The Internet: The Importance Of Internet Privacy

In this day and age, where the internet is ground zero for sharing content and living a ‘public’ life is the new norm, what does privacy even mean? The turn of the 21st century made it possible for a lot of people from all corners of the world to connect and share, adopt the internet as a part of a major research tool and ease the learning process. Essentially, through the creation of the world wide web, it provided a diversified platform that helped turn the world more digitized. While the internet made communication extremely fast, it also made exposure of personal data accessible to all. The internet has explicitly altered the meaning of privacy as it defiled the importance of keeping personal data private which paved way for the government

While it appears strange to some, mass surveillance could lead to a drastic reduction in crime as this is the advantage most often put forward by surveillance ‘enthusiasts’ nowadays. This is evident as to how cameras seem to have a drastic decrease in arson and some incidents of violence. If calibrated properly, total surveillance might eradicate certain types of crime almost entirely. For the internet’s case, surveillance has prevented assassinations of government officials, bombings, and numerous terrorist attacks. As a matter of fact, the government claims that they are not abusing their power just so spy on its citizens; the people in high power use surveillance to maintain order in the country. A significant percentage of the population in the United States justify the need for internet surveillance by utilizing the nothing-to-hide argument. The claim states that if “[a person] has nothing to hide, then [they] should only worry if [they] are doing something wrong... [people] don’t deserve to keep it private” (Solove, 734). Not everybody wants their emails and personal information snooped on, however it saves hundreds and thousands of lives every year due to government programs that pick up keywords on