Assignment 05: Privacy Paper 2 My Thoughts on The Limits of Privacy Post 9/11

Chris Ospring CST 373: Ethics In Comm and Tech Fall 2013

What is Privacy? Privacy is a topic that affects everyone in the world, but before talking about how it affects people we need to know what privacy is and what different types of privacies there are. Privacy is defined by Merriam-Webster as, the quality or state of being apart from company or observation; freedom from unauthorized intrusion. From research it appears that there are at least five different types of privacy including Personal Privacy, Informational Privacy, Organizational Privacy, Spiritual Privacy, and Intellectual Privacy. Personal privacy would be defined as

preventing intrusions into one's physical space. Most of us would have had experienced this type of privacy breeches in our childhood, especially if we have siblings. For example, remember the lady at the grocery store last week? She continued to ask questions and got right up in your face. We have all experienced someone like this and intuitively felt the obvious line being crossed once they were invading our personal space. Information privacy refers to the growing relationship between technology and the legal right to privacy in the collection and sharing of data about one's self. There are at least four (and likely many more) types of information privacy including Internet Privacy, Medical Privacy, Financial Privacy, and Political Privacy. Internet

privacy is the ability to determine what information one reveals or withholds about oneself over the Internet, who has access to such information, and for what purposes one's information may or

may not be used. One example of this is how a website stores personal information about you when you access it. Without any permission from the user, the website might keep any information provided such as addresses, age, sex, or even photos. Many internet users willingly violate their own privacy in one of the many social networking sites. Financial privacy refers to how ones personal financial information is protected. This is important because it can lead to identity theft or even loss of assets or portfolios. Most individuals are much more attentive to the protection of their financial information than they are with their personal information. Medical privacy is the ability to hold you medical records from others. Before the advent of word processing and digital imagery, medical information typically existing in a single hard copy file somewhere in a doctors office. Modern technology has allowed for much higher efficiency in the record keeping business using soft copies and digital record, but at the expense of easy thievery of the information. No one should have the right to view medical records except for the owner and whomever they give permission to. Political privacy refers to the right to not disclose ones personal political views. An obvious example of this is the secret ballot and the right every citizen has to not to be bullied into voting a certain way. The secret ballot actually empowers every individual to have a say in a democratic process. Organizations or companies typically desire to keep their activities or secrets from being revealed to other organizations or individuals. This is called

organizational privacy. Spiritual privacy is the protection of ones freedom to practice whichever religion they so choose, in private, without recourse. This privacy right stops the government from dictating which religion anyone has to practice. The final type of privacy is Intellectual Privacy. Intellectual Privacy is the protection of records of our intellectual activities. Intellectual privacy is vital to a robust culture of free expansion, as it safeguards the integrity of our intellectual activities by shielding them from the unwanted gaze or interference of others.(Richards, 2008) Intellectual privacy, and the use of patent protection, is the foundation of a capitalistic society. This privacy was the basis for the Industrial Revolution and the root of all the inventions that have led to our current standard of living. Each of these privacies affects our lives in multiple ways. The digital revolution has made the violation of every single one of these privacies much more pronounced, and this is likely to continue. Privacy in My Personal Life Privacy as had a huge in impact on my life and it is because of this that the privacy is a topic of great personal importance to me. Over the span of my life it has affected me personally in numerous ways including: Familial, Spatial, and Technological. Each way seems to be tied to the other even when the connections arent apparent. The earliest and most pronounced

effect in my own life was my own personal privacy within my family. I grew up in a large house with one brother, one sister, a mother, and a father. I had the typical nosey sister who was often invading my person privacy. She always had to know what I was doing which offended me greatly. My brother and I shared a room and this limited my privacy. I ultimately turned into a mini-him since that was all I knew. The fact that my parents dressed us alike only worsened the situation. To this day I still live partially in his shadow, but that shadow is now more of a role model. After my childhood, personal privacy was still hard to come by. I often found myself surrounded by many roommates in a small crowded space. I didnt know if this was because I enjoyed the company or that I was use to it growing up and it came natural. At the present time I have 7 roommates, 2 dogs, and a cat in a 4-bedroom apartment with paper-thin walls. I hate to think of myself as an eavesdropper, but with my current living conditions it is difficult not to be one. At times I believe that I am invading others privacy with out even trying. Is this wrong? This is a question that is constantly racing through my mind. It is my belief that I have grown used to this type of situation because of the way I was raised. My parents were very outgoing and had a great number of friends. It seemed like every other night someone was visiting us and spending the night. During

