Jeff Gearhart

Joshua Ryan Cruz

Alisah Vasquez
16 October 2016
CST 373

The United States of Transparency

What is Privacy?
Privacy is a difficult concept to interpret due to the fact that many of its aspects are
cultural, age-relative, and even family defined. Some cultures may consider opening a door
without announcing their presence as a serious violation of privacy, while another culture may
see this action as simply being permitted. Another example is the use of the bathroom, as a child
your bathroom use is usually monitored (to ensure that you have performed the action), this is
usually seen as normal and no notion of a privacy is being intruded upon. Now if we consider the
same scenario involving an average adult, the adult being monitored would consider this
intrusive and a violation of their sense of privacy. Adam Moore reflected this sort of privacy in
his article Defining Privacy stating that, We can view privacy as a condition or as a moral
claim on others to refrain from certain activities. (Moore,2008). Other forms of privacy may
refer to property and liberty or freedom.

Our definition of privacy in relation to information and post 9/11

A more expansive definition of privacy, and one which may be better suited for this
essay, is whether or not privacy can be defined as a form of freedom, as ones right to be without
intrusion from others. This can be corroborated from the book The Limits of Privacy by
Amitai Etzioni, Moreover there has been a strong tendency to treat privacy either as a cardinal

element (or liberty), or to treat these concepts as if they were synonymous with privacy, further
extending the reverence for privacy (Etzioni, 1999). Where others is used to represent people,
corporations, and governing bodies that may infringe upon the privacy of any given person.
Intrusions can manifest in a number forms, where an entity gathers information on an individual
without their consent, hinders their right to act, speak, or think. This information includes an
individuals actions, thoughts, beliefs, and even their possessions. An individual retains the right
to nullify their privacy by sharing this information (or information of possession) with other
parties. To further expand upon the concept of privacy, we can consider privacy as a state in
which a person is free from observation, or from being disturbed by others. The previously noted
observations can be considered an intrusion as defined earlier in this paper. The concept of
intrusion, based on our understanding of privacy, can be seen as an unwarranted accessing of
someones information, sharing said information, or infringing upon their beliefs.
Legislation following 2001 has further defined this concept of intrusion, by redefining the
boundaries of ones personal privacy. The terrorist attacks that took place on September 11th,
2001 forever changed the way the United States interacts with its inhabitants. The word
privacy is one that is greatly associated with the attacks, where the American publics
definition of privacy was redefined via the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening
America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of
2001). Standing for the people, Congress, in 2001, was attempting to reach a consensus on
protecting Americas electronic privacy from the government. Once the attack happened on the
Pentagon and the World Trade Centers on September 11th, Congress decided the government
had the right to form the Patriot Act, which allows the government to place anyone under

surveillance to prevent another devastatingly tragic terrorist attack. Now the government believes
innocent Americans are suspects, monitoring everything from email conversations to bank
statements and credit card reports (Surveillance Under the Patriot Act). The Patriot Act was
passed at time when the citizens of the US were outraged, grieving, demanding for some action
be taken, and seeking answers. Congress presented to the American people, the Patriot Act,
promising that this would be everything the people were looking for. The act was passed just
forty-five days after the attacks that took place on September 11th. The actions taken in this
instance, the bill being passed, has reformed the way we live and how we perceive privacy in the
United States.

Our thoughts of privacy relating to the digital age

The idea of Privacy in the U.S. has been in a state of constant fluidity since the
devastation that occurred on that day fifteen years ago. The Patriot Act was designed to give the
FBI more power in collecting information on individuals that were deemed suspect of posing a
threat to national security. Initially, society cheered and applauded about the decision that would
help to make our country a safer place. The Justice Department describes this law as having,
codified the law, the authority law enforcement had already used for decades. This tool is a vital
aspect of our strategy of prevention-detecting and incapacitating terrorists before they are able to
strike. (The USA Patriot Act | Department of Government and Justice Studies | Appalachian
State University). However, if we fast forward to the present day, fifteen years after the attacks
happened and the act was passed. The peoples attitude towards the Patriot Act have shifted quite
strongly to the opposition of its use. This is in no small part due to Edward Snowden, and the

