Privacy: Human Beings Worldwide Value Their Privacy ✓ Solved

Privacy Human beings all over the world value their privacy and

Human beings all over the world value their privacy and they need to be protected within their personal sphere. It means that nobody wants to lose control over what is known about them. Nobody wants that the personal information and what they hold confidential be accessible to anybody at any time. However, the increasing number of high-tech companies has reduced the control people have over their personal data and hence opening up more room for negative consequences when it comes to access to personal data. Since the onset of technology, there is an increasing emphasis on the use of personal data especially when accessing the information from the high-tech companies' websites.

The processing of personal data has been put at the center of every activity. The rise of technology, however, has been countered by the emergence of data protection policies. These are the regulations put in place to ensure that the companies collecting personal information adhere to privacy standards. However, the big-tech companies have adopted more technological advances such as big data and deep learning, which increases the storage and processing of more data. The cases of Cambridge Analytica have all demonstrated the negative impacts that these big-tech companies can cause when it relates to privacy.

These organizations are capable of collecting, storing, and searching large quantities of data. The main reason why these institutions are concerned about personal data is that they use it to analyze markets and reach out to potential customers. Therefore, every big tech company using a personal data-centered business model, such as Amazon and Apple Inc., has been described as a business in surveillance capitalism. Although these businesses pursue their own interests, the value of privacy has become a great controversy. This is due to the increasing power of new technologies and the conflicting clarity of privacy agreements in terms of law, policy, morals, and ethics.

This paper seeks to explore the relationship between high-tech companies and the threats to privacy experienced in the world today.

Overview

The debate about privacy evolves continuously as big-tech companies come up with new methods and measures of acquiring personal data. The issues surrounding search engines, wearable sensors, social media, and big data all center on acquiring and managing information for the benefit of organizations. People react in two ways to the rising developments of technology by these tech companies. First, some believe that the digital age has left no room for privacy and that there is no way to protect it. The second group believes that privacy is paramount and must be protected by all means.

There are different accounts of the nature of privacy in a human being's life. The reductionists state that privacy is concerned with aspects that people value from a moral perspective. Thus, it is possible to reduce privacy from a highly moral perspective to other sources of value. As such, people have a right to liberty and dignity, and the information they provide should not undermine their privacy values.

On the other hand, the non-reductionist view holds that privacy is valuable in and of itself, meaning it cannot be derived from other considerations. This perspective views privacy and personal spheres as human rights. High-tech companies have increasingly developed means of acquiring personal information from their customers, which can be linked to individual persons. Such information includes the date of birth, sexual preference, religion, current location, and credit card information.

The greatest threat to privacy is that with increased incidents of cyber insecurity, such information can fall into the wrong hands. The exposure of data online, as seen in the First American Bank database incident, exemplifies how these big-tech companies can compromise people's privacy, whether willingly or unwillingly.

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this research is to explore how the technological adoption by big-tech companies is influencing the processing of personal and private information. The gathering, storage, and distribution of information within these companies in various formats increase the chances of privacy breaches. For instance, Facebook holds personal information of all its users, making it effective in enhancing political mileage for politicians. By using one person's information and their contacts, one can reach a multitude of people. However, this occurs because individuals consent to the privacy terms, often without realizing the full implications of their agreement.

Today, maintaining any form of privacy has become nearly impossible, especially as these companies maximize avenues to acquire data and manage large datasets. Private communications are increasingly difficult to secure, given the potential for information retrieval. The privacy of personal information appears to be waning in this era, with rising incidences of government hacking, cybercrime, and voluntary releases of customer information.

Background Information

The issue of privacy regarding companies like Google, Amazon, Apple Inc., and Facebook began to rise significantly after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where information belonging to over 87 million Facebook users was obtained by a political data analytics company without user consent. Transparency issues, such as those concerning Apple’s supply chain, have also led to increased scrutiny of big-tech companies.

The main concern is that these companies leverage personal data for profitability and competitive advantage, converting data into revenue based on its volume. Although privacy concerns had not been paramount in the past, data breaches have increasingly highlighted the importance of safeguarding personal information.

Discussion

Big-tech companies have been criticized for contributing to the erosion of privacy worldwide. Advances in technology have enabled these companies to develop new techniques for acquiring information from consumers without prior consultation. The existing rules and regulations governing information privacy, which delineate the relationship between data collection, dissemination, and public expectations of privacy, are frequently violated. Consequently, big-tech companies use this information for marketing and competitive analysis, often at the expense of users' privacy rights.

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