The Information Age: An Explotation Of Privacy

Personal privacy and the right to personal privacy have not always been sought after individuals. The concept of having privacy in one’s personal life is a relatively new concept and one that has strong roots in early American settlements. According to the Encyclopedia of Social History, the exact origins of the expectation and longing of individual privacy are unclear but key factors include the “waning power of community and, later, the reformation of family as a collection of individuals” (580). Privacy between family members may have contributed to the original concerns over privacy but more modern feelings over privacy issues tend to revolve around the privacy of an individual’s home and also privacy from their government. In the 1920’s “privacy was defined by U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brandeis as ‘the right to be left alone’” (Gottfried 9). Ever since Americans have wanted and fought for this “right to be left alone” in hopes of gaining personal privacy from their government as well as individuals who have been gathering information on millions of American citizens for years. Americans have now come to want and expect privacy in their pers

The final protection of personal privacy is implied in the First Amendment that calls for the “freedom of association…courts have found that this implies the right to keep one’s associations private” (Gottfried 10). By assuring the privacy of associations, the Constitution is protecting the privacy of individual’s correspondence as well. However, the privacy of associations is often times sacrificed in instances of garbage searches and wire tapping in which letters or conversations with any number of correspondences could be uncovered.

Laws cannot always prevent the invasion of privacy-especially at the government level-and this can leave citizens feeling vulnerable as if they are constantly being spied upon. Although there are some laws in place to protect individual privacy “local and federal laws are limited and address only a few of the many privacy issues that trouble people today” (Gottfried 10). Therefore it is important that individuals are aware of what information they give out. People often give out more information than what is necessary to companies because the organization asks for it on a registration form. These companies will often turn and sell personal information to other agencies that the individual may have no connections to.

guilty, it can also be said that it protects citizens from having their phones tapped or their garbage searched because such actions could lead to an individual incriminating themselves.

In another Supreme Court ruling a New York law that “required the recording of the name, address, and age of every patient obtaining certain prescription drugs” was upheld because “the state used safeguards to maintain the secrecy of these records” (Levy 81). Although New York State may have ways of protecting the privacy of these patients, some employees of the state as well as pharmacy workers would have access to this information through the computers it is stored in. By allowing the state to require such specific

Although the Constitution does not specifically state that every U.S. citizen has the “right to privacy,” it does imply that the right to privacy is held by every citizen. There are several amendments in the Constitution which “create ‘zones of privacy’ which, taken together, add up to a Constitutional right to privacy” (Christopher 12). The amendments that suggest this right to privacy include the first, fourth and fifth amendments. According to Ted Gottfried in his book Privacy, the Fourth Amendment is the one used most often in support of personal privacy (10). The Fourth Amendment “refers to the right of the people to be secure in their…houses papers and effects” as well as providing a safeguard against unreasonable searches of these items (Kronenwetter 203). By guaranteeing the security of private houses and papers, the Constitution is saying that these items belong to the individual and cannot be taken or searched through with out a reasonable cause.

Along with the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment also implies a protection of privacy. The Fifth Amendment “prevents individuals from being forced to incriminate themselves” (Gottfried 10). Although

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