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Chris Miller
Post 9/11 Privacy
The whole world was change in the morning of September 11
th
2001, which was the day
that a terrorist wanted to get his point across by killing over 3000 people. In doing this issues
with our current security policies have been made apparent and as we evolve with our changing
world new policies must be made in order to combat the new threats.
When is privacy gone too far and has the government gone too far, where is the line
between personally privacy and public knowledge? What will constitute an over stepping of
boundaries, and what will not be enough. Has encryptions become a new way for people to
protect possible harm they can cause, or is encryption a new way for people to express
themselves. Does authentication requirement, in technology, of who you are create a loss of
privacy or a protection to prying eyes? Is having you medical records digitally available at all
times reduce the ability for medical privacy or open up the ability for doctors and scientist to
use the data to find possible issues base off of other others data.
Since serving in the United Sates Army, I have seen times when no privacy is allowed
and when privacy is the up most importance, there are times when soldiers die and the first
thing to change is policies are enacted where you give up all devices that can allow you with
people back home. While only the leaders have communication so that information can be sent
from the top down. Also while keeping the family from being notified by fellow soldier. Then
there are times where privacy is respected and encourage, what you do in your own home and
in life outside of work is your freedom, but when it comes down to dirtying the name of the us
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government, they start opening up your life to see what is going on. After serving and seeing
what people can achieve with privacy not being kept in check has the possibility to lead to
death and destruction. Privacy has different areas that have change since September 11
th
2001,
I feel a lot more people are open about having the government look in on things, while others
became more of a hermit and hide away and try to protect as much of their privacy as they can.
Encryption is a great mathematical invention that has giving technology users the ability
to keep their lives private and their systems protected. It also give the people that want to
cause harm or do illegal activities the ability to keep their information free from the authorities.
While I definitely think people deserve their privacy, it is their way of blending in with social
norms and when you take that away you get people who would be alienated and outcast for a
simple things that would normally be no ones business.
Us as people need to have the ability to be who we are. I believe that privacy is an idea
that allows us to do this. It creates an appearance for everyone, while you are home you can
love video games or like to build model cars. While social norms have shown that
stereotypically nerds play video games, but while you are allowed to have privacy in your own
home, there are girls who play video games that would normally not ever expect to because of
that stereotype. While it allows people to be themselves, it also allows the bad side of people
to come out and be protected from the authorities. For example a pedophile can keep a
computer full of images and videos of child pornography and the authorities wont every no
about it until they do something that opens a weakness in to their system.
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Where is the line drawn with encryption, Amatai Ezitioni has stated Encryption can
make it impossible to obtain necessary evidence. (Etzioni) With the Pedophile example, there
are images and videos of children being taken advantage of and that is something that is
morally and ethically wrong. Encryption provides the person with those images a way to keep it
from authorities. Also encryption can make it difficult for police and government to keep up
protected. For example in the book limits of privacy Drug cartels rely heavily on
communication networks; monitoring these networks has played an important role in
identifying the leaders and illegal proceeds of cartels. (Etzioni) While encryption allows us to
hide information we dont want out in the public and provides a level of secrecy and security. It
creates a whole new barrier that authorities have to work through in order to catch people that
are doing bad things.
Identification through the use of biometrics and user login and password, creates the
other part the encryption that is needed in order to keep information private. Some people
might say that the government uses biometrics to track what people are doing, while
biometrics creates a great ability for security to be effective, but this all so is very expensive and
can slow down the system that the biometrics is enabled on. A cheaper solution to the
biometrics is having identification cards. Which will require the personnel to have the card on
them at all times and should the person lose their identification card they will become a
security risk that has made the system vulnerable to whoever has the card. Ultimately the
Identification Card is overall the most cost effective, but it can also be unsecure if someone
loses their identification card.
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While Identification card create an ability to validate who the person is, it doesnt
validate the person past. People who fraudulently file for multiple refunds using fake identities
and multiple Social Security numbers cost the nation between $1 billion and $5 Billion every
year. (Etzioni) today people can search the internet and look for Identification card layouts and
social security card layouts, in which they can manipulate in to having the information that they
want on there so they can claim to be someone they are not. There are a number of other ways
that people have shown they can use Identification cards for criminal activity. For example,
Child abusers working with children, parents skipping out on child support, Illegal immigration,
illegal gun sales, credit card fraud, these are just to name a few. Forbes Magazine found
Merchants in the United States are losing approximately $190 billion a year to credit card
fraud much of it online, according to a 2009 Lexis Nexis study ("Solving the $190 billion
Annual Fraud Problem: More on Jumio"), This much loss of money in one year is incredible and
there must be ways to fight this. The sad thing is this statistic is from 2009 and that if our
government would use biometric registration for anything financial, it could possibly save the
United States Tax payers millions if not billions in money that isnt lost.
