Privacy

You might be astonished by the amount of information stored about you in computer database. You bank has information on your financial status, credit history, and the people, organizations, and businesses to which you write checks. School records indicate something about your ability to learn and the subjects that interest you. Medical records indicate the state of your health. Credit card companies track the places you shop and what you purchase in person, by main, or on the Web. Your phone company stored your phone number, your address, and a list of the phone numbers you dial. The driver’s license bureau has your physical description. Your internet cookies track many of the Web sites you frequent. By compiling this data-a process sometimes referred to as “profiling’-an interested person or company could guess some very privet things about you, such as your political views or even your sexual orientation.

When records were stored on index cards and in file folders, locating and distributing data constituted a laborious process that required hand transcriptions or photocopies of piles of papers. Today, this data exists in electronic format and easy to access, copy, sell, shop, consolidate, and alter.

Privacy advocates point out the potential for misusing data that has been collected and stored in computer database. In response to terrorist threats, the Pentagon is working on several controversial projects designed to mine data from database that store information about passports, visas, work permits, car rentals, air-line reservations, arrests, bank accounts, school grades, medical history, and fingerprints. Government data miners believe that data mining could uncover terrorists. Privacy advocates note, however, that every data set contains patterns. The big question is whether any set of seemingly innocent activities, such as credit card purchases, can be correlated with impending terrorist acts. The potential for error and privacy violation in generalized data mining projects is sobering. Privacy advocates are encouraging lawmakers to closely monitor government snooping and restrict privet-sector sale and distribution of information about individuals. Some legislation is in place for certain private-sector institutions. For example, the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act requires financial institutions to supply clients with an annual notice expanding how personal information is collected and share. This legislation also required financial institution to provide a way for clients to opt out of such information exchanges.

The issue of privacy is not simple. Information about you is not necessarily “yours”. Although you might “reveal” information about yourself on an application form, other information about you is collected without your direct input. For example, suppose you default on you credit card payment. The credit card company has accumulated information about your delinquent status. Shouldn’t it have freedom to distribute this information, foe example, to another credit company?

People aren’t always unwilling victims of privacy violations. Many individuals knowingly let companies gather profiling information to get free products. For example, thousands of people signed up for Google’s Gmail service even though they knew their e-mail massages could be scanned to develop marketing profile.

Unfortunately, private information can be garnered from your computer without your permission. Spyware is a type of software containing code that tracks personal information from your computer and passes it on to third parties, without your authorization or knowledge. Spyware might be embedded in an application that you download, or it can download itself from unscrupulous Web-sites-a process called a “driveby download”Database containing personal information do offer positive benefits. For example, many web surfers appreciate the shortcuts offered by software agents that assemble a customer profile in order to recommend books, CDs, videos, new articles, and other targeted goods and services. These users might willingly give up some measure of privacy for the convenience afforded by these agents.

The electronic privacy issue appears to be heading toward some type of compromise between strict privacy and wholesale collection/distribution of personal data.