light he shed on how it was being used. In 2013, he was successful in exposing just how far the
government was taking their domestic surveillance under the umbrella use of the Patriot Act.
This surveillance included everything from collecting internet metadata to the correspondence of
foreign officials. Because of this, Twenty-five percent of Americans say they have changed the
way they use technology at least somewhat after the Snowden revelations. (Ali & Abdullah,
2016).
In the book Click: What Millions of People Do Online and Why it Matters, by Bill
Tancer, he explains the internet is not as private anyone thinks, even the Government. Bill
Tancer is a General Manager at Hitwise, which is a competitive intelligence company. Tancer
has been interviewed by the New York Times, USA Today, Business Week, Forbes Online, and
CNN Money about his astounding results he made public. To start the book, he quoted the
governments claim that 99% of the porn on the internet was no longer found anywhere on the
internet. After examining the study, Tancer found 40% of users who are on the internet are
visiting porn sites, which is contradicting what the government had claimed. Before the social
media boom, people kept to themselves, talking to people they knew about their personal
matters. Today, on any social media site, there are personal posts and information people share
with everyone who is connected. These personal posts include where they are from, what year
they were born, what they are up to, and much more. What is popular among our generation is
keeping up with celebrities posts about their personal life. This is an issue because this redefines
our interpretation of privacy, especially to younger generations and thus creating Celebrity
Worship Syndrome. Celebrity Worship Syndrome happens to a person when they become
obsessed over what a certain celebrity is doing (Tancer, B.). Younger generations will see what

these Celebrities are doing and react as if it is OK or normal to post and say personal things
about themselves because their role models did it.

Where does privacy lie? How important is it?

Edward Snowden made a huge impact not just on our society, but companies as well. The
majority of companies, such as Google, and other social media sites, are now supporting user
privacy rights, changing their legal policies, and are letting users know when there is a
surveillance request. A good example of this comes from the website Reddit and the Canary
Paragraph, from their Transparency Report, the exclusion of the canary signified that the site had
been subject to National Security Letters, these letters were sent out to obtain information from
companies in a way similar to a subpoena. There are many, more notable companies that need to
protect our privacy, especially the telecommunication companies. In 2006, AT&T was sued by
the Electronic Frontier Foundation for deliberately giving away internet trafficking secrets to the
National Security Agency(NSA). In an attempt to push back on surveillance, Verizon
half-heartedly decided to challenge the dragnet program, which is the collection of phone bulk
data. For the first time, after 9/11, society was more concerned about their civil liberties than
threats of terrorism. The Yougov poll has showed 55% of Americans are agreed with the Prism
Program going public, which is another surveillance program that collects internet
communications (Timm, T., 2014). The method that was used to do this lies within the Patriot
Act's Section 215, "Section 215 revises substantially the authority under the FISA for seizure of
business records, including third party records of individuals' transactions and activities.
Previously, FISA section 501 permitted the FBI to apply to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance

Court ("FISC") for an order to seize business records of hotels, motels, car and truck rental
agencies, and storage rental facilities. Section 215 broadens that authority by eliminating any
limitation on the types of businesses or entities whose records may be seized. In addition, the
section expands the scope of the items that the FBI may obtain using this authority from
"records" to "any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other
items)." The recipient of the order may not disclose the fact that the FBI has sought or obtained
records." (DeRosa, M., 2016). To put into perspective how this was used, FISA only issued 51
orders between the years of 2007 and 2009, Snowdens revelations about the Patriot Act steered
the FBI away from using section 215 as a means to obtaining the metadata of US citizens. The
FISA court issued almost 600 orders for internet meta-data use between 2012 and 2014, this
significant increase was unprecedented and directly related to the Patriot Act.

Does anonymity play an important role in privacy?

Anonymity is a concept that plays a significant role in privacy. Allowing anonymity
allows a person to keep their information private, while being able to divulge a portion of said
information. Unfortunately this concept and the concept of privacy as a whole is being displaced
by the concept of transparency. Rafael Capurro describes this shift in privacy best as
privacy..[being] turned into its opposite through a right to information, particularly since 9/11 in
the US, meaning that the right to access information has almost reversed the concept of privacy
(Capurro, R., 2005). He continues by stating that the right to privacy collides now with the right
to security (Capurro, R., 2005). This sense of security is something that has become the main
goal of the United States government as a result of the 9/11 attacks. Most citizens seem to freely

