Essay Sample on Protecting Privacy: Ensuring Sensitivity & Secrecy

Introduction

Privacy refers to the reasonable anticipations where any information or data that belongs to an individual or a group of individuals is enclosed in a private place cannot be disclosed to any third party if at all the information will result in the embarrassment of the person of his ordinary or extraordinary sensitivities. The above has been reinforced by laws formulated to protect certain places where people want and term them as private. Such places include homes or offices.

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Privacy has existed since time immemorial and has evolved through to the current generation resulting in a call of protection for most importantly, the infringement of these various forms of privacy. Some of the issues are only solved by the advancement of technology in the future. It implies the influence that technology has had on the privacy issues concerning the information of people.

According to Nissenbaun (2011), challenges relating to privacy have been associated with the increase in the usage of technology and the upgrade of the same through the internet. These modern challenges are the same as those experienced in the past courtesy of the information systems and the digital media that was used in the processes of capturing, retrieval, analysis, distribution, and the dissemination of the information.

From the past, individuals, communities, and institutions have been generating a lot of content and experiences and storing them for future and current use. Some of these contents have been regarded as private in the sense that it cannot or can only be accessed certain people in the community since information is the supreme currency. Unlike in the previous times, the internet and the web have been widely adopted in modern times especially in the wake of the new millennium becoming the primary source of information and any media transaction, and communication (Nissenbaum, (2011).

The above has been successful due to people continuing to embrace the usage of technology and its advancement. As such, there has been a consistent flow of personal information, especially on the internet with a lot of it leaking to third parties where curiosity has arisen concerning this private information, particularly among the policy-makers.

The research was done to indicate that information technologies and digital media have posed significant threats to the privacy of information in modern times with a severe intensity of the same in future times. In the current times, the two have led to disruptions in the flow of information both belonging to the individuals or organizations which is much attributed to the social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter and the surveillance cameras.

Information that has been left online by the majority of the intensity users has been reported to be abused in many instances, a good example being witnessed in the present elections that are held by countries like the United States. As much as the inline information that people post and leave it on the internet and the web to known parties, the same information has always been retrieved by third parties that do business with it.

Drastic changes are often realized in technology for instance with private information related carriers like the emails and the websites that are created by the organizations or individuals. A lot of data sets and resources are shared through them which has enabled the smooth flow of information leading to cyberspace that is rampantly growing to influence future privacy.

The population of the world continues to increase influencing a lot of creativity that inclined towards information and technological environment. The above is boosted by the information revolution era. As such, with many inventions relating to information, the privacy of peoples' and organizational information becomes vulnerable to the issues of privacy.

For instance, in the past, according to Eleveth (2017), in film production, people used to act using their real faces. In modern times, people can use their real faces in their presence or their faces can be projected on to the faces of other actors and perform the same role. It is expected in the future that the above will be advanced to using the faces of individuals without the need to project on other individuals.

It implies that for the movie stars, they will feature in films even after more than a hundred years of their non-existence because they don't need to be present. However, the above will be inappropriate since it is being done without their consent and there will be a lot of fraud. Individuals and organizations might end up using the technology and the information of these prominent people in history for vengeful purposes in a bid to ruining and tainting their image in the books (Eveleth, 2017).

With the growing advancement and literacy of modern society and the expected coming generations, personal identities continue to be not only personally valuable sources of information, but they also prove to be economically important. We have witnessed the privacy of public figures being breached courtesy of democracy and technology where they are impersonated in fake videos to pass certain messages to the public and for economical purposes.

Future technology is expected to thoroughly breach the privacy of people in the film industry through capturing their data and information and propagating the same into other roles which will grow their influence over space and time. Therefore, not only a person will be famous in a specific domestic location, but also in other parts of the world where movies will be generated in his name, data, and face (Eveleth, 2017). These people could also be sold or sell themselves in future generations.

According to Warren & Brandeis (1890), the privacy of a person has evolved through various stages with the expectation that there will be more evolution to these protected forms of privacy. For instance, initially, the privacy of property was only composed of the tangibles. However, the evolution of the protective laws has compromised the forms of possession in modern times to also include the tangibles as well as the intangibles.

As these rights of privacy continue to be intensified to certain standards through time, recent and future inventions have also been on the rights of violating the same rights calling for the protection of the affected people. Media houses have been the greatest contributors to breach of privacy in modern times where they invade sacred precincts of private and domestic lives of people for economic advantages (Warren & Brandeis, 1890).

Just like the evolution of privacy, the law should also become dynamic to incorporate the changes that can be invoked appropriately in a bid to protect the privacy of an individual or an organization. Most of the information and data that has been breached into has been used for defamation or revenge and economical purposes. Unlike in the previous times, the present and the future times as captured by the laws will provide compensation for the injury of feelings of a person whose information has been breached into.

References

Eveleth, R. (2017, April 4). Unreel. Retrieved from https://www.flashforwardpod.com/2017/04/04/unreel/

Nissenbaum, H. (2011). A contextual approach to privacy online. Daedalus, 140(4), 32-48.

Warren, S. D., & Brandeis, L. D. (1890). The right to privacy. Harvard law review, 193-220.