Ethics Assignment - March 6

We have both a moral obligation and duty to protect our privacy. Anita Allen makes a good point about privacy being important to our overall well being. It promotes dignity, freedom, and protects individuals from unwarranted criticism. These are all key elements needed to live in a prosperous civil society.

Privacy is both an individual and collective effort. In Anita's argument for individual efforts she heavily implies that "we have to be open to the possibility that some of what we do and enjoy doing may not be ethically good or best" to which she goes on to reference the Anthony Wiener conundrum. Despite being his own private matter this extended well passed himself and unfortunately his family also felt the consequence. In this example it is our duty to protect our privacy in order to not hurt the privacy of others by the sphere of influence your actions may have in regards to someone else. Individual efforts also include self preservation methods for privacy such as passwords, what is shared, and to whom it is shared to.

There is and should be a collective effort at the enterprise/government level for privacy. Transparency to what information is stored, for how long, who it is shared to, why is it shared, etc. At the same time the collective public need to make strides to better educate themselves as to what their privacy actually looks like while using a service or giving out information. I do not like how the "Terms of Service contracts" are implemented where everyone is basically forced to agree to. There are huge implications on privacy there but the language is too dense and too long for most people to actually take the time to read. The collective efforts should focus on making that agreement more clear and accessible at the company side whilst there needs to be a conscious effort individually to understand what it is we're all really in agreement to.