nullify their individual privacy when they believe that their safety or security is at stake, this is
what Capurro refers when stating that the idea of transparency is overtaking the idea of privacy.
Transparency in relation to personal information is a concept that is becoming more
prevalent within modern society. The idea of privacy has begun to take on a new form, where an
individual and their sense of anonymity is being overshadowed by the community as a whole.
The problem with this line of thought is that society may not know the best course of action for
all its members. This idea is one that is shared by Sue Conger et al. in their paper entitled
Personal information privacy and emerging technologies. Conger et al. resonate the idea
stating that individuals are obligated to relinquish personal data for their own security as well as
for the collective good, (Conger, S., Pratt, J., & Loch, K,, 2013). This utilitarian train of
thought is leading to a society where anonymity is considered a form of guilt, where if an
individual has information worth keeping hidden they are considered abnormal and in some
instances dangerous. In actuality anonymity is needed to protect individuals from feeling any
form of guilt, embarrassment, or other ill-mannered feelings as a result of their actions, likes, or
dislikes. Hashemi represents this notion best by taking from the Globes Ivor Tossells writing,
summarizing that the truly private aspects of online life are the things we do out in the open, on
public websites, under the pretense of anonymity. While our Facebook pages sit there and look
pretty on our behalf, our real selves sneak off and start asking Google about the medical
conditions were convinced weve just acquired (Hashemi, Y., 2009). This statement can be
summarized as meaning that an individuals privacy is not defined by the information that is
shared willingly online via networks, but instead by the online actions taken by said individual.
If we take this statement as the truth it highly advocates the need for online anonymity.

Issues at hand, data mining, ad-profiles, monitoring of online activities?

Anonymity is essential to individual privacy, where it is the primary tool used to protect
ones information. The concept is even more so due to the increased use of online services within
the last decade. Corporate entities, foreign entities (usually individuals), and governing bodies
(or their respective agencies) incorporate both legitimate techniques and other techniques that are
considered ambiguous in terms of legality for gathering user information. These techniques
include data mining, click streams (series of clicks while browsing), ad-profiles, and malware.
Companies primarily gather an individuals information via first-second party
transactions based upon an exchange of goods, money, or services. During this exchange, an
individual agrees to share some personal information with the company (second party) in
exchange for something seen as valuable by the individual. The problem with this sort of
transaction is that companies are intentionally gathering more information - information that
individuals are unaware they are inadvertently sharing with the second party. The second party
usually shares this additionally gathered information with their partners (third parties). Conger et
al. summarizes third party activities stating, third parties collect data and click streams, and
[repurpose] collected data without permission (Conger et al, 2013). This sort of behavior is
unknown to most individuals leaving them exposed where under normal conditions, most
individuals would have chosen to not initiate the transaction with the second party if the
data-sharing activities had been explicitly acknowledged at the start of the transaction.
One company that has made a lucrative business out of sharing personal privacy with
third party affiliates is Facebook - the social networking giant. In September of 2007 Facebook

introduced new features involving third party partners. One feature in particular, named Social
Ads introduced the concept of ad-profiling, where Facebook used information to make
advertising within their service more meaningful to users. The service would also allow users to
share activities taken on third party websites with their friends. A second feature implemented in
2007 was Beacon, where Beacon was a service that allowed Facebook to track its users
activities on third-party websites. Users were not explicitly aware of the changes because
Facebook does not notify users about changes or additions to its service via email, Facebook
instead publishes these changes to their feature blog. One could argue that this practice misleads
users as to what Facebook is changing about the service.
Other companies (such as Google) use similar tactics where they incorporate online
tracking to increase the relevancy of its ads, however, these companies do not use user
identities information to endorse the ads, nor do they advertise their users activities in any way
(Hashemi, Y., 2009). Other companies also engage in online tracking, however do not track
users beyond their domain (meaning that they do not track users on third-party websites). These
activities and type of advertisement curation allows users to maintain their anonymity, thus
ensuring that their personal information is protected via the veil of such anonymity. The fact that
users are not directly tied to these curated advertisements and their tracked information is not
directly tied to any personal information guarantee that the users privacy is not breached.

How do other countries view privacy differently?

Although we take privacy as something precious, other cultures do not feel that way. In
Cairo Egypt, a city filled with sixteen million people, the citizens there do not have room for

personal space. Leila Fadel, one of NPRs (National Public Radio) reporters, stayed in Egypt and
experienced how crowded the city was. Fadel traveled around Cairo, Egypt on a microbus, which
was the size of a minivan, squashed in tight with 12 other people (Fadel, L. & Garcia-Navarro,
L.). Being no personal space, there also is not any room for freedom of speech. Since 2010, it has
been recommended to the Egyptian government to give journalist freedom of press without being
imprisoned and giving people the right to participate in political and public life. The Constitution
of Egypt, however, grants privacy of communication to their citizens. Any documentation or
electronic correspondence is considered private unless temporarily confiscated by a judicial
order. It also, grants citizens the right of privacy in their own home, which means, no one is
allowed to search and enter their home without a warrant (The Right to Privacy in Egypt).
Another culture that sees privacy differently than American culture is Brazil. According
to Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, a journalist from NPR, stayed in Sao Paulo, Brazil, a city populated
by 20 million people, experienced this so called touchy-feely culture. The citizens in Brazil are
more open and comfortable being close to each other. As most Americans will stare at their feet
or listen to music, most Brazilians will converse with one another, even though they are not
acquainted (Fadel, L. & Garcia-Navarro, L., 2013). Personal data for Brazilians, such as personal
records, are considered private, but when talking about electronic communications, the Brazilian
law has a timid approach on protecting electronic privacy rights. This is known as the
wiretapping law, which allows the Brazilian government to go through banking information,
deposits, payments, investments, currency transactions, and credit card usage. Due to the law, the
government, businesses, and other individuals can register and process data in an unlawful
manner even if the Brazilian Civil Code (BBC) give citizens personal rights (Fortes, V., 2013).

