The internet has become an integrated part of the lives of many people in current society. People depend on online services for our basic daily activities: social networking, online shopping, business, personal devices and communication. The reliance on digital appliances creates a large amount of personal information and data, which can be utilized for many difference purposes by “Big Data”. The exponential growth in the volume, variety and velocity of data in our digital universe, or simply “Big Data” (Crawford and Boyd, 2011), poses many threats and opportunities to individuals and groups around the globe. Diverse groups of people argue over the potential benefits and challenges, associated with the analysis and exploitation of user-generated data into useful information. The use of search engines and online social networking generates enormous amounts of data which can become a source of unbiased and untainted data for studies, data which can be potentially used for predictive analytics for public health and safety. On the other hand, personal information and data can also be traced to the individual, which can be used for purposes such as behavioural targeting and identification. If the risks of Big Data are well managed and controlled, then Big Data’s potential benefit to society go far beyond what has been accomplished previously. However, the current risks of ‘Big Data’ ultimately outweigh the potential benefits in society as ‘Big Data’ poses numerous ethical concerns and issues regarding the protection of individual privacy and information.
For the purposes of this discussion, privacy can be defined as a combination of the ability to have a certain amount of power or agency in a particular environment, to have an under...
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...th and safety of the society. However, with Google using tracking cookies to collect information on personal interests and Facebook providing unique online social networks for identification, the challenge of protecting individual privacy has increase rapidly with the revolution of Big Data. The process of analyzing and collecting large amounts of data simply poses too many risks, such as identification and violation of privacy. For Big Data to be accepted by the general public, the ethical concerns and issues regarding the protection of personal information must be addressed. The exploitation of personal information and the barriers of online data gathering would have to be controlled by regulated privacy laws. Once the risks are well managed and controlled, Big Data has the potential to revolutionize society in every major scientific field for an improved society.
In the Engineering and Technology Journal, two engineers, Gareth Mitchell and Guy Clapperton, gave their thoughts on both sides of the privacy issue. Is gathering information violating personal privacy? They made their arguments using currency as a metaphor for personal information and online services a product. Mitchell argues the case that giving out personal information is “too high a price to pay” (Mitchell, 2013, p. 26). He says that despite the option to opt out of cookies and certain information, many sites are more covert and make their opt out option less accessible than a pop up asking to opt out. The site makes it hard for the Internet user to say no to being tracked. Mitchell warns the reader to take more consideration into what information they are giving away and that “privacy is not to be taken for granted” (Mitchell, 2013, p. 26). Getting information from the Internet would mean tra...
The Human and Ethical Aspects of Big Data, quickly outlines an array of ethical problems that big data has had and will continue to develop in the upcoming years in our society. The author begins by giving an example of the earliest use of big data, the census. Census data can provide a plethora of benefits to society, representation in government, civil planning, such as road and water treatment, as these take years to construct and having the population and these necessities, Time align is crucial. As the author, uses the example of the internment of Japanese-Americans in 1943. Here is big-data supposed to help the citizens of the Unites States, the big data that is supposed to be private. Now in 1943, big data being used to discriminate
“Human beings are not meant to lose their anonymity and privacy,” Sarah Chalke. When using the web, web users’ information tend to be easily accessible to government officials or hackers. In Nicholas Carr’s “Tracking Is an Assault on Liberty,” Jim Harpers’ “Web Users Get As Much As They Give,” and Lori Andrews “Facebook is Using You” the topic of internet tracking stirred up many mixed views; however, some form of compromise can be reached on this issue, laws that enforces companies to inform the public on what personal information is being taken, creating advisements on social media about how web users can be more cautious to what kind of information they give out online, enabling your privacy settings and programs, eliminating weblining,
The personal connection Americans have with their phones, tablets, and computers; and the rising popularity of online shopping and social websites due to the massive influence the social media has on Americans, it is clear why this generation is called the Information Age, also known as Digital Age. With the Internet being a huge part of our lives, more and more personal data is being made available, because of our ever-increasing dependence and use of the Internet on our phones, tablets, and computers. Some corporations such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook; governments, and other third parties have been tracking our internet use and acquiring data in order to provide personalized services and advertisements for consumers. Many American such as Nicholas Carr who wrote the article “Tracking Is an Assault on Liberty, With Real Dangers,” Anil Dagar who wrote the article “Internet, Economy and Privacy,” and Grace Nasri who wrote the article “Why Consumers are Increasingly Willing to Trade Data for Personalization,” believe that the continuing loss of personal privacy may lead us as a society to devalue the concept of privacy and see privacy as outdated and unimportant. Privacy is dead and corporations, governments, and third parties murdered it for their personal gain not for the interest of the public as they claim. There are more disadvantages than advantages on letting corporations, governments, and third parties track and acquire data to personalized services and advertisements for us.
