Privacy
Privacy refers to being free from
intrusion—the right to be left alone,
to be free from surveillance, and to
have control over the information
collected and stored about yourself.
Citizens of free and democratic
nations expect, at the least, privacy
in their homes.
In this section:
• U.S. Privacy-Protective Laws • Behavioral Targeting
• U.S. Privacy-Invasive Laws • Traffic Shaping
• Electronic Surveillance
• Transparency
Issues > Privacy
U.S. PrivacyProtective Laws
U. S. privacy-protective laws refer
to legislation designed to protect the
private information of U.S. citizens.
President Gerald Ford made history when he
signed the Privacy Act of 1974 into law. It sets
out what kinds of information the government can
keep about its citizens and the rights of citizens to
know what’s kept about them.
Issues > Privacy > U.S. Privacy-Protective Laws
U.S. PrivacyProtective Laws
Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 2000 gives parents control over what information is
collected from their children online, and how such
information may be used.
It is estimated that approximately
3.6 million users on the popular
social media site Facebook are
under the age of 12. Almost 50% of
children under the age of 13 are
using social media sites.
Issues > Privacy > U.S. Privacy-Protective Laws
U.S. PrivacyInvasive Laws
U.S. privacy-invasive laws refer to
legislation that is invasive to individual
privacy for a perceived greater good of
the country.
Issues > Privacy > U.S. Privacy-Invasive Laws
Surveillance
Surveillance is the close monitoring of behavior through
electronic technologies such as wiretapping, data mining,
remote video and audio monitoring, GPS, and RFID.
Issues > Privacy > Surveillance
Surveillance
Global positioning system
(GPS) and radio
frequency identification
(RFID) technologies are
very useful, but they lead
to GPS tracking and
RFID surveillance and
can also be used to
invade privacy.
Issues > Privacy > Surveillance
Surveillance
Wiretapping involves secretly
listening in on conversations taking
place over telecommunications
networks including telephone, email, instant messaging, VoIP, and
other Internet communications.
Data mining refers to the process
of extracting information from large
databases. Data mining can tell
more about a person than all other
kinds of electronic surveillance.
Issues > Privacy > Surveillance
Behavioral Targeting
Behavioral targeting
uses information about
a person’s behavior to
inform businesses and
marketers so that they
can offer products that
are likely to be of
interest to that person.
Network behavioral
targeting is the most
invasive form.
Issues > Privacy > Behavioral Targeting
Traffic Shaping
Traffic shaping refers to controlling
the flow of network traffic in order to
optimize performance by delaying
some data packets in favor of others.
The privacy concern arises from the
methods that ISPs use to decide
which packets to throttle -using deep
packet inspection to examine the
contents of all data packets traveling
over a network may be an issue.
Issues > Privacy > Target Shaping
FCC Chairman Julius
Genachowski has fought to
enforce policies to rein in
traffic shaping.
Transparency
Transparency is when a
person keeps little or nothing
secret from the world; a
lifestyle that is supported by
technologies such as
lifestreaming, geo-location,
and microblogging, eg,
Twitter.
Justin Kan, founder of Justin.tv,
streams his life over the Web from
a video camera and microphone
on his cap.
Issues > Privacy > Transparency