A third culture whose definition of privacy differs from the United States is Japan. Japan
is a country rooted in ritual. According to Capurro, the Japanese lifestyle has led to to a concept
we can refer to as denial of self, where the Japanese seek the approval of the group
(community) as a whole instead of seeking self satisfaction (Capurro, R., 2005). This line of
thought arises do to the interconnectedness of each member of the population. Japan had a
population of 127.3 million people in 2013, where a staggering 13 million lived in Tokyo alone
(Tokyo Population 2013, 2014). The immense size of the countrys population leaves little room
for personal privacy. Capurro's argues that this concept is mirrored in other aspects of Japanese
culture, namely privacy within the online community. The Japanese see the cyberspace as an
enlargement of the space between us, where the space is considered to be private but in a
collective, non-individualistic way (Capurro, R., 2005). His argument is that the Japanese see
the cyberspace as an extension of their society, where the space between people is defined as
both private and public. He continues by acknowledging that the Japanese create a sense of
online privacy in the form of useage, where the user of the Japanese cyberspace is an individual
within the collective or culture because the japanese cyberspace is not accessible to strangers
(Capurro, R., 2005).

What factor does age play in privacy?

The idea of privacy is definitively something that evolves and becomes more
sophisticated as you grow older, your perspective of the world changes, and can even have
generational differences. For instance the idea of privacy between a toddler and an adolescent
will be as different as the idea of privacy between a teen and someone in their twenties or

thirties. Someone from the Millennial generation may have a completely different outlook on
privacy than the frame of reference that someone from Generation X or from the Baby Boomer
generation might have. Even if there are shared characteristics between the generations on their
respective ideas of privacy they will almost always be different in some way. According to the
Pew Research Center, ...while only 7% of all adults in the U.S. were SNS users a decade ago,
in 2015 this number increased to 65%. Ninety percent of young adults are currently SNS users
and usage among those who are 65 years old or older has tripled since 2010, reaching to 35%
(Perrin, 2015). (Lukas, J., 2016). What we can learn from this, is that sharing information with
others has become more commonplace, as well as a more acceptable thing as time has passed.
Especially so with the younger generations, that have grown up immersed in the technology as it
developed and progressed making the use of it as opposed to older generations being entered into
it, and having to learn about it.

Is anonymity acceptable?
Anonymity and the use of it, in essence is not inherently malicious. In the past some
authors would remain anonymous by writing under a pseudonym, people write in to advice
columns, call in tips to the police, and can do all of it anonymously. All of this is done for the
sake of maintaining the persons privacy. People want the ability to remain anonymous and not
be watched by agencies like the NSA, that gather your data and store it in massive servers for it
to be accessible by several other agencies(the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland
Security, the Department of Justice). That does not however shield it from being used for wrong
either. With the advent of the internet and the ability to be anonymous online, people can say and

do a multitude of malicious things without fear of consequence because they are hidden.
Whether the use of anonymity is acceptable or not is dependent on the intent of its use. When it
is used with the intent of causing damage, of being used as a weapon such as, cyberbullying,
identity theft, fraud, anything that would cause harm, it is not acceptable. If it is used in the
aspect of keeping your information safe, against those that would do you harm, that would be
acceptable. One step that can be taken toward this goal of safeguarding your personal
information is encryption.
When one thinks of anonymity, the word encryption is surely close to follow, whether it
is being used to hide who you are, or what you are doing. Encryption is the act of encoding
information in a way that only those with the proper method of accessing it can do so, this can be
used to protect identities, personal information, communications and more. In 1997 Dorothy
Denning and William Baugh Jr. said, "At 128 bits, finding an encryption key by exhaustively
checking all possibilities is not even feasible in a lifetime using all the computers in the world."
(Etzioni, 1999). At the time this may have been the case, however we now have encryption keys
that are 256 bit and some that can go higher (RSA is capable of 512 bit but uses a less secure
algorithm, and as such is used less often), and 128 bit encryption has been broken. Encryption is
still the most secure way of protecting your information and keeping it safe, however its use can
also keep the agencies that are in place to help protect us, from being able to uncover information
that may help them stop something from happening. The argument then becomes one of not
whether anonymity is acceptable but whether a person's right to privacy outweighs the use of
anonymity for. With the number of ways information can be mistreated and mishandled across
the internet and by corporations, when done responsibly the use of anonymity is acceptable.

