Gleason 1

Ben Gleason

Prof. Cassel

Eng-1201

19 March 2021

Privacy and the Internet

The internet and people’s willing participation in it has enabled a new age of data

collection and sharing on an unprecedented scale. Data sharing and information collection is not

a new or novel idea. Humans have been collecting and sharing information for as long as the

species has existed. The internet, however, enabled third parties to monitor and log information

without ever needing to be in the same country as the individual being collected on. This leads to

the question of “how does information collection and data sharing affect privacy?”

First, it is important to understand what privacy is, what protects your right to privacy as

an American, and what is protected by your right to privacy. Privacy is defined as “a state of

personal sovereignty and independence, free from interference by other people, or from other

unwanted attention” (Gale). The Supreme Court has routinely ruled that your right to privacy is

constitutionally protected by the 3rd, 4th, and 9th amendment, depending on the circumstances.

What falls under this right is far trickier to establish. The short answer is it depends on the

circumstances by which the information was accessed or uncovered and where the information

was published (Gale).

In the article Data brokers and the implications of data sharing - the good, bad and ugly,

Neil Raden delves into some of the good and bad things of data sharing that. Data sharing and

information collection are a part of the modern world. Nearly any business that collects
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information shares or sells it in some form. The information sold ranges from location data to

healthcare data and social security numbers. The main issue is that the sale and sharing of

information and data is an under regulated field. The purpose of the article is to inform people

about some of the loopholes in privacy law and how they are being exploited by companies to

make money, many times at the detriment of the customers. The article is reliable. Neil Raden

cites the articles that he refers to, and many of them are from credible news organizations

(Raden).

The book “Big data and privacy” is written by M.M. Eboch for a younger audience or an

audience that is not as familiar with the current privacy conversation. M.M. Eboch consulted Dr.

Scott J. Shackelford, who is an assistant professor of business and law at the Kelley School of

Business. Dr. Shackelford’s inputs would be useful since many of the conversations about

privacy are happening in the courtroom and are typically against a business. The book introduces

many of the topics of concern in the world of big data that has been built on information

collection. The book also pays special attention to the Edward Snowden scandal, which many

consider to be a defining moment in the privacy world. They also reference another source that

will be used in the paper. The book also expands on the idea that big data is not all bad; it comes

down to how the data is used that determines if the data is good or bad. Some of the quick

examples they discuss are in banking industry, education, and how if used properly, data could

help in identifying unlawful discrimination. The book also reinforces the point that data that is

stripped of personally identifiable information can still be combined with other information to

reidentify who the data belongs to (Eboch).

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This article that will be used to demonstrate one of the examples of what happens when

information collection is abused and data is used for malicious purposes. The article walks

through the Cambridge Analytica incident and explains how a company collected millions of

Facebook profiles and then used them to make highly personalized political ads to target people.

It is difficult to determine just how big of a role that they played in the election, but information

like that would be hard to quantify. The article was written 3 years ago but that will not matter

much the article is being used to refer to an event and the article was accurate when it was

written (Cadwalladr and Graham-Harrison).

In the article by Heikkila, they mention how many of the conversations about privacy are

binary and typically represent privacy as good and surveillance as bad, which has limited the

conversation from making any meaningful progress. They argue the better conversation to have

is “examining what people do in and with their privacy” (Heikkila). They also mention the idea

of a privacy paradox, which is that everyone is concerned about their privacy, but there are very

few taking any meaningful steps to secure it. The article is published in an academic journal but

it is written at a level that the average reader can understand. The article is aimed at researchers

since the author is trying to explain a better way to talk about privacy and proposes five

categories of privacy that break the big concept of privacy down into smaller categories.

In the article by Dennis Anon, he covers information that the government would know

about you and how they would know it. Dennis brings up valid information like how the

government would know where you live and by which methods, they could obtain that

information (Anon). But it has to be said that he has a slant in his writing. The writing is factual,

but it is in favor of privacy. Due to the slant of the writer the use of citations will be minimal.
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But he will work well with the source like Heikkila and the PEW research source. He represents

the fact that people as a whole are concerned about their privacy and the PEW research will back

him up with hard numbers.

In the PEW research written by Brooke Auxier and others, they surveyed 4,272 U.S.

adults and overwhelmingly people are concerned about their privacy, “a majority of Americans

report being concerned about the way their data is being used by companies (79%) or the

government (64%)” (Auxier et al). This is a study that is the foundation of many of the privacy

advocates arguments. This study is cited in a few of the other sources that will be used in the

essay. While doing research many other articles would cite this specific research as well.

Heikkila will be a good source as the foundation for the conversation about the privacy paradox

which is mentioned in the Heikkila source. This article and study will work well with all my

other sources.