Encryption and identification is huge when it comes to keeping privacy. Medical records
are one of those things that almost everyone wants to make sure never see the light of day,
unless they approve of it. A persons medical record contains every little piece of information
about them, some of the information would create a barrier for people trying to excel at
something. There is also the criminal side to this, In Newton, Massachusetts, a convicted child
rapist working at a local hospital used a former employees computer password and then
accessed nearly 1000 patient files to make obscene phone calls to young girls. (Etzioni) People
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that should not have any access to medical file, can access them using just a password, and it
shows that having just a password for authentications is a huge error on the hospitals part, as
well as administrators not closing accounts as people are fired or move on to another job.
There is also the issue of employers gaining access to your medical records without your
knowledge or approval. One of the ways an employer has accessed personal medical data was
done by Southeastern Pennsylvania transit authority (SEPTA), SEPTA had contracted the Rite-
Aid Pharmacy to provide prescription benefits to its workers. The contract included a
requirement that the pharmacy provide SEPTA with systematic access to employees
prescription records. One supervisor was told that an employee was taking AIDS medications.
(Etzioni) Even though it would be a courtesy to let your employer know that you have aids,
which is a deadly disease, but this employee wanted to keep that part of their life a secret from
their employer. The coworkers of that employee could have out casted him, if they found out
about the employees health issues.
The Countries of North Korea and South Korea are bout very different countries now yet
they both use to be one country. The countrys divided with the allied victory in japan in 1945.
The Soviet Union took the north while the United States took the south. While South Korea was
under the control of the United States, it declared its independence from North Korea, and
began to be a republic which allowed there people more freedom than that of North Korea.
North Korea has been a communist state with one man dictatorship. This has created a country
that has imposed major laws on its people, where there is little freedom for the citizens of
North Korea. While South Korea has many freedoms including over the north, In September of
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2011 one of the strictest privacy laws in Asian was pass and put in to effect. It enacts multiple
centers and committees all working together to protect the personal data and business data
throughout the country. It also creates new offenses that people can be charged for. While this
can seem overzealous for the country to protect privacy, it is proof that the country want to
protect their citizens and give them the freedom to have privacy. While the people of North
Korea have no privacy in general the dictatorship that runs North Korea has taken away the
freedom of privacy.
In the United Kingdom the idea of privacy runs along the same lines as the United
States, everyone has a right to privacy until to do something to take away that right, except it
wasnt until recently that they United Kingdom government could keep the fingerprints and
DNA samples on file. The Crime and security Act 2010 added gave the United kingdom judicial
system the ability to hold fingerprints and DNA samples for up to 6 years of anyone even if they
have been charged or not. While the United States as a whole has had this type of law in effect
since 1999 the only difference is there is no expiration term in which the government must
destroy the samples. Since this has gone in to affect every law enforcement agency works with
the state and federal database, piecing together the information to solve old cases that at the
time of the crime technology wasnt advance enough to solve the case.
In a world where privacy can be seen as one of the top concerns, there are people that
privacy protects their way of life. For example the Lesbian Gay Bisexual transgender
communities require privacy to keep what parts of their lives from public knowledge. There
have been hundreds if not thousands of hate crimes committed against the lesbian gay bisexual
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transgender communities. Especially after the September 11 attacks, people of the Muslim
decent are being treated like terrorist because that people that committed the attacks were
Muslim. Privacy is needed in this world but it comes at a cost. Encryption need to be available
to keep personal information safe but it also need to have ways that if the authorities have to
bypass the encryption, to protect the citizens of a county, I feel that that ability needs to be
there. Even though security in technology is so expensive, people should have to pay a little bit
to implement safe guards like biometric or finger print authentication, in order to protect their
data that is on the internet. While your medical record is like a file of your life, I think medical
records should be keep in one data base that each person has their own way of accessing it and
should have the option to certify medical personal, allowing the medical physicians access to
what they need to treat the patient. A compromise between protected information and public
information has been drawn and people need to understand what happens when you cross that
line.

Sources:
"Solving the $190 billion Annual Fraud Problem: More on Jumio." Forbes. Forbes
Magazine, n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2011/03/24/solving-the-190-billion-
annual-fraud-scam-more-on-jumio/>.

Etzioni, Amitai. The limits of privacy. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Print.
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Greenleaf, Graham and Park, Whon-il, Koreas New Act: Asias Toughest Data Privacy
Law (July 19, 2012). Privacy Laws & Business International Report, Issue 117, 1-6, June
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Tancer, Bill. Click: what millions of people are doing online and why it matters. New
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