How Technological Advances are Affecting Privacy Rights in the US
Human beings hold in high esteem their privacy, having their personal sphere of life protected and control over what people know about them. They simply don’t allow their personal life open to everyone at any time. However, technological advances pose a threat to privacy and have lowered their control over personal information hence the possibility of negative effects resulting from access to one’s personal information. How then are U.S. citizens’ privacy rights affected by the technological advancements and what can the government do to limit such violations? The 21st century has recorded a Big Data and advancements in technology that allows the data to be processed and stored in Exabyte. The technicality of collecting, storing and searching a large amount of data based on telephone conversations, electronic payment and internet searches are now available and utilized by the agencies of the government. Business firms are also taking advantage of the technology to access the customers’ personal information and to identify their potential customers.
The Decrease in Privacy and the Impact of Technology
People are more comfortable with technology that they store confidential information including the social security number of their bank accounts in their technological devices. However, storing personal information in a computer, a phone or a laptop may risk strangers, identity thieves and hackers getting access to it. Hence valuation of privacy remains a topic of controversial consideration. The increasing advancement of technology and the decrease in privacy has led to problems relating to policy, law, and ethics. The purpose of this paper is to determine how technology has reduced privacy rights, especially in the US. It illustrates the specific threats that technology poses for privacy and show how utilizing the technology itself can reduce the problem through development in a private way.
The Impact of Technological Advancements in the United States
Advancements in technology are changing the face of the United States in a dramatic way. The introduction of the new technology influences individuals in a number of ways including their interaction techniques with one another, with the government and with their businesses (Chun et al., 2011 pp 1-5). Even though technology allows for efficient task completion, it comes with costs. Surveillance technology threatens privacy rights in a more direct way than any other form of technology due to its nature that allows the surveillant to make observations on the subject on areas that the subject would not like observed. Surveillance is important in making criminal investigations (Whitaker and Reg, 2010, pp 91). However, the advancements in the surveillance technology, for instance, the passive millimeter wave imaging, radar-skin scanning, back-scattered x-ray imaging and the magnetic gradient measuring have led to privacy issues that did not exist previously. Additionally, privacy issues arising from surveillance activities most often involve government intrusion with the private actors having access to surveillance equipment and are capable of invading the privacy of individuals (Whitaker and Reg, 2010, pp 95). Recent concerns involving privacy rights is information privacy. Information privacy is an individual’s personal information and having control over that information. Personal information can track the habits and activities of the subject and without the knowledge of the subject; businesses, government, and individuals may use it for a number of reasons (Chun et al., 2011 pp 1-2). As the society depends more on computer devices, individuals’ ability to control access to personal information is becoming difficult.
The Impact of Technology on Social Media and Privacy
Privacy rights valued by the previous US generations are slowly fading away attributed to by several forces. These forces include individuals’ over-reliance on the internet for entertainment, work, shopping: cellphones, apps, and data plans addiction: the anxiety to expose our lives details on websites like Facebook and tolerance to excessive spy by government programs. Government surveillance eliminates individuals ‘privacy with its chilling effect constraining us through self-censorship of action as and thought (Liu et al., 2011; pp 61). It is through that it tends to destroy our internal life. The US government records its subjects’ public activities using security cameras under private operations or by the police agencies (Bennett and Wells, 2014, pp 33). Arguing against security cameras in high-crime spot may be difficult but their integration and proliferation in every place and into larger networks mean a greater part of public space is subject to surveillance. Technologies that recognize faces is capable of tracking individuals, giving information on their daily activities, which in the past was private. The FBI or the police and the private agencies are using automatic license plate, which is recognition scanners always situated at the back or to the sides of the police cars (Bennett and Wells, 2014, pp 33). These scanners have the likelihood of mushrooming to any locality having security justification. Plate scanners enable the police to tab us informing those who operate malls every time there is a pull in their parking lots. Amazon recently demonstrated how a small “domestic drone”, one that is controlled by a remote could make package deliveries to our doorsteps. The police and private corporations as well use these drones: to spy one’s home, peer at the windows, survey the backyard and follow one’s movements down the street (Cavoukian and Ann, 2012, pp 1-30). Certain organizations such as the Electronic Freedom Foundation have condemned government actions of using domestic drones and are campaigning for policies that enhance privacy protection.
Privacy Concerns with Social Networking Sites
Since the development social networking sites in the US in the early 2000s, there has been an exponential expansion of online social networking sites with the biggest ones in the social media at around mid-2010s being Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram (Hoadley et al., 2010 pp 50-54). The enormous arrival of the new technology has led to people’s personal information becoming accessible online and kept in the cloud. It has put privacy matters questionable based on the ability of the database to store such information safely. The degree to which social media administrators and users access an individual’s profile is becoming a matter of ethical concern and the awareness, legality, and boundaries to such privacy rights violations are a pivotal consideration with the advancement of the technological era (Fuchs et al., 2013, pp 310). The social media involves a set of social actors including organizations and individuals, and other dyadic ties and forms of social interaction between the actors. The privacy concerns with the social media include a collection of data privacy, which involves the right of charging personal privacy based on storage, third parties access, repurposing and display of an individual’s information through the internet (Madden et al., 2013, pp 24-25). Features inviting users to participate in invitations, photos, messages, and open platform applications often give the platform for easy assessment of private information. The social media track all interactions made on their sites, saving them for future use (Fuchs et al., 2013, pp 310). The privacy violation issues related to the social media include disclosure of location, cyberstalking, social profiling, the disclosure of personal information to the third party and the government using the social media to carry out investigations without safeguarding a search warrant.
