Threats : To Personal Privacy
Posted by Harisinh | Posted in | Posted on 1:29 AM
-
The accumulation of vast amounts of electronic information about individuals by governments, credit bureaus, and private companies, combined with the ability of computers to monitor, process, and aggregate large amounts of information about individuals have created a threat to individual privacy. The possibility that all of this information and technology may be able to be linked together has arisen as a specter of the modern information age.
This is often referred to as "Big Brother." To guard against such intrusion, Congress has enacted legislation, over the years, such as the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988, which defines the boundaries of the legitimate uses of personal information collected by the government. The threat to personal privacy arises from many sources.
In several cases federal and state employees have sold personal information to private investigators or other "information brokers." One such case was uncovered in 1992 when the Justice Department announced the arrest of over two dozen individuals engaged in buying and selling information from Social Security Administration (SSA) computer files.
During the investigation, auditors learned that SSA 42 employees had unrestricted access to over 130 million employment records. Another investigation found that 5 percent of the employees in one region of the IRS had browsed through tax records of friends, relatives, and celebrities. Some of the employees used the nformation to 43 create fraudulent tax refunds, but many were acting simply out of curiosity. As more of these cases come to light, many individuals are becoming increasingly concerned about threats to their personal privacy.
A July 1993 special report in MacWorld cited polling data taken by Louis Harris and Associates showing that in 1970 only 33 percent of respondents were.
Enjoy.....
The accumulation of vast amounts of electronic information about individuals by governments, credit bureaus, and private companies, combined with the ability of computers to monitor, process, and aggregate large amounts of information about individuals have created a threat to individual privacy. The possibility that all of this information and technology may be able to be linked together has arisen as a specter of the modern information age.
This is often referred to as "Big Brother." To guard against such intrusion, Congress has enacted legislation, over the years, such as the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988, which defines the boundaries of the legitimate uses of personal information collected by the government. The threat to personal privacy arises from many sources.
In several cases federal and state employees have sold personal information to private investigators or other "information brokers." One such case was uncovered in 1992 when the Justice Department announced the arrest of over two dozen individuals engaged in buying and selling information from Social Security Administration (SSA) computer files.
During the investigation, auditors learned that SSA 42 employees had unrestricted access to over 130 million employment records. Another investigation found that 5 percent of the employees in one region of the IRS had browsed through tax records of friends, relatives, and celebrities. Some of the employees used the nformation to 43 create fraudulent tax refunds, but many were acting simply out of curiosity. As more of these cases come to light, many individuals are becoming increasingly concerned about threats to their personal privacy.
A July 1993 special report in MacWorld cited polling data taken by Louis Harris and Associates showing that in 1970 only 33 percent of respondents were.
Enjoy.....
Comments (0)
Post a Comment