Privacy (Pri-va-cy) n.1.the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people. Americans fear that technological progress will destroy the concept of privy. The first known use of wiretap was in 1948. It’s no secret that the government watches individuals on a daily bases. According to the constitution, the Fourth Amendment serves to protect the people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. Unreasonable is the word that tips the balance On one side is the intrusion on individuals’ Fourth Amendment rights and the other side is legitimate government interests, such as public safety. What we consider reasonable by law, the government might not think so. The word ‘privacy’ seems to be non-existent today in the 21st century; the use and advances of technology have deprived us of our privacy and given the government the authority to wiretap and or intervene in our lives. Our natural rights we’ve strived for since the foundation of this nation are being slashed down left to right when we let the government do as they wish. The government should not be given the authority to intervene without a reasonable cause and or consent of the individual
The word “privacy” did not grow up with us throughout history, as it was already a cultural concept by our founding fathers. This term was later solidified in the nineteenth century, when the term “privacy” became a legal lexicon as Louis Brandeis (1890), former Supreme Court justice, wrote in a law review article, that, “privacy was the right to be let alone.” As previously mentioned in the introduction, the Supreme Court is the final authority on all issues between Privacy and Security. We started with the concept of our fore fathers that privacy was an agreed upon concept that became written into our legal vernacular. It is being proven that government access to individual information can intimidate the privacy that is at the very center of the association between the government and the population. The moral in...
Garfinkel, Simson. "Internet Privacy Can Be Protected." Privacy. Roman Espejo. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2010. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "Privacy Requires Security, Not Abstinence: Protecting an Inalienable Right in the Age of Facebook." Technology Review 112
Most people concerned about the privacy implications of government surveillance aren’t arguing for no[sic] surveillance and absolute privacy. They’d be fine giving up some privacy as long as appropriate controls, limitations, oversight and accountability mechanisms were in place. ”(“5 Myths about Privacy”). The fight for privacy rights is by no means a recent conflict.
Technology has developed in leaps and bounds over the past few decades. The case is that the law always has difficulty keeping pace with new issues and technology and the few laws that are enacted are usually very general and obsucre. The main topic of this paper is to address the effect of technology on privacy in the workplace. We have to have an understanding of privacy before trying to protect it. Based on the Gift of Fire, privacy has three pieces: freedom from intrusion, control of information about one's self, and freedom from surveillance.1 People's rights has always been protected by the constitution such as the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from "unreasonable searches and seizures". As said by Eric Hughes, "Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world."2 As written by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1928 is the right most valued by the American people was "the right to be left alone."3
The world erupted in outrage following revelations by Edward Snowden regarding the extent of surveillance perform by the National Security Agency. Privacy becomes one of the hottest topic of 2013 and was chosen by the world’s most popular online dictionary, Dictionary.com, as the Word of the Year. However, the government is not the only one that conduct data gathering and surveillance. Employers often monitor their employees, and businesses collect data on theirs customer. The morality of these practices is a topic that generates heated debate.
There are various kinds of definitions about what data mining is. The authors in [1] define data mining as “the process of extracting previously unknown information from (usually large quantities of) data, which can, in the right context, lead to knowledge”. Data mining is widely used in areas such as business analysis, bioinformatics analysis, medical analysis, etc. Data mining techniques bring us a lot of benefits. Business companies can use data mining tools to search potential customers and increase their profits; medical diagnosis can use data mining to predict potential disease. Although the term “data mining” itself is neutral and has no ethical implications, it is often related to the analysis of information associated with individuals. “The ethical dilemmas arise when data mining is executed over the data of an individual” [2]. For example, using a user’s data to do data mining and classifying the user into some group may result in a variety of ethical issues. In this paper, we deal with two kinds of ethical issues caused by data mining techniques: informational privacy issues in web-data mining and database security issues in data mining. We also look at these ethical issues in a societal level and a global level.
As technology as advanced, so has our society. We are able to accomplish many tasks much easier, faster, and in effective ways. However, if looked at the harmful impact it has had on the society, one can realize that these are severe and really negative. One of the main concerns is privacy rights. Many people want that their information and personal data be kept in secrecy, however with today’s technology, privacy is almost impossible. No matter how hard one tries, information being leaked through technological advancements have become more and more common. With personal information being leaked, one does not know exactly how the information will be used, which validates the statement that privacy rights have been diminishing and should be brought to concern. Many people do not realize that their information is being used by third-parties and to consumer companies. In conclusion, technology has had a significant effect on privacy
Perhaps the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, said it best when he claimed that privacy is no longer a “social norm.” Virtually everyone has a smart phone and everyone has social media. We continue to disclose private information willingly and the private information we’re not disclosing willingly is being extracted from our accounts anyway. Technology certainly makes these things possible. However, there is an urgent need to make laws and regulations to protect against the stuff we’re not personally disclosing. It’s unsettling to think we are living in 1984 in the 21st century.
Created for communication, the internet, both the world wide web and the deep web, is the greatest way to transmit information between multiple platforms. The exponential growth of the internet only increased its use in the world, with a myriad of digital services, like the media, articles, forums, and entertainment and social platforms, especially twitter, youtube, facebook, and multiplayer gaming, using it as a vehicle for communication and spreading information, and possibly also influence. The uses of the Internet is good to know, sure, but what does it have to do with the concept of privacy? Today, the involvement of the internet with privacy gets quite convoluted, and countless issues, successes, controversies, and terrors have occurred
The internet, provided by many devices nowadays “provides everybody with identical technical capacities… publishing his or her personal views on a worldwide scale - and all of this at a minimum cost and effort, without any spatial restrictions” (Geser 9). “Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious” (Orwell), the internet is easily accessed by many people worldwide and can be easily hacked to find out important private information about anyone. Social networks especially, whose privacy systems have failed to protect their users from their ac...