Privacy Concerns with Facebook and its Updates
Facebook has undergone a lot of scrutiny for privacy-related issues due to its general setting of privacy including the privacy concerns related to Facebook applications (Liu et al., 2011; pp 63). Upon the introduction of Facebook in US in the year 2004, its focus was mainly on the universities and especially only those with .edu address could hold an account. In addition, only individuals within the specific university network could access the page. For these reasons, the initial users of Facebook were more willing to share their confidential information (Hoadley et al., 2010 pp 55). With time, Facebook gained publicity allowing persons without the university and with no specific network to open accounts and gain access to pages of the people in networks (Hoadley et al., 2010 pp 52). Introduction of the News Feed in 2006 enabled Facebook to highlight the recent activities of one’s friends. As time went, Facebook by default publicized more information and in 2009, it changed its policies on privacy hence users could have a look at each other’s’ list of friends. The new policies also availed the photos uploaded on Facebook to the public by default without the knowledge of the users.
Concerns about Facebook's Privacy Settings and Applications
Facebook recently made an update on its profile format enabling users to see personal information about others who are not in the list of their friends, making telephone numbers and home addresses easily accessed by third-party users (Liu et al., 2011; pp 68). Marc Rotenberg, EPIC Executive Director said that Facebook is trying to erase the line between private and public information hence it would be irrelevant to seek permission in publicizing information. There are a number of unwanted activities that take place via Facebook, phishing attacks in particular, where attackers can easily steal other users’ passwords. In opening a Facebook account, the users lead to a page where they are required to give information about their login hence stealing their personal information that way. Recent findings note the Facebook cyberstalking app, the Breakup Notifier, that give notifications to the users on broken relationships through Facebook, allowing users to know their friends’ romantic activities. The concept has gained much popularity in the America attracting more people to the site and numerous downloads (Liu et al., 2011; pp 61). The Facebook CEO Zuckerberg and his team have been trying to respond to the users’ concerns in the US and are unapologetic about the privacy rights violation. They argue that their system updates based on current social norms, suggesting that the internet is growing into public space and becoming more open, justifiable through changes in the Facebook settings on issues of privacy.
Government Surveillance and Privacy Rights Violation
Governments voraciously collect, use and occasionally abuse private and personal information. There is a long list of privacy violations committed by governments and their servants with an inclusion of the United States federal government under the reign of President Trump. The government possesses many inducements of collecting, storing and using personal information (Chun et al., 2011 pp 9). However, just a few of the incentives carefully treat its citizens’ personal information. The US government although group among the best operating in a legal environment, it has failed to protect the privacy rights of its citizens. It makes several collections of personal information about its citizens, store it for a fairly long period and later use it to provoke privacy. The government sector is the vivid menace to privacy rights in the current world through the aggressive gathering of information, frustrating the chances available for privacy protection and they are in possession of massive databases that they occasionally misuse in terms of both civil and private liberties.
The Use of Surveillance Technologies by the US Government
There is a special computer called Carnivore, made by the FBI and loaded with a software that has the ability to scan more than a million e-mails in seconds, attaching the Internet Service Providers system, monitoring their email traffic (Madden et al., 2013, pp 2-20). Technology has enhanced monitoring conversations for legitimate crime suspects and fishing over the e-mails of people using the ISP. Similar to a case where the police stops and frisks anyone entering a shopping mall. Using the carnivore in the manner mentioned is a violation of the Fourth Amendment of privacy rights to many of the internet users (Madden et al., 2013, pp 2-81). Recent research shows that the FBI is planning to attach carnivore to the EarthLink system, the largest ISP. Since the FBI is against any independent monitors and with the strong technology, there are no proofs that the government is using Carnivore within the legitimate bounds and for the legal purposes (Chun et al., 2011 pp 7). Although the FBI reassured the public and the Congress against using Carnivore to violate their privacy rights, it isn’t enough. Trump’s government would have closed Carnivore but it has failed to even though it’s pulling some little efforts to protect the people’s privacy rights. Carnivore should be used under strict and independent monitoring otherwise it would continue being a technological threat to the privacy of the Americans.
Technological Solutions to Protect Privacy Rights
To solve the problem of reduced privacy rights arising from increased technological advancements, technologies that enhance privacy are recommendable, for example, the communication-anonymizing tools including Tor, identity management systems that contain many software packages and Freenet. These tools allow the user to anonymously browse and share information on the web. They utilize security protocol and cryptographic techniques to achieve anonymity in communication. Both systems provide the “k” anonymity so that it becomes difficult to uniquely distinguish an individual from a group of size “k”. Tor allows encryption of messages and routes them along with different computers hence obscure the real message sender, providing anonymity (Chun et al., 2011 pp 5). Freenet also has its content storage done on the encrypted form such that it is safe from all users of the system. Since the users lack decryption keys they are unable to know the information stored in the systems in their computers. It, therefore, provides privacy and deniability. Another method of anonymization is through the use of special software to anonymize the information. There are tools that can delete patient names and present information on age in intervals form, for example, it presents a person aged 35 to fall within the range of 30-40 years. The secret behind this kind of anonymization is that the information does not relate to a specific person even though it still gives space for utilization of some of the information for scientific purposes.
Protecting Privacy Rights
Privacy right is the right to have freedom from government or civilian surveillance and this is indeed violated by the technological advancements. Surveillance conducted by the government should only occur if the reason behind it is important and approved by an independent judicial officer. The State and the civilians should only collect and store personal information if the purpose of the information is legitimate and sanctioned by the law. Destruction of personal information is recommendable as soon as the purpose for its collection is reached for security as well as private purposes. The spread of the new technology including the CCTV and the GPS has increased privacy threats outpacing the law. Stopping the spread of such technologies is futile hence it is the responsibility of the legal environment in ensuring that personal information is not misused. For example, approving liability compensation on privacy violation issues committed without a legitimate reason.
Works Cited
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