has come to be.