Destruction Of Privacy, By Alan Westin

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Destruction of Privacy
The sentence that says “technology has made privacy a relic of that past” is saying that within the New World of technology, Cyberspace, we no longer have our own personal privacy. Alan Westin defines privacy as, ““Privacy is the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others.” [2]. When you step into this world we live in today, we no longer have just the aspect of the Old World. We are born into this New World a majority of the time. In this New World, all of our actions are presented to the world for everyone to easily see. We can no longer do things without the entire world knowing. As an example, in the Old World, at the age of 15 we could sit at a park bench and crack open an ice cold beer to drink with a friend. This would cause no problems, and bring no harm to anyone or anything. If you were caught in this occasion, drinking under the age of 21, that would be breaking the law. You would more than likely not get in trouble at all, and if you did, it would be nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a report to your parents. If this sort of thing was to happen today in the New World, the outcome would have been completely different. In this New World, the privacy of a 15 year old teenager getting a slap on the wrist for drinking 1 can of beer now turns into your entire community knowing about it through the means of the newspaper, TV news, internet news, easily available police reports, and even the community around you gossiping about it all over social media such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. So simply going from the Old World to the New World, a 15 year old drinking a can of beer turned into a sl...

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... become a law so that actions can be taken against people who violate the privacy of others. Citizens should have the ability to protect their privacy.
Lastly, if we give people the ability to protect their privacy, then they need to be educated on the subject. If we have laws and regulations put into place to protect everyone’s privacy, that isn’t going to make a difference if they don’t realize that when they allow apps to track their location, then their privacy laws all go out the window. When people are posting all sorts of personal information online for everyone to see, then they need to realize that they themselves are the culprit of their privacy being destroyed. We must start teaching everyone about the New World, cyber-space, and the suggested precautions that they should be carrying out to help protect themselves and their privacy within this New World.

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