The Arrival of the Computer Age

This problem of the danger of usurpation of cover has been foreseen for some time. The keeping of records is hardly a hot activity, but computers progress to changed record-keeping activities in several ways: 1) they have made possible a new crustal plate of culture gathering; 2) they have made possible new kinds of study; 3) they have made possible a new scale of randomness distribution; 4) the effect of err whizzous information preserve be magnified; and 5) information about events in one's vivification may remain on one's record for life (Johnson 87).

in all probability the frontmost solicitude raised in terms of the concern for information privacy in the computer age was that the regimen would be the entity to commit a br to distributively one of privacy, and it is true that the organization today has farther more information on each citizen than it ever had in the past and could have access to far more in various private computer systems crosswise the country. In the past, most governmental decisions concerning individual citizens in much(prenominal) argonas as taxes, law enforcement, student loans, and social Security benefits were establish on personal knowledge of the citizen involved and upon limited information obtained from families, friends, and associates. When such information was kept it was kept in manual of arms files in a decentralized system. This has

Such controls could prevent private companies from selling information collected for one purpose to a company that may utilization it for quite a different purpose. Fears of government abuse argon also very strong, and legislation can address this append as well without making reference to the specific engineering involved. In this instance more than in that of the private sector, rapprochement societal interests and privacy rights is more difficult, but Congress has well-bred this with other issues. The first step is a commitment to bring on the legislation that will accomplish what is needed and to protect privacy without curtailing the benefits of computer use.

Legislation should address these two social sectors separately, with one provision for controlling the dissemination of information in the familiar sector and another for the public sector. This is because different social set are being protected and balanced in each case.

A related issue does involve the technology, and this is the issue of pass access. Legislation can only go so far toward preventing a computer user from intruding into a database and victorious the information desired, and this aspect of the matter has to be addressed some(prenominal) by legislation and technological solutions. We have to recognize the splendour of our privacy and the threats being posed to it, and then we must seek the means to protect ourselves from those threats.

The question then is why we would indispensability to deny them this information, whether they are the government or a corporation. We first have to admit that privacy is important to us. James Rachels notes that on that point is no simple answer to this question and that there are a number of different interests which people have that may be harmed by invasions of privacy. Among these are the following: 1) Privacy may be needed to protect the individual's interests in a private-enterprise(a) situation. 2) Someone may want to keep an aspect of his or her life or behavior private simply because it
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