Expecting+Privacy+in+the+Digital+Age


 * ** EL7007-8 ** ||  ||
 * ** Ethical and Legal Issues in an Online Course ** || ** 6 Expecting Privacy in the Digital Age ** ||
 * Hi Steve, **
 * Truly impressive work! I really liked the way that you presented this. Well thought out and presented with outstanding flow. Flawless APA formatting. What else can I say.....truly impressive! Thank you for your effort. **
 * Truly impressive work! I really liked the way that you presented this. Well thought out and presented with outstanding flow. Flawless APA formatting. What else can I say.....truly impressive! Thank you for your effort. **

=**Expecting Privacy in the Digital Age**= In the United States certain expectations of privacy exist for most citizens. For the most part, each person is entitled to privacy if they are not in a public setting and if they are not participating in an action that could impinge upon another person or group. These expectations, however, can change when technology is introduced. Since the Internet is part of the worldwide web, an argument could be made that when you enter, you are no longer in a private setting regardless of your physical location or setting. Laws in the United States protect and espouse the expectation of privacy unless there is a countervailing rationale to justify encroaching upon it. These laws enforce a privacy balance that weighs the needs of the many against the rights of the one. [Outstanding intro]

Balancing Privacy
In the United States, privacy is a basic human right afforded by the U.S. Constitution and many other laws ( Lim, Cho, & Sanchez, 2009 ). From the public’s perspective, however, it is almost universally believed that people have less privacy than they used to and this is a bad thing ( Langenderfer & Miyazaki, 2009 ). Belanger and Crossler (2011) reported that 17 of 20 adults believe controlling access to personal and private information is very important. Sometimes the need to protect, maintain order, or ensure the safety of many outweighs the privacy expectations of individuals ( Burgunder, 2011 ). The law will generally uphold an intrusion into privacy for these reasons as long as the encroachment is neither unreasonable nor highly offensive ( Burgunder, 2011 ). Unreasonable intrusions into individual online privacy are normally of three forms; privacy invasion, improper use of information, or improper acquisition of information ( Lim et al., 2009 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">[Impressive APA and content]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Privacy and Technology
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Technology provides any number of convenient ways to gather information about individuals that may be considered private. Technological privacy used to be primarily concerned with keeping intruders from accessing computers or systems, but is now primarily focused on controlling personal information ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Langenderfer & Miyazaki, 2009 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). Privacy considerations in organizations deal with two factors: How is personal information used or reused, and is permission gained from the people that the information is about ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Culnan & Carlin, 2009; Tang, Hu, & Smith, 2008 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">)? According to Belanger and Crossler (2011) information privacy is “ <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">the interest an individual has in controlling, or at least significantly influencing, the handling of data about themselves <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">” ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">p. 1018 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). Information privacy consists in the right to privacy in personal communication and to data privacy and comprises four dimensions; “ <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">collection, unauthorized secondary use, improper access, and errors <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">” ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Belanger & Crossler, 2011, p. 1018 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). Burgunder (2011) mentioned several technologies that might be used to or considered an invasion of privacy including; biometic scanning, radio frequency identification, global positioning system, cell phones, MySpace, Facebook,* and Google Street View. Along these lines, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires parental consent before collecting personal information from children under 13 and applies certain restrictions on the data that is collected ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Burgunder, 2011 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). Some claim, however, that COPPA is outdated in that it does not address privacy concerns with regards to social media or smart phones ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">FTC to Update, 2012 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">) and lacks meaningful enforcement standards ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Langenderfer & Miyazaki, 2009 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Although the U.S. government has legislated laws regarding the privacy of data in the educational, health, and credit data fields ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Tang et al., 2008 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">) it has “ <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">adopted, in the main, a hands-off approach with respect to private data collection and exchange,. . . [making it] increasingly incumbent upon individuals to take an active role in the ways they safeguard their own personal information <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">” ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Langenderfer & Miyazaki, 2009, p. 383 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). Combine these findings with the fact that 85% of business organizations or institutions of higher learning experienced “ <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">some sort of reportable privacy breach during the previous year, [with] 63 percent report[ing] multiple breaches <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">” ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Belanger & Crossler, 2009, p. 1018 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">), and it is apparent that improvements need to be made. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Fair information practices (FIP) have been established to “ <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">provide individuals with control over the disclosure and subsequent use of their personal information, and describes organizational obligations for data protection <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">” ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Culnan & Carlin, 2009, p. 127 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). FIP are used as the basis for regulatory programs in many organizations, and for privacy laws. FIP in the United States have five elements. Individuals have the right to know what data is collected about them and how it will be used, called notice. Individuals have the right to object or opt out of reuse of their personal information in ways that are different from the reason it was originally collected, called choice. Individuals should be provided the ability to see the information collected about them and be able to correct any errors, called access. Organizations that maintain data stores have the obligation to provide security, ensuring both data integrity and protection from unauthorized access. Finally, FIP identifies that policies should be in place to ensure that these principles are complied with, called accountability* ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Culnan & Carlin, 2009; Tang et al., 2008 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). The ability for organizations to send clear and unambiguous messages regarding their policies and intentions of protecting privacy engenders and enhances trust ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Tang et al., 2008 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Privacy in the Classroom
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">The privacy issues in higher education are very similar to most commercial establishments in a number of ways. Educational institutions often engage in commercial activities in the form of relationship marketing, accepting of donations, selling of school paraphernalia, textbooks, and athletic tickets; which if not effectively managed pose privacy risks ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Culnan & Carlin, 2009 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). Also, like commercial establishments, decentralizing computer environments between departments pose a larger privacy risk without a centralized security protocol and strategy. A potential breach of security is the large online stores of sensitive personal information regarding educational institutions students, faculty, and staff ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Culnan & Carlin, 2009 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Culnan and Carlin (2009) conducted a study in which they compared the security policies “ <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">of the top 236 schools from the US News and World Report 2004 list of best colleges <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">” ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">p. 127, emphasis in original <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">) with FIP. The authors found that “ <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">higher education lags the private sector in addressing privacy issues <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">” ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Culnan & Carlin, 2009, p. 128 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). Privacy notices regarding FIP should be consistent, and should be attached to every page of an organizations web site that collects data ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Culnan & Carlin, 2009 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). From this study, the authors identified six key elements for managing privacy; (a) assign responsibility, (b) develop a privacy policy, (c) determine the laws and regulations that apply, (d) review access of individuals and organizations and make sure that they comply with policy, (e) ensure staff, faculty, and students receive appropriate privacy training, and (f) consistently audit to ensure compliance with privacy laws, regulations, and policies ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Culnan & Carlin, 2009 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Privacy in an educational setting also requires a balance. The educational institution has its own vested interests to protect, but must also protect the interests and rights of its students, faculty, and staff.* In the left column of Table 1 are listed the resources and obligations of each educational institution in protecting itself and the student body from harm. The right column of Table 1 alternately identifies actions and obligations that the institution has to ensure that encroachment into the privacy of each individual student does not exceed what is absolutely necessary. //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Table 1* // //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Relevant Considerations for Privacy in the Classroom //
 * ~ <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">Educational Institution Purposes ||~ <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">Reasonable Expectations for Privacy ||
 * * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">To protect institutional assets and resources
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">To ensure that institutional assets are used for appropriate purposes
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">To reduce exposure to sexual harassment claims
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">To reduce exposure to defamation claims
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">To reduce exposure to harmful consequences to the institution
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">To confirm reasonable suspicion of harmful activity
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">To help create trust || * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;"> The circumstance of the intrusion
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">The degree of the intrusion
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Existence of an acceptable use policy
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Notice of monitoring on all institution pages
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Notice of privacy on all institution pages where personal information is collected
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Consent acquisition on registration or hire
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Procedures to minimize privacy intrusions
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Procedures to confirm results
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Procedures regarding consequences for harmful activities
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Procedures to guard private information ||

