privacy essay

Submitted By hizips
Words: 1141
Pages: 5
Open Document
Government: Stop Peeking at Us! Do you know that our government is spying on us? According to a report by Washington’s Blog, our government spies on us through our computers, phones, cars, buses and all other things that our life is based on these days. Some people might say that they have nothing to hide; however, this argument of “nothing to hide” is actually suggesting that the thing that people try to hide is bad. Privacy matters because it belongs to the man who owns it. It’s a part of him/her, which is not allowed to be exposed. Privacy matters because it varies between people; it should not be used against the owner as well as it cannot be used for other purpose. Privacy created clothes for our thinking, allowing government to collect our privacy is equivalent to let them peek our thinking. I don’t agree with the argument that people has nothing to hide because privacy is a personality, the possibility of overpower our government and the risk of improper secondary use. First of all, I do not support the argument that people has nothing to hide about because privacy is who we are, a personality as well as a human right. Privacy is subjective, that means that it varies as people changes. So there is nothing that is absolutely private or anything that is definitely public. In the article “Why Privacy Matters Even If You Have “Nothing to Hide”,” Solove states that the problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is the underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things (343). Furthermore, he says that surveillance can inhibit such lawful activities involve freedom, and the most important, it violates first amendment rights that is essential for democracy. In my opinion, there are different kinds of privacy; for instance, there are secrets that we do not want others to know; there are things that we only want someone to know, nevertheless, there may be things that are bad and don’t want law enforcement to know. But massive surveillance sacrifices other aspects of privacy to focus on “bad ” privacy. What’s more, the reason why I do not support the argument is because the possibility of overpowering our government. Collecting data on citizens gives our government a method, a power, a tool to control us whenever they want. This kind of problem is called Kafkaesque. In Solove’s essay:
The problems portrayed by the Kafkaesque metaphor are of a different sort than the problem caused by surveillance. They often do not result in inhibition. Instead they are problems of information processing---the storage, use, or analysis of data---rather than of information collection. They affect the power relationships between people and the institutions of the modern state. (Solove 343)
What this means is that with all this collected data, our government can overpower us. But why should our government be given that kind of power, that it can control its citizen rather than server them? In a famous movie “V for Vendetta,” there is a famous quote “People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.” It is also true for privacy. People should have privacy but government cannot, after all, government should do what it is said in the definition: a branch or service of the supreme authority of a state or nation, taken as representing the whole, servicing for all. Beside the problem of Kafkaesque, the risk of secondary use of the collected information is also a reason why I refuse the argument that people has nothing to hide about. We have no guarantee than the government won’t use the collected data other than “detect terrorism.” Government is where management of a whole country is taken place, however, there is neither a person nor an institution that oversees the government; so no one can ensure that improper secondary use will not occur. This is also being argued in the essay:
Secondary use is the exploitation of data obtained for one purpose for an unrelated purpose without the
Show More

Related Documents: privacy essay

Essay Privacy

ideas of what privacy, invasion of privacy, and privacy rights are, but nonetheless most people have ideas or an opinion on such topics. “Definitions of privacy can be couched in descriptive or normative terms. People may view privacy as a derivative notion that rests upon more basic rights such as liberty or property.” (Moore, 2008, p. 411) Even with the many explanations of privacy rights that we individually claim, we should all be able to agree that to some degree our right to privacy is essential…

Words 2601 - Pages 11

Essay on Privacy Matters

ENG 101 Professor Barry Essay 1 19 September 2014 Privacy Matters Should the government keep their ability to access our personal information? In “Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets” the author Peter Singer “encourages readers to question their current views on privacy and examine how new technologies have the ability to affect the future” (Barrios 461). He explains the potential harm of new surveillance technology and how government officials misuse them. We need to understand…

Words 728 - Pages 3

Suns on Privacy Essay

1. Ubiquitous Computing and Your Privacy MySpace, Facebook, email, and collaborative sites for both work and leisure are a norm on the net these days. But did you know all of the content you post on many of these sites immediately become partially owned by the sites themselves? And, taking items away by deleting them never really gets rid of them. In fact, in Groundswell by Bernoff and Li, they state that trying to take something off the Internet that you have posted is like trying to remove…

Words 1328 - Pages 6

Internet Privacy Essay

Comm: Ethics and Issues May 10, 2013 How Did You Know That: The Conundrum of Internet Privacy Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, provision to third-parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet. Internet Privacy is commonly split into two types: Personal Identifying Information (PII) and non-PII. Personal Identifying Information doesn’t necessarily pertain to a person’s date of birth or social…

Words 1833 - Pages 8

Essay on No Such Thing as Privacy

English 10 16 December 2012 The Imperial Bedroom Privacy is a concept that every single one of us claims to enjoy, but also something that has slowly been disintegrating, while we’ve become more and more oblivious to it. Although it is not explicitly stated in the Bill of Rights, mostly everyone agrees that at the very least, our Founding Fathers hinted at the right to privacy. Recent occurrences around the world have brought the concept of privacy into the spotlight and have left dark and, in many…

Words 2136 - Pages 9

Essay about Privacy: National Security Agency and Privacy Rights

threats, right? It’s not quite that simple. People shouldn’t be so quick to give up their privacy rights in the name of national security because this makes it too easy for the government to abuse their power and strip citizens of rights for reasons that may not be justified. Now, some people will surely argue that giving up a few privacy rights is a small cost for making sure our country is safe. In his essay, “Invisible Man: Ethics in a World Without Secrets,” philosopher Peter Singer suggests…

Words 1800 - Pages 8

Essay about Right To Privacy

Person's Right To Privacy should be Upheld Right To Privacy The United States federal government should significantly increase protection of privacy in one or more of the following areas: employment, medical records, and consumer information. The question of workplace privacy is a tricky one; in order to come up with a workable solution, one must balance the separate, and often conflicting, needs and expectations of employers and employees. In this essay, three types of workplace privacy issues will…

Words 1649 - Pages 7

Essay on privacy issues

Government Requirement Taxi Company Requirement Theft recovery: If a cab is stolen, its whereabouts will be known if it is equipped with a vehicle tracking system. Improved Customer Service the GPS tracking system needs to be able to locate the cab closest to a given destination to dispatch a cab for quick pick-up. It can also be used to provide the customer with a real-time estimate of when the taxi will arrive at their location. This results in much happier customers. - See more at: http://www…

Words 461 - Pages 2

privacy rights Essay

follow us and track us with our cell phones. Some may feel violated by an officer’s ability to do this and ask the question “is public surveillance and invasion of privacy and should it be made illegal? “ The answer is no. Public surveillance is not an invasion of privacy; when going into public citizens give up our right to this privacy. It’s common for one to see police officers on television following a suspect around in their car-keeping tabs on their every move. On occasions, officers may sit…

Words 616 - Pages 3

Privacy Google Essay

Google’s privacy issues Privacy is defined as the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information, which therefore means that they get to select what information about themselves gets released to the public. Search engines and the internet cause the boundaries of what is considered private information to be blurred. Once private information gets released on the internet, it becomes very difficult to remove this information completely because it may have already been copied…

Words 640 - Pages 3