privacy
The right of the individual to be free from secret surveillance (by scientific devices or other means) and from the disclosure to unauthorized persons of personal data, as accumulated in computer data banks. Always an issue complicated by considerations of state security, public welfare (in the case of criminal activity), and other factors, it has been rendered more complex by present-day technology.
Computer data
All Western countries now have computerized-data protection. In the USA the Privacy Act 1974 requires that there should be no secret data banks and that agencies handling data must ensure their reliability and prevent misuse (information gained for one purpose must not be used for another). The public must be able to find out what is recorded and how it is used, and be able to correct it. Under the Freedom of Information Act 1967, citizens and organizations have the right to examine unclassified files.
| In the USA, many states have laws of privacy to protect citizens from unlawful intrusion by others, especially the news media. There is a working rule that private information is made public only concerning those who have entered public life, such as politicians, entertainers, and athletes. |
privacy
| On the Internet, generally used to mean the right to control who has access to the personal information generated by interaction with computers. |
| The right to privacy is one of the most hotly-debated issues on the Internet, as commercial suppliers seek to gather more and more information about their customers. The most common approaches to securing the right to privacy are technological, via encryption (coding), and legislative, via laws such as Britain's Data Protection Act. A third approach is to use services such as anonymous remailers to strip identifying information from individual messages when posting contentious or sensitive material. |
| More Web sites are now creating privacy documents, a statement which explains to people how the Web site owner will use any information collected in the course of the visit. This is of particular concern when online shopping, where personal and financial information is likely to be entered using Web forms. This statement may be backed up by registration with a third-party trust organization, which checks the statement and issues a certificate saying that it conforms to basic rules. If the Web site is found to be breaking its own privacy rules the trust certificate can be withdrawn. |
