Internet users are held accountable for what they post or
view online. Indeed, we should be careful about what we post or view online. However,
we can no longer safely discern what is considered innocent self-disclosure or
innocent Web surfing. Imagine, an employed pregnant woman (similar to our
reading) innocently perusing baby related Websites or posting this news on
Facebook. She could be unwittingly tracked and fired. And she would never be
able to “prove” why. People are regularly fired and denied employment based on
their age, medical records, and credit scores.
Additionally, tracking people’s political affiliation and
who they vote for is unethical. The whole point of secret ballots is for
society to feel comfortable and secure that no one will be influenced or bribed
to vote for certain candidates. Potential employers could use this to decide
not to hire you, based on your political affiliation. Every corporation has its
own culture. Headhunters do searches for corporations that solicit potential
employees who fit their values and criteria of their particular corporation. It
is naïve to believe that people are simply hired for merit or experience.
The implication of tracking is that people don’t question
the legitimacy or ethics of this system. People become complaisant robots who
expect and tolerate trespassing. These “robots” readily defend tracking as if
it benefits them because they have become programmed to believe that this way
of life is “normal.” In later years, they will discover the consequences of
allowing private information to flow. They will become “cloned” by a “greater”
model of robots that will exceed them in being far more tolerant and subservient
to a governmental system where newborn babies will automatically be inserted
with microchips to be tracked for the rest of their lives. Thus, tolerating
tracking today leads to microchips tomorrow.
I agree that internet tracking opens up many opportunities for the abuse of information. Like you said, getting jobs and keeping them isn’t necessarily a matter of what you know and how skilled you are; often, employment is about who you know in the higher levels of a company and how you are perceived by them. It’s a little scary that so much information is tracked and available online because consumers are not necessarily aware of the visibility of their specific information. However, I think that enough people are uncomfortable with the current privacy system that companies are implementing changes. For example, in addition to providing the legal privacy statement explaining their new tracking system, Google also had a summary of the changes at a lower, more accessible reading level. I don’t think that micro chipping will become part of pop culture anytime soon.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your reply. I like everything you said, except I don’t agree with the statement about Google.
DeleteYes, there’s options.. but you sure have to do a lot of work to protect yourself from Google’s permissive policies. What about Facebook? The article on Facebook privacy proves that protection against privacy invasion will soon become a thing of the past. I like what one person named Turlock posted in the comment box, “You are not Facebook’s customer, you are Facebook’s product.” I think these articles on Google and Facebook support my arguments that it will become difficult to not only protect yourself from exploitation but eventually you won’t have any privacy at all.
Pauca, I read the Facebook article differently. I read it as saying Facebook was trying to implement a more structured security measure for it's users. This way, you can tailor your security to your needs. The sad truth is there is no privacy with the invention of "member discounts", social media and the like. We have to begin reeling back what we do socially, and be willing to take a hit financially to keep privacy. Yet, it's a double-edged sword. To know what's going on in the world, we have to click to discover things nowadays. Finding a happy medium is a daunting task.
DeleteI completely agree with you. A person’s voting rights should be private and only to them to know. If they want to tell someone whom they’re voting for, then that is their right to do so. It exploits citizens to feel pressured into voting for the “correct” candidate. I also believe that an employee shouldn’t be fired because of a post on Facebook or looking for items on the Internet. People shouldn’t feel like they can’t express their opinions while fearing exploitation and being part of a target audience through a social media website.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your response. I totally agree with you and your point brings up how Google’s move to exploit people’s profiles with products would make people less likely to express their opinions. In regard to Facebook: the controls and settings to “protect privacy” are totally worthless because if you carefully read and dissect the article it keeps exposing the bottom line—that there are ways for people to find out who you are, user name etc. The main point is that you have no protection. Indeed, "people shouldn't" have to "fear expressing their opinions" or feel "paranoid" about future employment opportunities etc.
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