about a 7-year window in my life my mother had a close friend start living with us. The result is that our house, that seemed

comfortable before, then turned out to be crowded. After a significant amount of research, it seems obvious that this has been a struggle since the very beginning of the United States of America. Privacy History Pre 9/11 Privacy has a long grueling history. Many believe that is has only lately become a huge issue, but this is a mistaken point of view. Privacy has been a concern as early as the 1600s, particularly the area of personal privacy. Under Puritan rules, it is a civic duty to keep an eye out for your neighbor. In many towns, people are forbidden to live alone.(Huitric, 2013) In the 1700s the government started dipping its hands in the privacy bowl. Mail was routinely opened before it was delivered. In the 1800s there was a huge breakthrough in privacy when the 14th amendment was introduced. The 14th Amendment states, All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. It is my feeling that this is when we started realizing privacy was becoming important in the United States. In the 1930s most thought that government was back to its old tricks. To be specific, in 1936 all American adults were issued a social

security number. Most thought of this as a way for everyone to keep tabs on them and were very displeased. The 1960s were more

than just free love; it seemed we would have another breakthrough in privacy. In 1968 the Freedom of Information Act was passed. As stated on the FOIA homepage, The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a law that gives you the right to access information from the federal government. It is often described as the law that keeps citizens in the know about their government. Many events took place in the 1970s. Two of the major events were the invention of personal computers and the beginning of wire-tapping in our government. With the invention of computers the huge rate of piracy grew over the next 20 years. In 2001 our nation was rocked by one of the biggest events in history. On September 11 2001, two planes drove into the sides of the World Trade Center buildings and into the Pentagon. Privacy History Post 9/11 The acts that occurred on September 11, 2001 led the Bush administration to create the USA Patriot Act. The purpose of the USA Patriot Act is to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and other purposes. The Patriot Act expanded federal officials powers to keep tabs on anyones personal information, from credit card use to cell phone calls to car travel. Today, 3,984 federal, state, and local organizations take part in domestic counterterrorism efforts; the National Security Agency alone has about 30,000 people eavesdropping on 1.7 billion

intercepted e-mails and other communications every day. In June, the FBI gave significant new powers to its 14,000 agents to search databases, screen household trash, and use stakeout teams to investigate persons of interest. In my opinion, this has reduced privacy for nearly all of the citizens in our country. A new technology that has been implemented is full-body scanners at airports. This was rolled out in 2008. A full-body scanner is a device that detects objects on a person's body for security screening purposes, without physically removing clothes or making physical contact. The implementation of this device has sparked a huge controversy amongst Americans. Opponents of full-

body scanners argue that strip searches without probable cause violate basic human rights. Governments do not have the right to make strip searches routine and mandatory, regardless of whether the strip search is done by physically removing clothes or by using technological means to remove the clothes. Full-body scanning technology allows screeners to see the nude surface of the skin under clothing, prosthetics including breast prostheses and prosthetic testicles, which may require a potentially embarrassing, hands-on physical inspection once detected. These are examples of personal privacy being stripped away because of an act of terrorism. In 2009 the federal government enacted a secret spying program in which they would monitor phone calls of Americans. At one point in 2009, officials had