Conclusion
The conception expressed in the Fourth Amendment provides a solid foundation for
communitarian public philosophy of privacy, one that has significant implications for our social
mores, public policy, and jurisprudence as we struggle to adapt our institutions into the
cyber-age.(Etzioni, 1999). We are now living in that cyber-age that Etzioni mentions in his own
conclusion from "The Limits of Privacy". Through the research conducted to write this paper it is
evident that privacy is a fickle matter and is a value that will be changing as the laws and bills
that help define it are struck down, created a new, or amended. We live in an age where
everything is at the tip of your fingers thanks to smart phones, the internet, vine, youtube,
facebook, places where your privacy may be infringed upon, yet we freely access these sites
nullifying our right to privacy as we post videos, pictures, and statuses telling the world what is
going on in our daily lives. Companies buy and sell the metadata of its users, to others and use it
for their own gain. Ambiguity arises in the form of third parties where users inadvertently release
more personal information than aware, via the initialization with second parties through
transactions for goods or services. As the world becomes more interconnected through
technology, full transparency will become the social norm, and the idea of privacy will slowly
fall away to only the most personal of information, eventually redefining what privacy is.

References:
Ali, S. & Abdullah, H. (2016). Did the Patriot Act change U.S. attitudes on
surveillance?. NBC News. Retrieved 16 October 2016, from
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/9-11-anniversary/did-patriot-act-change-us-attitudes-s
urveillance-n641586
Capurro, R. (2005). Privacy. An Intercultural Perspective. Ethics and Information Technology,
7(1), 37-47. doi:10.1007/s10676-005-4407-4
Conger, S. , Pratt, J. , & Loch, K. (2013). Personal information privacy and emerging
technologies. Information Systems Journal, 23(5), 401-417.
DeRosa, M. (2016). - Sections 214 and 215. Apps.americanbar.org. Retrieved 16 October 2016,
from https://apps.americanbar.org/natsecurity/patriotdebates/sections-214-and-215
Etzioni, A. (1999). The limits of privacy. New York: Basic Books.
Fadel, L. & Garcia-Navarro, L. (2013). How Different Cultures Handle Personal Space.
NPR.org. Retrieved 16 October 2016, from
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/05/05/181126380/how-different-cultures-h
andle-personal-space
Fortes, V. (2016). THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY AND PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION IN
BRAZIL: TIME FOR INTERNET PRIVACY RIGHTS?. BRUSSELS PRIVACY HUB.
Retrieved 16 October 2016, from
https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/cybersecurity-capacity/system/files/BPH-Working-Paper-VOL
2-N5.pdf
Hashemi, Y. (2009). Facebook's privacy policy and its third-party partnerships: Lucrativity and

liability. Boston University Journal of Science & Technology Law, 15(1), 140-161.
Lukas, J. (2016). Age differences in privacy attitudes, literacy and privacy management on
Facebook. Cyberpsychology.eu. Retrieved 16 October 2016, from
http://www.cyberpsychology.eu/view.php?cisloclanku=2016052301
Moore, A. (2008). Defining privacy. Journal of Social Philosophy, 39(3), 411.
Surveillance Under the Patriot Act. (2016). American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved 16
October 2016, from https://www.aclu.org/infographic/surveillance-under-patriot-act
The Right to Privacy in Egypt. (2016). privacyinternational.org. Retrieved 16 October 2016,
from https://www.privacyinternational.org/sites/default/files/UPR_Egypt.pdf
Timm, T. (2014). Four ways Edward Snowden changed the world and why the fight's not over
Trevor Timm. the Guardian. Retrieved 16 October 2016, from
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/05/what-snowden-revealed-chang
ed-nsa-reform
Tancer, B. (2008). Click. New York: Hyperion.
The USA Patriot Act | Department of Government and Justice Studies | Appalachian State
University. (2016). Gjs.appstate.edu. Retrieved 16 October 2016, from
http://gjs.appstate.edu/media-coverage-crime-and-criminal-justice/usa-patriot-act
Tokyo Population 2013. (2014). Retrieved October 14, 2016, from
http://www.worldpopulationstatistics.com/tokyo-population-2013/