Data.gov will be used to address the counterpoint. Data.gov was started to provide people

with access to high-quality machine-readable datasets. These data sets are available in multiple

formats, and they are also validated data. (Data.gov). This data would be very expensive if

someone had to buy it. Data.gov will be a good counter point since it is the government putting

data to good use and it is also a way to fact check decisions made by governing bodies. That was

the intention of Data.gov when it was started.

The article by Lecher is as published in the Verge magazine. It is about how he hired a

bounty hunter at a surprisingly low price and had them track down one of his collogues who

agreed to help with the story. The bounty hunter was able to do this because of a loophole in the

cell service providers terms of use (Lecher). They were selling the location data. The Verge isn’t
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an academic source so it will be used a limited number of times and never as by itself to make a

point, but it will be used in combination with many other companies abuse of their user's privacy

to make a solid point.

The United States of Secrets is a documentary on the Snowden scandal. The documentary

will be the primary source for the topic of “The Program” which was a super secretive program

that collected millions of American’s information (Kirk). The Program is often cited as the single

most controversial event in American privacy. The Program the program was altered to reflect

the changing of the laws. Specifically, the changes to the USA PATRIOT Act. The source may

have a slight lean on it but the parts of the documentary that will be cited will be factual area.

Many of the sources agree the notion of privacy is all but dead. There is not much

information about a person that does not exist somewhere on the web. The common question is

what will be done with the little that is left of an individual’s privacy? Advocates agree that there

exists a privacy paradox like Heikkila stated in their article, but the reason why a privacy

paradox exists is debated.

The common misconception is that innocent people have nothing to hide, which at its

base is true, but the dangerous thing about that misconception was demonstrated by Cambridge

Analytica, when they interfered in a free and fair election. The data of one person isolated by

itself is not especially useful but when you combine the data from many sources you can use

trends to interpolate and extrapolate to get the information that they are seek. In the case of this

example, what was the most effective way to make you vote for a specific candidate. Some areas

for further research would include some of the positive things that have been made possible by

data sharing, and what are the things that a person can do to protect their privacy.
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Works Cited

Anon, Dennis. “Citizen Surveillance: What Does the US Government Know about You?”

Privacy.net, 4 July 2019, privacy.net/us-government-surveillance-spying-data-

collection/#:~:text=Some%20information%20is%20required%20for,trends%20and

%20make%20policy%20decisions. Accessed 25 Mar. 2021.

Auxier, Brooke, et al. “Americans and Privacy: Concerned, Confused and Feeling Lack of

Control Over Their Personal Information.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science &

Tech, Pew Research Center, 17 Aug. 2020,

www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/11/15/americans-and-privacy-concerned-confused-

and-feeling-lack-of-control-over-their-personal-information/. accessed on 4 March 2021

Cadwalladr, Carole, and Emma Graham-Harrrison. Revealed: “50 Million Facebook Profiles

Harvested for Cambridge Analytica in Major Data Breach.” The Guardian.com, 17 Mar.

2018, www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-

us-election. Accessed 24 Mar. 2021.

Data.gov. U.S. General Services Administration, Technology Transformation Service, 18 Sept.

2019, www.data.gov/open-gov/. Accessed 24 Mar. 2021

Eboch , M.M. Big Data and Privacy Rights. Ebook, Abdo Publishing, 2017. EBSCOhost eBook

Collection, https://web-a-ebscohost-com.sinclair.ohionet.org/ehost/detail/detail?

nobk=y&vid=4&sid=c009fdbb-8e64-44ce-aa81-bcc6130b3383@sdc-v-

sessmgr01&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ==#AN=1349204&db=nlebk. Accessed

15 Mar. 2021.
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Gale. “Privacy.” Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2020. Gale In Context:

Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/PC3010999063/OVIC?

u=dayt30401&sid=OVIC&xid=f66ca4b9. Accessed 4 Mar. 2021.

Heikkila, Heikki. " Beyond Moral Coupling: Analysing Politics of Privacy in the Era of

Surveillance." EBSCOhost, Vol. 8 issue 2S2, Cogitatio Press, 20 Apr 2020, https://eds-b-

ebscohost-com.sinclair.ohionet.org/eds/detail/detail?vid=5&sid=edcd46f0-5303-4a88-

a960-d1ae8aeb74e5%40sessionmgr101&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU

%3d#AN=edp3059344&db=edspub. Accesssed 15 Mar. 2021.

Lecher, Collin. “Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T pledge again to close data access after location-

tracking scandal.” The Verge, 10 January 2019,

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/10/18176898/sprint-t-mobile-att-phone-tracking-data.

Accessed 25 Mar. 2021

Raden, Neil. “Data Brokers and the Implications of Data Sharing - the Good, Bad and Ugly.”

Diginomica, Diginomica, 23 July 2019, diginomica.com/data-brokers-and-implications-

data-sharing-good-bad-and-ugly. Accessed 1 March 2021.

United States Of Secrets. Directed by Michael Kirk, Frontline, 2014. Frontline films,

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/united-states-of-secrets/. Accessed 4 March 2021.