improperly identified more than 15,000 telephone records for further scrutiny even though the records did not meet the proper standard for their suspect links to terrorism. (Johnson, 2013) This is personally discouraging; to know that even with no probable cause the government may be listening to my own phone calls. This seemed occur accidently on a significant number of Americans who were in no way suspected of terrorism. Of the more than 17,000 numbers included on the list in 2009, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, about 1,800 met the reasonable articulable suspicion' standard of having links to terrorism.(Johnson, 2013) This statement is basically outrageous as sit gives significant leeway for a low level government official a subjective reason to listen to any phone call. These issues were born out of what happened on September 11, 2011. But technology has created its own privacy monster. In 2004, a social networking site known as Facebook made its debut. Facebook has been the target of huge privacy concerns since its launch. These concerns not only apply to Facebook, but across most of the subsequent social media sites that were spawned in the following years. Currently government and local authorities rely on Facebook and other social networks to investigate crimes by obtaining evidence in a crime, provide location information, establish motives, prove and disprove alibis, and reveal communications. Privacy had suffered so much, that a day to quit Facebook occurred in 2010. Quit Facebook Day was an online event which took place on May 31, 2010

(coinciding with Memorial Day), in which Facebook users stated that they would quit the social network, due to privacy concerns.(Paul, 2013) As most can tell after the event that occurred on September 11, 2001 our privacy is even more at risk then it was in the past. Though the effect on our culture has been great we were not the only ones affected. Other cultures have made changes to the way privacy is protected. Privacy in Other Cultures One culture quite different from America is the Chinese culture. There is no expectation of privacy except at the very highest levels in Chinese society, where elites, it is sometimes argued, don't behave that differently than the original imperial elites. Anybody's business is everybody's business and every means of gathering information from social pressures to electronic eavesdropping on even friends and colleagues is considered acceptable. International electronic communications are of special interest as in the United States where there now seems to be no restraints upon the monitoring of communications. The Chinese will certainly modernize all systems of establishing, authenticating, and tracking both individual identities, and communications between them, should they consider it cost effective to do so. However, the Chinese government has come to believe that a more efficient mode of policing is simply to ignore individual transgressions until they become sufficiently egregious to come to the attention of the state. Then they are

repressed with a deliberately heavy hand, so as to discourage additional violators, a policy called "Killing the Chicken to Frighten the Monkeys." Another culture with similar views is North Korea, which is a communist country with a government that is essentially a dictatorship. Some people consider it could even be a theocracy because of the way the "Supreme Leader" is regarded. "The North Korean government operates 450,000 'Revolutionary Research Centers' for weekly indoctrination sessions, where attendees are taught that Kim Jong-il, who must be referred to as 'Dear Leader,' possesses supreme supernatural powers and had a miraculous birth atop a legendary Korean mountain" (Head, About.com). Due to this sort of "worship" citizens are expected to have unwavering loyalty for the state, and talking negatively amongst friends or family members could get a person killed or sent to a work camp. Arab countries are extremely different from ours. For example, a few years ago in Egypt people were out in the streets protesting the actions of their government. In reaction to this, the Egyptian Government required "local internet service providers to disconnect from the global internet" (Hoffman, 2011). While the government's hopes were to stop the protestors, "any such government ability to impact technology in such a manner, creates substantial privacy concerns for individuals and industry" (Hoffman, 2011). So even though they have the ability

to stop the protest, the government chose to try and cut off the protestor's communication with the rest of the world. Conclusion Privacy is much more than our personal space. We have covered what privacy is and how it affects different parts of our lives. My own interpretation of what privacy means to me has been rooted in my upbringing. While I was growing up, my privacy was very limited and I accepted this as the social norm. After researching the ethics of privacy I found out that my basic understanding of privacy was extremely skewed. Before September 11, 2001 our governments views on privacy seemed very lenient. But after the events on September 11, 2001 the government became determined to control and sometimes invade citizens personal privacy. This saddened and discouraged many of the Americans residing in the United States. In other cultures it seems like everyone knows everything about everyone and privacy not considered as valuable as it is in the United States. This seemed especially true in most Asian cultures including North Korea and China. The Arab culture seemed slightly different where in they didnt disclose information as public as in the Asian cultures. They seem to enjoy their privacy and wanted to keep there personal lives just that. In America, people just want to be free, and that includes freedom from anyone, including the government, being able to invade their privacy

Work Cited

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