Topics in Information Technology Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Topics in Information Technology Ethics - Essay Example Of course, security reasons are not the only purposes for Internet surveillance; corporations also use surveillance for marketing purposes. Paul Mobbs, in the article â€Å"How and when organisations and the state can monitor your actions,† discusses the â€Å"potential threats to civil liberties posed by the use of electronic networks for the purposes of surveillance, by the state and private companies, and the potential damage of these for civil society in the long term.† Karen McCullagh, in response to the growing security concerns after 9/11, also states that the modern use if the Internet has provided companies ad states with opportunities of surveillance that were not open to them previously. As she sees it, privacy and security are interconnected issues: â€Å"It is submitted that privacy and security are necessarily interrelated and interdependent. Therefore neither principle should ever be applied to the exclusion of the other, as they are both essential tenet s of a liberal democratic society.† These are difficult issues, and there are no easy answers to them. It is necessary, though, for people to be aware of the extent to which they are or can be monitored. Security is a necessity, but no will could argue that civil liberties are not also a necessity. Mobbs splits surveillance into two different categories, indirect and directed. Under indirect surveillance, the practices of dataveillance and data profiling are the two most commonly used. These practices are used typically for the purposes of marketing, political lobbying, police investigations, and the protection of intellectual property. As most users of the Internet do not understand the technology behind the Internet, these users are particularly susceptible to invasions of privacy. This is not to say that people are not aware that their privacy has been violated, though it does mean that people might attempt to protect their privacy by means which could be