Is Privacy an Issue?

	The pros and cons of privacy can be discussed at considerable
length without any real closure, but a question must be approached before
that level is reached: Is privacy really that important in today's
society?  It must be determined whether or not a topic like
privacy-invasion by the Internet is even worth the time it will take to
argue it.  Is anyone really private anymore?  The dominance of the mass
media has been around a long time before the emergence of the Internet.
A newspaper, book, or radio show has been able to broadcast anyone's
personal information for decades now; the Internet just can hold such
information in a larger, more conveinent arena.  That is why it can be
seen as confusing that so many people today attack the Internet for being
privacy-crashers.  The precedent of privacy as an overall issue has,
according to Carl Hausman, never really been dealt with any real
concreteness:



	
	1.  Unlike many other clearly delineated rights, privacy is not
	guaranteedby the United States' fundamental legal and philosophical
	documents; it is essentially absent from the Constitution.
	2.  Privacy is not dealt with to any great degree in the
	literature of philosophy either.  Although one can find volumes of
	discussion on theories of obligation, for example, the privacy shelf is
	virtuallybare.
	3.  To further complicate matters, when privacyis discussed it
	is often debated in the context of its value versus other rights,
	especially the public's right to know.  But this right is equally
	nebulous.  (91)




This list above states that there really is no all-included legal or
philosophical standard as to how privacy should be respected or invaded.
Besides, the only people that are really worried about privacy are those
with something to hide.  The law-abiding citizens of this world should not
care who knows what grades they received in high school or how large their
credit card bill is, right? 




	I was playing devil's advocate in the above paragraph, but the
points raised are worth thinking about.  The simple fact remains, however,
that if any one person in this world is feeling uncomfortable about the
Internet invading their privacy, then the issue of privacy is worth
debating.  Many cases have arisen in which the Internet has made available 
a person's private record to the public with disasterous results.  Such
cases include an obsessed fan aquiring actress Rebecca
Shaeffer's address on the Internet in order to shoot her to death
(89).  A case like this show us how dangerous the Internet could possibly
become if put in the wrong set of hands.  This does not mean that personal
information on the computer is an all-out bad idea, but it does mean that
the issue is worth discussing.


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