Privacy In The Information Age :: essays research papers

The world is changing rapidly. There used to be a time when we could be confident that no 1 could apprehend too much about our personal lives. There used to be a time when training was merely a way of retention records. That time is gone and with it went a large amount of what we might invite our personal privacy. Information about our personal lives has now become one of the most valued resources on the market today. The explosion of the computer and communication theory industries has created a trunk that can store vast amounts of data on an individual and transmit that information almost anywhere in a negligible amount of time. More and more people are gaining admission charge to this information and the government has been too slow to react to the changes. As a result, employers, insurance agencies, law enforcement officers, and researchers are all lobbying for legislation that would establish elapse rules for the access to this information. Each of these groups stand t o gain enormous benefits from legitimizing access to a broad base of personal information. This information allow for be nonionic into vast databases that will be maintained by the government, credit makeup agencies, the health care industry, and employers. The system will come to contain information on virtually every aspect of our lives, the data will be quickly and efficiently transferred around the globe via the arising Global Information Infrastructure, and paper records sitting in file cabinets will become a affaire of the past. However, considering current trends, what may be missed the most from the old system are the locks on those old, rusted file cabinets. This new system allows for a lot of access to previously confidential files and we are already see the negative effects that this system has produced. For example, employers and insurance companies have begun to discriminate against individuals establish on samplings of a persons or fetuss DNA. As genetic testing and the human genome project advance, there will be an even greater opportunity for discrimination based on characteristics or conditions that may, or may not, arise in an individuals future. To provide a background to the discussion, this report will establish who has access to what information today.