The Value Of Personal Privacy

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.

Personal interest in the right to privacy has intensified in recent years along with the rapid development of new technologies. A century later, these concerns remain, but many others have joined them. Advances in information and communications technology have increased our ability to collect, store and transmit data about individuals. While these advances could be considered useful, some see them as a situation where anyone can watch and record the actions of every individual, and where the individual has lost control over information about herself and thus over her very life. As a reaction to these concerns, new regulations have been formulated to define the rights of individuals and the limits on the use of technology with respect to personal information.

In his essay “Why Privacy Matters” from The Wilson Quarterly, Jeffrey Rosen offers a compelling account of the harmful effects of eradicating our privacy. Rosen ventures into several different fields affected by the ever-growing intrusion of our privacy, offering a rich compendium of illustrations from the real world. From Monica Lewinsky’s fate under her investigation, to a Charles Schwab employee, Rosen offers a prolific arsenal of incidents where the dignity of privacy is challenged. In his descriptive examples, Rosen demonstrates a broad expertise within the field by taking his time to describe a careful characterization of each case by both implying his own personal experience

"We Need Privacy Laws for the Digital Era | The Nation." The Nation, 8 Jan. 2014. Web. 21 Oct. 2016.

America today rivals George Orwell’s 1984 society through the National Security Agency’s global surveillance programs such as Prism, XKeyscore, and Dishfire. Surveillance programs, led by the NSA, are all used to clandestinely collect electronic data from all internet and phone users throughout the world. These programs came about after the Patriot Act of 2001. This act was put in place to help protect the American people from terrorist groups after the atrocities seen on 9/11. Originally drafted to protect the people, the Patriot Act was soon taken advantage of by the NSA. These programs should be heavily restricted because they disregard personal privacy, do not properly protect the information they are taking, and, lastly, are unconstitutional.

Some of the most contentious and recurrent argumentative dialogues regarding civil liberties stem from what seems at face value, like a relatively elementary idea the notion of personal privacy. This debate could never be more relevant than in present day society, where globalization and advanced communications technologies have synergized to form a ubiquitous digital library of shared information. The specific example of the delicate balance between personal privacy and national security here in the United States has only further convoluted the issue the debate of whether and to what caliber citizens have privacy rights is hotly contested. As technology

In his October 2014 TEDGlobal speech, “Why Privacy Matter?”, Glenn Greenwald argues the importance of privacy and how people constantly crave for privacy. He references Edward Snowden’s leaked archives as well as two well-known CEOs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg, to support his argument. The purpose of his speech was to inform and persuade his audience how privacy still matters and those who say otherwise are lying. Greenwald gave an emotional appeal to successfully reach out to the audience and persuade them. However, Greenwald’s ability to build credibility and ethos was weak and therefore, impacted his argument.

“Imagine waking up one morning and losing everything you have, your property, your dignity, your family, and, most importantly, your freedom. (Mr. Payne, Congressional Record, V. 147, Pt. 8, June 12, 2001 to June 25 2001)” In just a blink of an eye, a part of freedom could vanquish, and nothing would ever be the same. Everyone’s life would become an open book; a place where anyone could seize other’s private information. Worst of all, there would not be anything anyone could do to make it stop. The government may claim that this inevitably helps society and keeps American citizens safe by solving crimes faster, which is a favorable thing, but even so, many wonder how Americans are safe if their information is easily obtained by others. Although

Governments have for centuries attempted to restrict the privacy of their citizens. For some time now this has also included efforts to regulate citizens’ communications data by means of collecting and storing information gathered by providers of communication services. These efforts are referred to as data retention measures and would grant law enforcement agencies unlimited access to this data (Clarke, 2014).

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.

The current controversy that needs addressing is a dating website has been asked to hand over user information to the public health department because of a STD outbreak on the site, even though their policy is against it. Normally, the health department needs a warrant to get this information but because the department is not able to the company that hosts the chatroom needs to make the decision to give out personal user information. The main proposal being presented is the company should give out the user’s personal information because if it does not the STD could continue to spread without the carriers even knowing. So, the department believes that for the betterment of public health it is okay to breach privacy in this instance.

The purpose of this paper is to explain what I use to protect my personal privacy. There are many different things that can be use to protect someone’s information and keep hackers from accessing their computer. Some people use anti-virus, firewalls and anti-spam software to help protect their personal privacy. As we all know with today’s technology having just anti-virus or firewalls are not good enough, but having something is better than nothing. They do not protect you from new or custom-made viruses and evil-scripts. There is no one solution to protect you from Identity Theft, it’s just too many threats to keep up with, and having one software will not do the job for you. One key to protecting your information would be

The use of real time surveillance video has become very popular, and companies like Google, Planet Labs, Skybox Imaging, and Digital Globe are launching dozens of satellites that are capable of recording the status of the entire Earth in real time or near real-time. The satellites themselves are getting cheaper, smaller and more sophisticated, with resolutions up to 1 foot. Commercial satellite companies make this data valuable to corporations — or, potentially, private citizens with enough cash — allowing clients to see useful images of areas coping with natural disasters and humanitarian crises, but also data on the comings and goings of private citizens (www.news.nd.edu). The ethical question is whether or not this is an invasion of privacy, and does this technology have the potential of being abused by criminals, police agencies, or corporations.

Individual citizens' rights to digital privacy continue to be to challenged by the increasing need for national security one the one hand, and the increasing digital vigilance many companies are putting into place to protect themselves while learning more about their customers. These factors are a volatile catalyst that continues to change the ethical, legal and personal landscape rights of digital privacy in the information technology age. The depth and pace of change that is occurring in the areas of capturing, aggregating, analyzing and using personal data is unprecedented and will continued to escalate as new risks emerge (Ottensmeyer, Heroux, 1991). In conjunction with these volatile catalysts of change, there has never been an era where every aspect of activity in a company or enterprise is monitored (Riedy, Wen, 2010). From the use of company telephones and networks to the monitoring of Wi-Fi signals accessible from outside the four walls of a business, surveillance and the implications for digital privacy continue to exponentially increase. Beginning with an analysis of three dominant technologies that give individuals the ability to research others' backgrounds and personal data, this paper looks at the advantages and disadvantages to this type of information distribution.

For the sake of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, American citizens crumple up their own desires and follow laws such as the speed limit and paying taxes. These laws are given by the government, created by citizens to protect all residences. After all, one would give up a few priorities for the name of common good too, right? But there is a borderline between what an individual should and shouldn’t give up. For example, privacy rights. In most cases, people would claim that they have nothing to hide, but the definition of privacy is not covering the atrocious. Privacy is a fundamental value of human right; it is our defense and space permitted to us of being ourselves. The right to privacy is to forestall the invasion of privacy by other people and the government to have absolute regulation over people’s lives.