Every citizen is entitled to fundamental rights. Freedom is part of the bill of rights that every citizen is entitled. This is a provision that should not be taken away from anyone unless in some exceptional circumstances. Freedom of speech for instance has been misused by various people and in some cases led to prosecution in the court of law. The ‘infamous’ Maclean’s article published in the Canadian magazine took the world by storm as the author allegedly published an article which was considered a violation of British Columbia ate speech as it incited animosity towards the Muslims. The Congress argued that the article actually violated the bylaw and presented the Muslims as violent and inhuman people. However, the first amendment of the US constitution states that Congress shall not make any law limiting freedom of speech (Liptak, 2006). This amendment does not apply to private universities and employers which in my own discretion is a big problem. This fact jeopardises the efforts of having a free world and a place where people can air their views without being compromised or victimised. This law ought to have been applicable indiscriminately across all sectors of the economy so that the subjects in various institutions can champion for their rights and ensure a free and tolerable working environment.
Genetic information should not be distributed to anyone upon request. Apart from the fact that people may not be knowledgeable enough to understand the complexities involved in obtaining genetic information, some information obtained in genetics may not be appealing to the users. Genetics helps a person to know more about their future and in some cases; some of the revelations may not be pleasurable. Getting hold of an employee’s genetic information is not desirable. With the acquisition of genetic information about various employees employers may not be willing to hire some employees based on the revelations that they may obtain from genetics. There are some features that if revealed to employers, may make them a bit hesitant when hiring employees in various fields (Pinker, 2006). It is therefore unacceptable and undesirable for genetic information to be leaked out to employers or any other third party.
Social media has taken the world by storm personal information can be easily leaked to third parties without the consent of the owner of the information. The law is also a bit lenient on the administrators of various social sites when it comes to matters related to information leakage. Leaking such crucial information jeopardises the efforts of enhancing privacy since personal information can be obtained and misused by people with ill intentions. Therefore technology has played a very important role in breaching people’s privacy which usually negatively affects the users (Lori, 2006).
The three chapters of the readings have played an important role in shaping my career. In as much as genetics is a favourable and a desired undertaking, it can play a negative role in enhancing the quality of life for various affected individuals. Social media is also one of the main stumbling blocks in achieving absolute privacy as the law is not strict on the administrators in case sensitive information is leaked. I would therefore recommend that people need to take stringent measures when supplying their personal information to the social sites. This will help in reducing cases of fraud and disclosing of crucial information to non-legitimate users.
References
Adam Liptak, Freedom to offend. 2006
Lori Andrews, Facebook Nation (Chapter 1), from I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social networks and the death of privacy, 2008
Steven Pinker My Genome, My Self. 2009
