Assessment

How can we prevent the government from being able to access our personal matters being kept online? Having digital privacy should be an expectation in the 21st century. Collecting our data is an invasion of privacy and is not completely legal. Whether or not it is for a good cause, world wide data collecting is not good.


"Privacy is a basic need," Bruce Schnier, author of "The Eternal Value of Privacy"  states, "if we seek privacy we are not always doing something wrong." If a person hid in a bathroom stall, they most likely only want privacy to do the deed, not to secretly do something illegal. This quote supports, my claim because the general public's data is most likely innocent and meant to be private.


Keeping our online data is an invasion of privacy. Our personal data kept on a digital device are mostly innocent and meant to only be for ourselves unless intentionally shared with permission. In modern days, many people store their private and personal memories online. Storing memoirs online is much more easier and somewhat safer. In Virginia and Utah, there are giant server farms collecting our digital data. According to Douglas Rushkoff, "they don't have authority to go over it, but they may at some point." This quote means the higher officials are not trusted well enough to give us privacy. Since many people can not trust them, it is more difficult to give them the benefit of doubt to their reasoning for collecting our data.


The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) collects domestic telephone records or audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, etc from people overseas. According to James Clapper, director on National Intelligence, said the internet monitoring is, "used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats." While this may be a good thing to do, FISA is not considering innocent people's rights. According to the US Data Fact Sheet, "The FISA court, Clapper and other administration officials obviously think so [that the data collecting is legal], but many privacy advocates and some lawmakers believe this sort of broad data goes too far." This quote supports the idea that what FISA is doing is not right.


Digital privacy should be an expectation in the 21st century. Wanted privacy is a right for everyone to have. The data collecting that FISA is doing is not even completely legal and approved by everyone. Protest to the government for our right of privacy online.