Communication and transportation have largely evolved in the recent years to attain an unprecedented growth. The technological sector today has changed and grown into a labyrinth of information. Fingertip communication and endless links over technological media results in the accumulation of huge amounts of data. Electronic association, as one would call it, entails the endless exchange of messages and information.
Privacy can be described as the capacity to negotiate social interaction through the ability to control personal information. Privacy of an individual is, however, dependent on a number of aspects. Policies, technology, and laws all play a role in shaping and defining the structure of interactions among people (Agre 86). It is evidently true that technological advancement has resulted in the transfer of information and by devices that are easily portable; however, this does not allow for the reduced degree of protection of this information.
It is the constitutional mandate that guarantees an individual the right to privacy. The law created for the protection of the right to privacy in itself has not evolved and changed in accordance with technological advancement. The protection of privacy in every right has been far outpaced by the innovation in the technological sector.
Digital footprints that come with the use of technological device leave marks that can be traced by governments and interested parties. In the contemporary situation, for a great deal of the American populace, one has to make a choice between protecting civil liberties and the use of new technologies. However, this should not be the case for American as the both challenges can be minimized and mitigated.
Technology has changed the mode of access and presentation of information. Corporations and governments have been singled as some of the major threats to the right of privacy. Monitoring and surveillance in the place of work, for instance, has greatly been criticized as a mode of breaching privacy. Companies seek to control and manage the activities of their workforce through monitoring their activities.
This, however, raises the dilemma of how far the surveillance and monitoring are undertaken. Computer use monitoring, phone-call and video surveillance of change rooms are examples of some of the issues that are raised by workers in regards to their privacy. In the market environment, corporations also tend to threaten privacy through the extraction of the commercial value from the transactions that are made by customers.
Looking at the government as a threat to individual privacy, a number of incidences do arise. For one, compelled identification by government authorities has been singled out as the most prevalent mode of violation of privacy (Agre 47). The profiling of databases is another aspect that highlights how governments curtail the violation of privacy.
The aspect of privacy in the context of government raises a great dilemma owing to the fact that they often are in tandem with guaranteeing of security to the very citizens. Government surveillance has been allowed by the constitution to a certain degree. However, transparency is highly necessary if any form of surveillance is to be seen as legal.
A number of measures can be established to help minimize the challenge of privacy protection in a tech-savvy interaction environment. The step includes the revision of the law that protects privacy constitutionally (Korthals and Jens 56). The changes in technology have long outpaced the legal framework that is in use currently. The evolution of the legal and policy framework is a necessary step that is needed for the attainment of a coherent model that is effective in solving the privacy challenge.
The internet, on the other hand, has long since worsened the problem of privacy. The challenge of privacy faces a greater problem when it comes to the internet. The protection of personal information remains largely elusive, as innumerable hacks in the recent times have indicated. However, mathematical developments have been promising in relation to the development of security protocols.
The use of biometric information as a key component in the securing of information offers another way of ensuring the protection of personal information. The use of biometric features allows for personalized access to information, and this reduces the incidence of breach of privacy (Holtzman 87). The promise and potential that lies in the advancing technologies bring about the need for a theoretical innovation.
Technology has become a crucial mediator of human relationships. Technological environments require more dynamic and complex theories to allow development of trust and security in communication. Increased communication that is dependent on technological devices has eased the cost and increased the degree of communication among people. The problem, however, arises in the protection of the privacy of a person’s communication. As discussed above, every individual have the constitutional right to privacy; this has, however, continued to be compromised by the degree of technological advancement.
Work cited
Agre, Philip E. Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape. Cambridge, Mass. [u.a.: MIT Press, 1997. Print.
Holtzman, David H. Privacy Lost: How Technology Is Endangering Your Privacy. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2006. Internet resource.
Korthals, Altes W. F, and Jens C. Arnbak. Information Law Towards the 21st Century. Deventer u.a: Kluwer Law and Taxation Publ, 1992. Print.
