Privacy in the Information Age essays

Privacy in the Information Age essays Privacy is at the very soul of being human (Diffie, 555). For as long as humans can remember privacy has always been a major issue in our society. From the time telephones came into play, in which strangers had the advantage of calling your own private house to talk to you, until now with the creation of the Internet. With the rise of technology in the U.S. today many of our individual privacies have been invaded, from video cameras that record our entries into shops and buildings to supermarket checkout tapes... (Diffie, 555). Every step we take is pretty much watched by the government. As Bob Herbert describes it, We are very close to the day when strangers will know, or will be able to know, anything they want about you ( 540). What Herbert is trying to say is that if we keep on heading in the same direction we are going now our individual privacies are pretty much going to be destroyed. Many people look at the destruction of privacy in a bad way, not taking into consideration the other perspective of this problem. The invasion of privacy in the U.S. can have both a positive and negative effect on our society. When many people think about the invasion of their privacy they tend to ignore the indirect positive affects that it has on their society. Sometimes in certain situations individual privacy has been given up for the protection of U.S. citizens as a whole. Two good examples are the medal detector screens and the searches of personal belongings at airports (Hubbartt, 554). Although it is true that these searches are invading peoples privacy of what they have in their suitcase, at the same time it is protecting them from any terrorist attacks on board. Its better to give up a little of your privacy then to put your life into the hands of strangers. Although you trust yourself you cant trust others around you. You never know who the person sitting next to yo...