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Summary:
The author of this article is Simson Garfinkel, associate professor at the naval postgraduate school in Monterey, CA. In the article, the author expresses his views about the state of privacy Americans have as a result of modern technologies such as the computer, internet, and databases. As eluded to in the title, Garfinkel points out that whereas Americans could at one time abstain from letting others have too much of their personal information by paying in cash, having conversations face to face rather than over the phone, or driving a personal vehicle instead of flying, we are now faced with security cameras, online medical records, online bank records, and other similar things that make it impossible to live life apart from the web. All of us have personal information online; the question becomes not whether to abstain from technology or not, but how to make the systems we do use as secure as possible.
Garfinkel spends a majority of his article outlining the history of privacy acts in the United States. Basically, where privacy stands right now is that each online company or website that takes a user’s personal information is required to provide a privacy policy for users defining what that site can and can’t do with the user’s information. A company would only get in trouble if it used personal information in a way that violated its own policy.
Garfinkel points out that while the privacy laws that we have now are working out OK, there are still a lot of holes that we need to patch up in our system. One major problem with the internet is that there is no way of knowing when a person is really who they say they are. For example, if someone were to hack into your Gmail account and then change the password and settings so that you could not get back in – how would you prove that it was actually your account in the first place? Would you be able to get it back? Once they got into your account, they would have quite a bit of personal information about you including, most likely, passwords that had been emailed to you from other sites you use to do business online. Garfinkel is hoping that someday soon we can have an online security profile similar to that of a US passport – one identity that allows a person to sign into all of their sites online. He is hoping that a system like this would help prevent against most of the online identification problems that we are facing. A system like this, however, will cost quite a bit of money and will mean the government needs to make some big decisions about the policy surrounding it.
Reaction:
Reading this article reminded me that I should be more careful when entering my personal information online. A agree with the author that it is better for us to be online and aware of the potential privacy issues than to abstain from using the internet and/or modern technology and be marginalized by society. As consumers of technology we need to be careful of how we use it, what information we publish about ourselves online, and take purposeful steps to be informed about potential threats. I am not sure what I think about having a “digital passport” issued by the government for every person. While it would make it simpler to sign into websites and applications with just one ID, I’m not sure I want the government having the ability to track everything I do online. Having a universal, government-issued ID seems like it would protect my privacy in some ways, but violate it in others. Right now, someone can type in my passport number and see when I have left the country, where I went, and when I returned. What if someone could type in my online ID # and see what time I logged into my Facebook account, how often I check my online baking, and if I have ever used an online dating service?
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