Privacy on the Internet Super Highway

Privacy on the internet super highway

Business Government and Society

Privacy on the internet super highway

Americans take their right to privacy very serious, and for 90 percent of the population that right is earned and well deserved, the other ten percent not so much. As the United States continues to advance through technological innovation the legal and moral issue of personal privacy has continues to be challenged. This issue seems to be multi pronged in its essence. The first issue that seems to arise is that of government monitoring of internet sites and the activities of people who are on the sites.

Government Monitoring, In terms of legality for monitoring the Internet,” under section 216 of the Patriot act, the FBI can conduct a limited form of Internet surveillance without first visiting a judge and establishing probable cause that the target has committed a crime.” (Poulsen, 2005) This should not be a concern for most US citizens though. During this surveillance the Government is only looking for key words or different additional pieces of information that would identify someone as a terrorist or supporting potential terrorist cells. The FBI has a suite of programs that scans through millions and millions of pages of data per day and analysts are searching for not only things that would identify a potential terrorist but also, evidence of unfolding natural disasters, public health threats and serious crimes such as mall/school shootings, major drug busts, illegal immigrant traffic. So the assumption would be that the Government monitors the internet to protect the citizens of the United States from potential acts of terror, or mass destruction. They really could care less that someone posts on face book that they ate a whole box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts or that the next door neighbors’ wife is sleeping with the mail man. Unless the mail man is Al Qaeda, then there may be some issues.

Private business monitoring, Recently...