The Value of Digital Privacy in an Information Technology Age

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The Value of Digital Privacy in an Information Technology Age

Introduction

Privacy is considered to be an ongoing concern for every person around the world. Currently we live in an era where commerce activities, government services, bank statements are all available through the internet, with the increased popularity of the internet sharing information even signing business contracts are all occurring through the internet and this has certainly jeopardized a person's privacy and the broadly available information of people has been seen as a situation of both concern and benefits however the weight age of which is more widely experienced remains an unanswered question.

Various methodologies have been adopted in order to ensure the data is encrypted and the privacy of the user is not tempered at all, however various occasions in the past clearly show the sensitive nature of data many times information is breached and data is decrypted and a huge issue develops for the person whose information has been tampered with. This issue brings us to the topic under discussion how important is digital privacy and how can it be ensured in such a technological developed era? Moreover, how much information should an individual give out to ensure his privacy is not affected at any cost? (ACS, 2009).

List and describe at least three (3) technologies that allow an individual to research citizens' private data

The following are 3 technologies that allows an individual to research a citizen's private data

Biometrics

Cloud Computing

Radio Frequency identification

Biometrics A system designed to verify the identity of a person by the use to intrinsic physical and other personal characteristics face structure, fingerprints and irises. The collection of this data along with other personal aspects like for instance contact details, address, social security number. A person is kept under constant surveillance and is rendered powerless.

Cloud Computing

Though apparently cloud computing has been praised as a highly effected system the biggest disadvantages lies over the fact that it focuses strictly on what an individual seeks and no importance is laid on where the information is stored in a cloud based system retrieving the required information becomes easy for those who know how to work it.

Radio frequency identification

RFID is a wireless system that requires radio frequency to transfer data from a tag attached the tag contains electronically stored information which can be read from miles away.

Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of public access to this information, both for the researchers and those who are being “investigated”.

From a researchers point of view the advantages of public access to information are immense it is extremely beneficial for any researcher to be able to access full information however too much information often tends to become misleading. Moreover from the citizen's perspective having your data under constant scrutiny seems highly bizarre, though there are various times when a person's data is available it might be researched and maybe some existing discrepancy from the data can be identified and eradicated which could ...