In today's world, our privacy is under attack from several competing forces. Not only are average citizens subject to identity theft from hacking, phishing and other cybercrimes from the on line underworld. In today's environment, the invasion of privacy and misuse of data is common to corporations and cybercrminals alike, often in tandem with one another. Because individuals have no access to this data about themselves, frequently they are left in complete ignorance. This essay considers how the use of cybertechnology threatens our privacy and why we should care. Threats to privacy force us to ask what is the good of privacy and why do we need it in society.
What is distinct about today's world that privacy is an even greater threat than ever before?. The main force behind the erosion of our privacy is cybertechnology. Cybertechnology in its many forms allows for rapid scan, input and collection of data. The data captured can be stored in database on servers for an unlimited amount of time and then transferred in a data merge for later use. Businesses engage in this practice routinely in part because there is cost incentive. Database storage is at an all time low in cost, and personally identifying information happens to have a wide and profitable secondary market. When our data is stored on publicly accessible servers that are wired to the Internet, it can be moved around at rapid paces which increases its vulnerability (“Privacy Under Attack” 157). Criminals or other parties without authorization are able to gain access to this data. The modern corporation is entirely digital in its record keeping, and this further increases our threat to privacy. Every time a person buys a product with his or her credit card, this identifying information is sent somewhere for storage in a computer database. (“Privacy Under Attack” 157) This kind of data is shockingly revealing about personal lives and every days practices as it includes timestamps, dates, locations of our movements. Problematically, this information can and is often stored for years on end and then transferred to credit agencies where it is re purposed, rejoined with other data and used for further analysis. What makes this seemingly invasive is the paper trail that begins to exist surrounding each member in society where they have little freedom or control. “Digital dossiers” are terms for collections of our entire financial and transactional histories that exist in cloudscape and hardware server space which are record collections able to track and re demonstrate the movements of our everyday lives.(“Privacy Under Attack” 158). How can this information collecting pose a risk of harm? One good example is to consider how large-scale electronic records adoption in the health care industry has been implemented and the questions and concerns raised about data safety, privacy and consumer protection that arise. The ability to digitally scan data into an information system while in a health care setting can improve efficiency enormously. As health care centers increasingly serve larger and larger volumes of people, the integrity of a patient's health file, including their allergies, current conditions and treatment circumstances are highly sensitive and must be handled with great care. This is often quite literally a life or death situation. Doctors, nurses and support staff will use these records for diagnosing illness, providing medical treatment and later billing the medical claims through insurance processors. Third party insurance groups are therefore often granted access to this medical records data in order to confirm the claim is true and to process it according their own corporate work-flow policy. This sharing of medical records information in fact strips patients of their power to privacy over sharing their medical conditions and history with unknown persons.. A complete file that is a medical record with access rights given to Insurance parties will contain psychiatric treatment information for example, if it is present. It may also include treatment for past addiction or substance abuse, or visitation with a counselor known to treat victims of rape according to professional specialization. In the United States today, the laws do little to protect individual people from being informed of what is inside their personally identifying records that third parties build and store against them. People often walk in ignorance of this issue and are unfairly victimized by the hand of bureaucratic control. If a person unknowingly elects to share a medical file, for example, with an insurance person or even an employer and is not aware of what is inside, they may be penalized and have no recourse.(“Privacy Under Attack” 159). Cases have been reported in the media about injured people who have been disqualified from receiving benefits on a disability program for non-medical reasons that a file reviewer chose to use as evidence against the applicant in a dishonorable way. Thus, a person might consent to share her medical file with an insurer or even a prospective employer, unaware of its exact contents. In face of these fears, it is important for citizens to acknowledge that threats to privacy are persistent and real. To fully understand how deep this problem is, however, requires a prior belief that privacy is not a instrumental good but a basic moral right.
Works Cited
“Privacy Under Attack” in Saitz, Selected Readings in English: Cambridge, Mass: Winthrop, 2013 Print, 157-159.
