High speed computers and large databases enable society to catalog and analyze large amounts of information as never before. Information can be stored easily and cheaply, and the ability to search and study it has grown exponentially: in the three decades since 1970 the power of microprocessors increased by a factor of 7,000. Computing chores that took a week in the early 1970s now take a minute. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, for example, the cost of storing one megabit of information, or enough for a 320-page book, fell from more than $5,000 in 1975 to seventeen cents in 1999. An individual can search the tens of millions of pages indexed on the World Wide Web through search engines or track their bills with online banking or with finance software. One can take care of taxes or track stocks online in real time. We can locate information almost instantaneously and exactly. It is possible to find long lost loved ones and re-establish contact. You can retain a chronicle of every paper you ever wrote, every email. We can search files quickly and easily and manipulate amounts of data. The data is literally at your fingertips. This is all to the good.
Yet much of this data is not private; if the Internet is the cheapest and most effective means of communication ever afforded to man, it is also as insecure as it is effective. Much of your data - much more than most able know! - is public record. Moreover, it will remain up part of the public record forever! Have you ever written an email you would never want to be made public? Have you ever been visited a web site that would embarrass you if other people knew about it? How would you like to be haunted by some tasteless joke, piece of gossip, or off-hand comment you wrote the years ago which was recorded on some computer and somewhere? Think about everything you ever wrote in a chat room! Did you ever say anything you would not repeat in a crowded elevator? Those comments will never go away; people can find them, if they want to. Individuals, thinking what they wrote would remain private, have been fired for what they wrote in chat rooms after their employers found out. New communications technologies have increased the danger that intimate personal information originally disclosed to our friends and colleagues may be exposed to (and misinterpreted by) less understanding audience of strangers or even our enemies. This is potentially very dangerous. When even the sex lives of public officials are fair game for outsiders, what is private anymore? Where do we draw the line?
In George Orwell's Oceania the individual had absolutely no privacy: telescreens and other electronic monitoring devices recorded almost every action made. The privacy of the individual was subordinate to the power of the Party. There literally was no such thing as "privacy." How different is our society? Can we expect privacy from computers that catalogue everything we buy online and in stores and websites we visit? Programs and databanks that store everything we say and write? Or can retailers and marketers and other interested parties with the help of technology search out, discover, record, and analyze all the minutiae of our lives without us being able to do anything about it? Is individual privacy impotent in the face of technology in the Age of Information? Are we impotent in the face of processing power and data storage capabilities?
In the real world Americans expect and demand privacy, but in the virtual world privacy is much more elusive. Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy pronounced publicly on January 1, 1998: "You have zero privacy, anyway. Get over it." Should we just get over it? U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis saw it differently. "The right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by a free people," Brandeis explained the primacy of privacy in his 1928 Olmstead v. U.S. ruling. Who is right? McNealy or Brandeis? Is privacy important? Why? How should we manage privacy in the digital 21st century?
Questions to keep in mind: What is a "cookie"? What is "data mining"? What can companies find out about you from "data mining"? What is an "IP address"? How can you be tracked across the Internet? What is "spam"? Help in your privacy be invaded on line? How is email not private? What is a "clean email" address? How much privacy do VUSD students have? Employees at work? How much privacy can you expect from your ISP (Internet service provider)? What tools can law enforcement used to fight crime on line? With tips and tricks can be used to defend your online privacy? What our twelve simple, easy ways to protect the or online privacy? What is encryption? What is a "third person proxy"? What software programs and/or web sites can you use to protect your privacy? How can you browse the world wide web the undercover (ie. anonymously)? What is the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA)? What steps can young children taken to protect their online privacy? Eliminate "spam" email? How untraceable do you want to be? How untraceable do you need to be? From whom are you hiding your identity? Is it enough to obscure your identity from marketers and advertisers, data aggregators and statistics gatherers? Or do you want to be anonymous from those providing you with Internet access? Can you trust your identity to some and still remain anonymous elsewhere? Is anonymity possible over the Internet? Is it desirable? Why? Why not? If you value your privacy, does it mean you have something to hide?
