Privacy Concerns with New Technologies

Privacy concerns with new technologies

The world today is altogether different from the world we had in the previous decades. This is due to the emergence of new technologies. New technology has changed essentially how everything operates. Technology has impacted the human life both positively and negatively. As with the perceptions surrounding most of these new technologies, some of the concerns are well-grounded while some are based on basic misconceptions of the technology's operation. Others are totally unrelated to the technology. With the advance in technology, privacy concerns have also been on the rise. The use of biometric and drone technology has often been associated with privacy concerns, in such a way that it is not possible to talk about biometrics and drones without having to address the negative perceptions surrounding its usage.

sBiometric technology has been seen to infringe both on personal and informational privacy. Technology is meant to make our lives easier, but even with its advance; there is a fear that these new forms of biometrics can be a privacy invasion when used for the wrong reasons or by somebody with the wrong intentions. Inventions such as the internet and smart phones are forms of biometrics which store information on us and when used for the wrong reasons can cause a large invasion of personal privacy (Albrechtslund 6). Use of biometrics can risk the problem of data creep, whereby information given in free will to one recipient for a sole purpose may be transferred, without authorization, to another recipient, linked with other information or data and applied to a new purpose.

Invasion of informational privacy can be well explained through use of social media as an example. A common example would be the use of facebook. Facebook is a social network most people use for keeping in touch with family and friends. People who are its members willingly feed this site their personal images and personal information, which more than likely they would not want to share with just everyone or even have strangers get a hold of. However, almost everyone can have access to this information. The information posted there can also be linked into Google and other public sites on the Internet. A malicious person with evil intentions can get your personal information through the use of facebook, and in turn use that same information to violate your privacy in one way or the other. Even with people giving information to facebook for solely different reasons and purposes, other people might be using it for totally different intentions. Not so long ago, according to the New York Times, Google was fined one hundred thousand Euros for violating privacy laws through a program called latitude. Lattitude is a mobile application for smart phones which lets people broadcast the location they and their friends are in at the moment and have it show on a detailed map. The danger of this application,