Take The Initiative
Some people are unaccustomed to privacy. Many adults will speak of their idyllic hometowns where everyone knew everyone, windows had no curtains, and nobody had any secrets. They will reminisce about dialing the phone operator and asking for someone just by their first name and getting connected, Some even assert that no one used to lock their doors, and children played completely unsupervised in the streets.
In today’s society these “old-style” values are a bit antiquated, and do not apply. Today’s home environment is a large municipal district where it would be impossible to know everyone, dialing a phone operator and asking for someone by first name would garner rude laughs, and people spend top-dollar outfitting their houses with special locks and other security measures. One would be hard pressed to find children playing in the street unsupervised, for fear of the massive amount of traffic hitting them, or just being kidnapped.
Nowadays, privacy has become a point of contention for everyone. People always are concerned with keeping to themselves and arm themselves to do so. Not only is this a respected value, it is a necessity in today’s information generation. Online crime has skyrocketed since the advent of the Internet, and has done so consistently for some time. Identity thieves run rampant on the web, and prey on the blissful people who think that the whole craze over online privacy is a big joke.
Even though the zeitgeist of today is all about privacy, our news doesn’t pay much attention. Oftentimes they put the names and photos of people who were involved or committed crimes out to the world, and instantly everyone knows their names.
“Privacy: The Lost Right” by Jon Mills analyzes and provides a commentary on the loss and changes in privacy. In his book, he wrote about a particular court case in which a boy murdered six college kids in Tallahassee. Even though the victims were obviously deceased, they deserved a bit of privacy for both their and their family’s sakes, and therefore, crime scene photos were not released. The public, as is their morbid nature, wanted to see photos of the scene. The media saw they had an audience, and fought to gain access to the photos to show them on national television, and obviously draw a wide audience.
The courts wouldn’t budge. After so much pushing however, they made the photos available if the person could provide a valid reason that they needed to view them. These issues were mundane with what we are faced with today. Sites like YouTube and other streaming video media pages can catch people on camera and easily get away with putting them up without signing a release or anything.
Mills has made many contributions to society’s privacy problems. In 1980, he passed Florida’s privacy amendment, which protected citizen’s privacy by stopping certain government intrusions. His amendment was so strongly supported that even senators of two completely polar views both signed onto the document and touted its strength and necessity. His amendment was concerned with the releasing of medical and social information, and 30 years later he is fighting against Internet terrorists and ruthless online scammers.
Unfortunately, while a stick-up at gunpoint is easy to identify in the tangible life, it is much harder to detect and bring to justice that occurred online. Mills is particularly concerned with the level of personal information they give out. Many youngsters would argue that they only allow friends to view their profile, but in the “who has more friends” mentality of today’s youth, many friends are anything but. Therefore, their personal information could be used by a “friend” to hack their accounts, or maybe just ridicule them throughout life.
Adults aren’t exonerated from guilt either. Oftentimes they fill out surveys and make purchases online that leave a trail of breadcrumbs right to their door. The bottom line is, get yourself protected because the threat is real, and the criminals prey on the weak and the ignorant.
To read the full article and get more details about Mills and his works, click http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009907050307.