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Professional Opinion
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">In a classroom setting it is expected that certain amounts of privacy will be maintained and sacrosanct. While the class is a public setting, and the expectations of privacy are diminished from those one might expect at home, there are some expectations. For example, each student would have the expectation that topics discussed in the class are germane to the topic of the class and would not pry into irrelevant details about the student’s life. Students may have the expectation that papers, tests, and grades will be kept private, or presented in a way that has no easily identifiable information. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">I have not experienced a situation online in which my personal information was compromised. <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">[You shouldn't!] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;"> I fall into a category of users that are less concerned about their online privacy. Research demonstrates that males who are technically savvy are less concerned than are female users, or those who are less technically competent ( <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;">Belanger & Crossler, 2011; Lim et al., 2009 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">). Because of this competence and information gleaned from news articles and technical journals, I am more likely to recognize the security ramifications of a presentation, and judge my willingness to divulge information based on those considerations. =<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Conclusion = <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Privacy in the digital age is most concerned with the control of personal information. Personal information on the Internet is not governed by any overarching organization or set of laws. While some laws apply to certain arenas of information, many instances of personal information are not covered by law. Honest organizations that rely on the trust and faith of consumers to purchase their products, generally subscribe to self-regulation and FIP because it is in their best interests. Institutions of higher learning, however, have not been so circumspect in their implementation of procedures to protect the personal information of their students, their faculty, or their staff. <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">[Most impressive work Steve!]

[K1] Big time these days. [K2] Most definitely [K3] Perfect inclusion [K4] Excellent table


 * = References ||
 * * Bélanger, F., & Crossler, R. E. (2011). Privacy in the digital age: A review of information privacy research in information systems. //MIS Quarterly//, //35//(4), 1017-A36. Retrieved from http://www.misq.org/
 * Burgunder, L. B. (2011). //Legal aspects of managing technology// (5th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
 * Culnan, M. J., & Carlin, T. J. (2009). Online privacy practices in higher education: Making the grade? //Communications of the ACM, 52//(3), 126-130. doi:10.1145/1467247.1467277
 * FTC to Update. (2012). FTC to update children’s online privacy. //Information Management, 46//(1), 7. Retrieved from http://content.arma.org/IMM/images/January-February%202012/IMM_0112_full%20issue.pdf
 * Langenderfer, J., & Miyazaki, A. D. (2009). Privacy in the information economy. //Journal Of Consumer Affairs//, //43//(3), 380-388. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6606.2009.01152.x
 * Lim, S. S., Cho, H., & Sanchez, M. (2009). Online privacy, government surveillance and national ID cards. //Communications of the ACM//, //52//(12), 116-120. doi:10.1145/1610252.1610283
 * Tang, Z., Hu, Y., & Smith, M. D. (2008). Gaining trust through online privacy protection: Self-regulation, mandatory standards, or caveat emptor. //Journal of Management Information Systems, 24//(4), 153-173. doi:10.2753/MIS0742-1222240406 ||