To What Extent Is Privacy Possible In The 21st Century

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Is privacy possible in the 21st Century? Anita M. Armstrong English Composition II : ENG 122 Instructor Erin Reaume September 28, 2015 Is privacy possible in the 21st Century? The 21st century has ushered in new and exciting ways for people to communicate and stay connected to one another. But with all of the emerging technology in today’s society, privacy has become very limited. The way people communicate in the 21st century has changed drastically and has caused privacy to be almost impossible to achieve. Web 2.0 applications such as Myspace, Facebook and LinkedIn has allowed the world to become interconnected through just a few clicks of your mouse. We are now able to connect to each other in ways that we were not ever able to. With…show more content…
Seems harmless right? It’s not always. For a website to collect data about the products that are important or interesting to you, they must track your browsing history. Your browsing history is the list of any website you have visited on that computer. “Many Internet firms have collected a huge amount of personal data from their users and use this data to allow their advertisers to target and personalize ads. Consumers might see personalized ad content on such sites as more appealing and more connected to their interests (Anand and Shachar, 2009), but they also may see it as ‘not only creepy, but off-putting’ if they feel that the firm has violated their privacy”(Stone, 2010). Have you ever been shopping online, then later while visiting other sites you see that the products you were previously looking at seem to appear in ads on other sites? This is how websites use your browsing history in attempts to get you to purchase…show more content…
This is a blatant invasion of American citizens’ privacy. So much that in 2014, even President Obama commented that “without proper safeguards” phone records that the NSA kept, could have been used for the wrong purpose” This means that the NSA was given access to private information and was able to do what the please with it. In a speech given in January 2014, President Obama explained that phone records are collected in two stages. “The first stage is collection of the records, which show the date, time, and duration of each call from one number to another. In the second stage, the database of records is searched (“queried”) for numbers that have interacted, directly or indirectly, with numbers linked to suspected terrorists.” After an investigation by the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies it was found that the NSA did not use the phone records improperly. However, had they done so Americans could have been at great risk. (Saletan 2014) Stored Communications Act The Stored Communications Act was passed in 1986 in order to keep Americans Fourth Amendment safeguarded. However, because the act has not been updated to reflect the change in society and communication; the Stored Communications Act does not protect our emails, chats and direct messages.(Borchert 2014) Our internet communications are not legally protected and can be read and seized at any given time. When we sign up to use these sites
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