The Effect of Technology on Privacy

Developments in science and technology continue to provide individuals, governments, and private industry with new ways to invade the privacy of others. In particular, the ability of computers to record, process, and communicate personal data has increased exponentially during the latter decades of the twentieth century.

This increase in computing power has been used by governments, companies, and individuals to process an increasing quantity of personally identifiable data. Globalization has driven the desire to distribute personal information to different parts of the world and has encouraged the development of standards such as the Internet Protocol suite and XML, enabling an efficient exchange of digital information on a global scale.

The widespread use of the personal computer and the Internet has provided a variety of both legitimate and malicous reasons for individuals to process personal data. Social networking websites allow people to search for user profiles matching certain criteria. Similarly, querying a Web search engine for an individual’s name reveals a wealth of information about the person, including archived posts on mailing lists and newsgroups, personal home pages, business web pages, and telephone numbers.

Often this information is intentionally published by, or on behalf of, the individual, but this copious amount of information can be easily misused. More serious invasions of privacy are possible when personal computers are connected to the Internet and contain sensitive personal data, for example, financial records and medical information.

Many computers today are relatively insecure and are easy prey for malicious code in the form of viruses, trojans, and worms. Once compromised, a computer falls under the complete control of an attacker who may freely access any private data stored there.

The quantity and quality of personal information available on the Internet can be sufficient for a malicious person to perform identity theft, allowing them to impersonate a victim for illicit financial gain. Cyberstalkers use information available online to harrass their victims, sometimes with violent consequences.

Anti-abortion activists have created websites detailing the home addresses of abortion doctors and photos of women who receive an abortion; these details have then been used by violent extremists, sometimes resulting in murder.

Governments process personal data for a variety of different purposes. Census data are collected from citizens in many countries to enable strategic planning of state and private sector services. Financial data such as bank account transactions are examined in the fight against organized crime, and biological data such as photographs, fingerprints, iris scans, and DNA profiles can be collected for both research and forensic analysis purposes.

Traditionally, different government departments, like separate companies, have kept separate databases, but in some cases, disparate systems are in the process of, or have already been merged, enabling far more in-depth citizen profiling.

Companies compile personal information about customers to process orders, determine effective marketing strategies, and direct advertisements toward individuals who are likely to be receptive to them. Targetted advertisements are often used to increase consumer loyalty by providing discount points, tokens, or coupons on products of interest to a specific individual.

In economics, the act of charging different prices to different customers is known as price discrimination and is common practice in many markets worldwide. There are several different mechanisms by which sellers can perform price discrimination, including individual bartering, schemes of quantity discounts, and market segmentation. Sellers who have collected detailed personal information on buyers can employ a fourth mechanism. They can compute directly how much a user can pay for a product.

In markets with large up-front costs and low production costs, sellers can sacrifice the privacy of buyers to good effect, maximizing their profits without having to unnecessarily inconvenience anyone. For example, sellers no longer need to employ market segmentation to force poorer buyers to purchase third-class tickets; instead everyone can get the same high-quality service but for different prices: a potential social benefit. Societies have yet to decide whether this represents a reasonable invasion of privacy or something requiring government regulation.

Small and mobile computational devices are becoming increasingly popular. The GSM Association estimated that in early 2004, more than one billion people—one sixth of the world’s population—had a GSM mobile phone.

As devices like these continue to proliferate, the volume of personal information processed by computers will continue to increase, not just because there are more devices, but because these devices increasingly need to collect more personal information to function effectively (see ubiquitous computing). As a consequence, providing privacy in the twenty-first century will become increasingly difficult and important.