Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on how has technology affected privacy.

Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on how has technology affected privacy. Financial institutions such as brokerage firms, credit card companies, insurance companies, and banks routinely and legally share their customer information databases with each other. The federal government has not only refused to end this breach of privacy, but the representatives of the people have also facilitated information sharing by enacting the Financial Services Modernization Act in 2001. Financial institutions are allowed to share databases, referred to as ‘affiliate sharing’ but must provide this information for no cost through this caveat is hard of any comfort to those concerned about confidential issues. Information can be sold if the customer approves which is generally slyly obtained by offering an ‘opt-out’ choice. In other words, the customer must explicitly choose not to allow their financial information to be sold. Many people wonder why they are receiving mountains of ‘junk e-mail’ or how a telemarketer obtained their cell-phone number. The answer is, the federal government promotes it but these examples are irritations, other, more damaging outcomes concern privacy rights advocates. “Decisions on one’s creditworthiness might hinge on medical information gleaned from insurance company data. A scam artist might use one’s profile as a risk-taking investor to pitch get-rich-quick schemes. Elderly individuals with cash-rich portfolios could be vulnerable to fraud artists’ promises of lucrative returns on risky investments” (Givens, 2007). Financial institutions claim their right to contact potential customers is protected under the First Amendment’s ‘free speech’ clause, however, this seems an enormously wide interpretation of the Constitution. The land of the free is one of the only industrialized countries that permit this invasion of privacy. “Citizens of nearly all developed countries throughout the world enjoy rights to privacy through laws that are called ‘data protection acts’”.