User:GoBears243/Privacy

Link to original article on privacy (I have edited and added information to the the history of privacy, particularly its subsections: technology, police and government, and legal discussions on privacy and have added the appropriate citations).

History

Technology

Further information: § Techniques to improve privacy, and Privacy-enhancing technologies

As technology has advanced, the way in which privacy is protected and violated has changed with it. In the case of some technologies, such as the printing press or the Internet, the increased ability to share information can lead to new ways in which privacy can be breached. It is generally agreed that the first publication advocating privacy in the United States was the 1890 article by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, "The Right to Privacy", and that it was written mainly in response to the increase in newspapers and photographs made possible by printing technologies.

In 1948, 1984, written by George Orwell, was published. A classic dystopian novel, 1984 describes the life of a Winston Smith in 1984, located in Oceania, a totalitarian state. The all-controlling Party, the party in power led by Big Brother, is able to control power through mass surveillance and limited freedom of speech and thought. George Orwell provides commentary on the negative effects of totalitarianism, particularly on privacy and censorship. Parallels have been drawn between 1984 and modern censorship and privacy, a notable example being that large social media companies, rather than the government, are able to monitor a user's data and decide what is allowed to be said online through their censorship policies, ultimately for monetary purposes.

In the 1960s, people began to consider how changes in technology were bringing changes in the concept of privacy. Vance Packard’s The Naked Society was a popular book on privacy from that era and led US discourse on privacy at that time. In addition, Alan Westin's Privacy and Freedom shifted the debate regarding privacy from a physical sense, how the government controls a person's body (i.e. Roe v. Wade) and other activities such as wiretapping and photography. As important records became digitized, Westin argued that personal data was becoming too accessible and that a person should have complete jurisdiction over his or her data, laying the foundation for the modern discussion of privacy.

New technologies can also create new ways to gather private information. For example, in the United States it was thought that heat sensors intended to be used to find marijuana-growing operations would be acceptable. Contrary to popular opinion, in 2001 in Kyllo v. United States (533 U.S. 27) it was decided that the use of thermal imaging devices that can reveal previously unknown information without a warrant does indeed constitute a violation of privacy. In 2019, after developing a corporate rivalry in competing voice-recognition software, Apple and Amazon required employees to listen to intimate moments and faithfully transcribe the contents.

Police and government

Further information: Police, Police body camera, and PRISM (surveillance program)

See also: The Wire

Police and citizens often conflict on what degree the police can intrude a citizen's digital privacy. For instance, in 2001, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in United States v. Jones (2001), in the case of Antoine Jones who was arrested of drug possession using a GPS tracker on his tracker that was placed without a warrant, that warrantless tracking infringes the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court also justified that there is some "reasonable expectation of privacy" in transportation (reasonable expectation of privacy had already been established under Griswold vs. Connecticut). The Supreme Court also further clarified that the Fourth Amendment did not only pertain to physical instances of intrusion but also digital instances, and thus United States v. Jones became a landmark case.

In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Riley v. California, where David Leon Riley was arrested after he was pulled over for driving on expired license tags when the police searched his phone and discovered that he was tied to a shooting, that searching a citizen's phone without a warrant was an unreasonable search, a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court concluded that the cell phones contained personal informations different than trivial items, and went beyond to state that information stored on the cloud was not necessarily a form of evidence. Riley v. California evidently became a landmark case, protecting the digital protection of citizen's privacy when confronted with the police.

A recent notable occurrence of the conflict between law enforcement and a citizen in terms of digital privacy has been in the 2018 case, Carpenter v. United States. In this case, the FBI used cell phone records without a warrant to arrest Timothy Ivory Carpenter on multiple charges, and the Supreme Court ruled that the warrantless search of cell phone records violated the Fourth Amendment, citing that the Fourth Amendment protects "reasonable expectations of privacy" and that information sent to third parties still falls under data that can be included under "reasonable expectations of privacy".

Beyond law enforcement, many interactions between the government and citizens have been revealed either lawfully or unlawfully, specifically through whistleblowers. One notable example is Edward Snowden, who released multiple operations related to the mass surveillance operations of the National Security Agency (NSA), where it was discovered that the NSA continues to breach the security of millions of people, mainly through mass surveillance programs whether it was collecting great amounts of data through third party private companies, hacking into other embassies or frameworks of international countries, and various breaches of data, which prompted a culture shock and stirred debate related to digital privacy.

Legal discussions of Internet privacy

Main article: Activism for Internet privacy

Further information: § Police and Government, § Legal right to privacy, and § Ethical Controversies Over Location Privacy

In 1914, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was established, under the Federal Trade Commission Act, whose goal was to promote competition amongst businesses and prohibit unfair and misleading businesses. Since the 1970s, the FTC has become involved in privacy law and enforcement, the first instance being the FTC's implementation and enforcement of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which regulates how credit card bureaus can use a client's data and grants consumer's further credit card rights. . In addition to the FCRA, the FTC has implemented various other important acts that protect consumer privacy. For example, the FCRA passed the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998, which regulates services geared towards children under the age of thirteen, and the Red Flags Rule, passed in 2010, which warrants that companies have measures to protect clients against identity theft, and if clients become victims of identity theft, that there are steps to alleviate the consequences of identity theft.

In 2018, the European Union (EU)'s the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect, a privacy legislation which replaced the Data Protection Directive of 1995. The GDPR requires how consumers within the EU must have complete and concise knowledge about how companies use their data and have the right to gain, correct, and delete data that a companies stores regarding them, enforcing stricter privacy legislations compared to the Data Protection Directive of 1995.

Online harassment

Main article: Online harassment

See also: Doxxing

After the 1999 Columbine Shooting, where violent video games and music were thought to be one of the main influences on the killers, some states began to pass anti-bullying laws where some included cyber-bullying laws. The suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier, where Meier was harassed on Myspace, prompted Missouri to pass anti-harassment laws though the perpetrators were later declared innocent. Through the rise of smartphones and rise in popularity with social media such as Facebook and Instagram, messaging, online forums, gaming communities, and email, online harassment continued to grow. 18-year-old Jessica Logan committed suicide in 2009 after her boyfriend sent explicit photos of her to various teenagers in various different high schoolers, where she was then harassed through Myspace, which led to her school passing anti-harrassment laws. Another notable occurrence where digital privacy was invaded include the death of Tyler Clementi and Amanda Todd, whose death instigated Canadian funding towards studies on bullying and legislation regarding cyber-bullying to be passed, but problems regarding the lack of protection for users were risen, by Todd's mother herself, since this bill allowed for companies to completely access a user's data.

All states have now passed laws regarding online harassment. 15% of adolescents aged 12-18 have been subject to cyberbullying, according to a 2017 report conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics and Bureau of Justice. Within the past year, 15.7% of high schoolers were subject to cyberbullying according to the CDC's 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System.