Conflict and Ethical Issues - Essay Example

Conflict and Ethical Issues The article 'The anxious new dawn of cybersnooping' by By Nancy Libin brings up the conflicting situation of government'sright Vs citizen's right. Government has been buying the data on the pretext of securing the lives of its citizens. This trend increased particularly after incidents like 9/11. Government agencies require the databank about certain community, certain city, certain age-group once they get some intelligence input. After getting an intelligence lead the agency starts hunting for more information.

At this crucial moment do we expect that the agency will come out with public pronouncements detailing the kind of intelligence input the agency has got, and the kind of information the agency requires to further pursue the matter Things are done in a hush-hush manner, so that the conspiring parties don't realize that their plans are being sniffed. The federal agency approaches banks, telecom agencies etc. to go to the bottom of the plans. And thus the process of further investigation begins.

Now there's one very crucial issue which gets overlooked in this episode. The conspiring guys could be just a small group of people and the federal agency ends up with huge personal data of thousands/ millions. For the sake of argument we can even think that at the leisure time federal agency people would start monitoring the intimate bedtime telephonic conversation/ net-chatting between two renowned Hollywood actors/ actresses or two well known republicans/ congressmen. This conversation could then be recorded and next morning the tabloids would be full of hot stories.

Well, the federal agency would never come out with assurances that they won't allow this to happen and maintain the privacy of all such 'monitored' people, for the simple reason that they will never admit of having any such data. Does that mean the law enforcing agencies are squarely being cruel and illegal in their activities Nancy argues that if we study the Privacy Act of 1974 which requires the government to 'abide by explicit privacy standards when it collects personal information from citizens and creates its own databases of personal information', then it is quite apparent that the law enforcing agencies are indeed exploiting the loopholes.

This amounts to an unethical intrusion in the private lives. The action appears more unethical and unpardonable for the simple reason that the 'Government' appears to be the 'law breaker'. The law itself has been made in 1974 with an eye on the security situation prevalent (and some amount of foresightedness) at that time. Who would have thought at that time that two commercial flights full of passengers will be deliberately crashed on the twin towers Indeed the security scenario in 1974 and in 2006 is entirely different.

But then it becomes the duty of the government to revise the law as per the times. It's been more than 32 yrs and the privacy aspect is still being overlooked by the government. Nancy Libin has very rightly pointed out that the existing law - written before the rise of private data brokers - does not provide the same privacy protections when government agencies purchase personal data from private companies that collect, aggregate and sell personal information. As of now, foolproof mechanisms like 'data breach mechanisms' are being discussed and debated to fill some of the loopholes.

In this digital age when storing and transferring of data has become very easy and convenient, appropriate data protection mechanism has to be in place to discourage the data-cheats from creating havoc. Recent media stories about some call-centre guys having sold details of millions of credit card users of some companies must prove to be an eye opener for bridging the information legislation gaps. Government can take help from willing IT companies like Microsoft, eBay etc. for enacting a broad-based consumer privacy legislation, which will go a long way in honoring the internationally accepted Fair Information Practices toward protecting the privacy of its law abiding citizen.