Development Notes:  Watchers on the Web: Privacy in the Digital Age is a prototype. Only selected features and examples are active

See the Features page (available from the navigation bar, above) for a description of the instructional features available to the student. The case National ID: Protection or Intrusion is currently the most fully developed.

Privacy...
"the right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by a free people."
                                                                           - Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. U.S. (1928)

In the Information Age, personal information has become a highly valued commodity that is captured and compiled, bought and sold in ways never before imagined. Whole industries and bureaucracies have formed solely to collect and distribute sensitive information that individuals once viewed as under their exclusive control: medical records, personal shopping habits, credit histories. As our wallets become "e-wallets" financial data, housed somewhere out on the Internet rather than in our back-pockets, and as our public institutions, businesses, and even cultural institutions find homes online, the confidentiality of our communications, papers, and information encounters an increasing risk of compromise. (http://www.cdt.org/privacy/guide/start/ )

It is clear that our existing legal framework did not envision the pervasive role information technology would play in our daily lives. Nor did it envision a world where the private sector would collect and use information at the level it does today. Our legal framework for protecting individual privacy in electronic communications while built upon constitutional principles and statutory protections, reflects the technical and social "givens" of specific moments in history. From a belief that the government's collection and use of information about individuals' activities and communications was the only threat to individual privacy and that a solid wall separated the data held by the private and public sector; to the notion that the Internet would be used primarily for a narrow slice of activities and that private and public spaces were easily demarcated, these vestiges of a pre-Internet, pre-networked world, stress our existing privacy framework.
(http://www.cdt.org/publications/lawreview/1999nova.shtml)

The Problem:

Does existing U.S. policy and legislation (including the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution) provide sufficient personal privacy protection in the Digital Age?

If so, how are we protected and why is this sufficient?

If not, what changes and/or additions would you recommend and why?

Watchers on the Web provides a starting point for problem analysis through related cases, themes, and perspectives.

Find a case that interests you and follow the connections.

Explore the related resources. Record important points and reflect on your new knowledge.

Communicate with other learners, your instructor(s), and experts in the field to
      pose provocative theses,
      challenge or support others,
      inquire to clarify understanding
      or suggest additional resources and alternative strategies.

Propose and justify a solution to the problem. did

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