Right to privacy and circumstances leading to limitation to privacy

Right to privacy and circumstances leading to limitation to privacy

As human beings, we all enjoy the right to privacy which is a basic human right which is recognized by United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and other international and national treaties. In the modern age, the right to privacy has become one of the most significant human rights. Over the last ten years, many countries around the world have adopted comprehensive laws to protect the right to privacy as well as laws that protect data. The reason for the adoption of these laws is to correct past injustices, to promote electronic commerce and to ensure that local or state laws are consistent with Pan-European laws.

There are several threats to the right privacy and these include advancements in information communication technology, globalization, and multimedia technologies which enables rapid transfer of information from one form to another. Privacy is one of the most difficult rights to define, but basically privacy can be described as having three facets which are, information privacy, bodily privacy, privacy communication and territorial privacy.

According to an experiment on anonymity carried out by Catherine Price in 2008 the modern world is highly computerized and thus quite vulnerable to invasion of privacy. The experiment involved a simple collection of the author’s data through looking at background checks, online transactions, and credit card, telephone bills, along with a list of friends he emailed regularly and the websites visited. By putting together all this information the author was surprisingly able to learn quite a lot about himself even details that he considered private. As demonstrated by this experiment private information is easily acquired through relatively secure sources such as records of our daily activities that are easily available online through the online footprints that we leave as we doing routine tasks (Price, “Experiment on anonymity”).

A report by Wendy Kaminer which describes how after the terrorist attack in September 2011 the federal government devised measures to counter terrorism some of which are mildly intrusive and the power by the government to investigate potential threats was not balanced with civil liberties. According to this report issues like electronic surveillance, civil liberties and privacy rights were basically and irreversibly changed in the eyes of the government (Kaminer, “Trading Liberty for Illusion”).

Described in an article found in The Economist titled “If looks could kill” is how surveillance systems are nowadays used to decipher the behavior and intentions of suspicious characters in the public through observing their motions and actions. Such systems use traits such human gait and can be used to look on to a target in the middle of the crowd and then focus on specific parts of their body such as knees and elbows to see if the person is carrying any suspicious materials such as explosives. Currently, such technologies are still in their testing phase and so far there is raging public debate of whether such measures constitute an invasion of privacy.

The law does provide for privacy of individual but there are limitations to that right. This is especially so in matters which are linked to public security. After the attack on the world trade center, the strict counter terrorism measures put in place for the purpose of security was a major setback to the right of privacy. Private data found in servers both in the public and private sector is regularly inspected by federal agents even without court warrants or other necessary authorization. The public, the government, and all stake holders should strive to strike a balance the need to secure the public and the right to privacy in order to create a proper atmosphere to nature this basic human right.

Works Cited

Price, Catherine. “FUTURE TECH: PRIVACY-THE ANONYMITY EXPERIMENT-Trying to live a private life in the information age, our writer encrypts e-mail and uses a prepaid cellphone. But threats lurk everywhere, from Google searches to yoga studios.” Popular Science 272.3 (2008): 60.

Kaminer, Wendy. “Trading Liberty for Illusions.” (2002).