E-Mail Surveillance, Tapping Telephones & More Interesting Facts Regarding Privacy

Privacy, in today’s society, is becoming an issue to the general public and to the world itself. There are laws throughout the world regarding personal privacy. Some of them relate to cyberspace, some relate to personal information. Then again, with the “free for all” that the worldwide web offers, it is practically infeasible to keep our personal details private.

In 1974 the US Governement passed a FTC Privacy Act System. This goes for all Federal files on individual American citizens. At that time it was written that an individual had to be given access to any information that was required to be disclosed to them and they were asssured that the records were secured.

It was on October 26, 2001 that President George W. Bush placed his signature on the US Patriot Act, and this made it possible for there to be unauthorized search and seizures for web documents, phones, medical files and other documents. In 2002, the World Wide Web was secured by the passing of the e-Government Act. This act was to outline strong privacy policies and practices that were to secure maximize privacy and security.

Within the context of the US Patriot Act, an individual had no say when it came to their e-mail messages were being logged, their phone being tapped, their bank account examined, their house searched and other similar actions by the government.

This Act was to expire in December of 2005 but was re-examined and signed into Law in March 2006, ignoring many of the common Civil Liberty Laws that Americans had taken for granted over the years. Although courts of law have found several of these things unconstitutional, they are still continuing today.

The Internet allows people to find information on others that includes their address, occupation, telephone number, and other personal information. Some sites are even being created to allow people to get easier access to people’s information, like through reverse lookup sites like fast-lookup.com/Wisconsin/Gilman/715/447.

Social Security Numbers, which were considered to be very private at one point, have increasingly accumulated a greater risk of being abused over time since nearly all documents require them. With there being such an incredible loss of company files, information like this has increasingly become more and more accessible to the public.

Today’s identity theft has become more and more common due to the above, open availablity of private records. It is not hard to find and access information like credit records. The only thing it takes is one dishonest individual at the office to seize documents, or an inadequately shed document, to wreck a perfectly innocent individual’s life.