Essay Review

Technological Advances vs. Privacy Loss

Technological advancement is something that has become a part of people’s lives. As time goes by, technological progress is likely to impact people's lives. Before, it was not imaginable that people would receive physical therapy through technological platforms such as Telehealth; however, it is happening. Recently, technology has taken over every aspect of society from transport, government, schools, medication, war (cyber warfare), love (dating apps), online shopping, ordering food, and other different aspects. While it is a great thing and people most probably should appreciate the technological advances, technology could endangering the same experience and allow exploitation. Despite the benefits, new technology is not worth it due to weak privacy policies, companies mining large volumes of personal data, and lack of due diligence of users.

Privacy Loss and Technological Companies

Everything comes at a cost; while technological advances have become part of life, and make people’s lives easy, it has a dark side. Deanna Paul expresses, "When data from a mental health app is shared or sold to other parties, a wealth of information can be used for purposes beyond the health needs of students. Insurers can use it to calculate premiums, employers can use it to assess risk, advertisers can use it to tailor ads to consumer preferences or conditions, and all can exploit students' weaknesses." (Paul). Privacy loss is one such dark side since technological advances rely on data to function. It requires individual data so that it can make many tasks easier. Google search collects data so that it can be able to provide relevant research results, and it makes everything easy.

Google, Facebook, Airbnb, and Amazon all rely on Big Data but, create an environment for privacy loss despite making lives easier. Concerning entities in the world have now provided people with privacy laws that somewhat hinder the operations of such companies, proving the point that privacy is much more important than just making a few more dollars in revenue. The sharing of personal information and technology is identified to be as indispensable at the moment, especially in this modern society. Online shops also receive data and use algorithms to predict what people might like based on their previous preferences. This can be excellent when one knows exactly how corporations are analyzing one’s preferences. The issue comes when cooperation and online perpetrators use private data to make one generate a preference on what they are selling, or simply sell the data to other companies that would use the data to create a choice for their products. The data might be sold to insurance, medical drugs, or gadgets and different items. While this is not ethical at all, at times, it becomes catastrophic for the individuals whose personal data was shared without consent. One can find their credentials used to commit online crimes, their pictures on pornographic sites, and similar occurrences.

There are inadequate and too complex privacy policies on the use of technology devices and apps. According to Sacks, organizations should provide valid grounds that will justify the collection of personal data and should provide the user with a transparent privacy policy, which includes why the personal data is collected and how it used. The access to internet utilization of new digital technologies has become the modern necessity in education, employment, civic life, and among other important aspects of life. Technology has become a necessity, and when no one cares about their privacy loss, especially the millennials, things will have different aspects. While privacy loss is a concern, and should not be sacrificed for technological advances, it is something that might have been accepted, just like everything has its pros and cons. In the manner that people have the mentality of using the internet or any technological interface, it might lead one to think it is a great experience, but one will pay for that experience by exposing personal data to people who want to exploit them. It makes the privacy policies that are in place useless, mainly because bodies in charge of privacy policy such as HIPPA (Garner) are ensuring that these corporations adhere to the laws and regulations developed to use consumers’ data (Finlay). However, the consumer does in actuality utilize the policies for their benefit. It may be the design of the privacy policies, which may be so excruciating for people to go through the privacy policy agreement and just jump into an agreement.

The uptake on apps and instant gratification shows a pattern of dependence on technology which makes the consideration of the privacy policies as a secondary aspect after people’s needs are satisfied by the app of the software. For example, when using the mental health app, if a person is depressed, he will not have the time to go through the agreements so that will be easy to understand what privacy policies the app provides. At the moment, what one wants is the therapy of the condition that the app provides. For instance, if one is heartbroken, and decides to find love on Tinder; probably, one will not bother to go through the user agreement. Technology will never be on the same level as privacy, mainly because of such aspects. To choose privacy over technological advances means that all stakeholders should agree, especially individuals who are the victims of privacy violations. It is primarily because at the moment, privacy has been established as part of modern society. Eliminating technological advances only means the world will be dysfunctional because technology has become part of human evolution. Due to the availability of Uber and other taxi-hailing applications, some individuals do not walk anywhere. Such individuals may not heed the advice to uninstall the Uber app due to the threat it poses to their privacy since they enjoy its convenience.

Artificial Intelligence was a highly significant development in technology among other technological advancements and depends largely on mining large volumes of data. The AI systems need to analyze data so that they can learn. Therefore, it is important to understand that data is the raw material. The data is fitted to the AI systems utilized to take actions and make decisions without requiring human interaction, meaning that the more individual data they have, the better the decision made will be. It means that private policies come in and become the undoing of the AI systems. The main problem is that technology carries a lot of privacy issues. At the moment, data is the current gold: highly-priced. The more customer data, the more others know about the users, and more customers can be better served.

Therefore, the collection of data should be transparent for privacy loss to be eliminated. If a corporation has somebody’s internet browsing history and activity, which includes purchasing behavior, and social media activity, it can create and develop customized promotions and offers that directly have been targeted. It means that private information and Big Data are tied so that medical advances, pollution reduction, and traffic reduction, among other innovations that technological advancements have brought to the world. The stringent security on borders and airports requires personal information and technological advancements, which will help prevent impending attacks and, most probably, loss of life. At this moment, moving away from individual benefits, technological advancements have been instrumental for society in general. Also, imagining a situation in which private information cannot be collected, and the opposite happens: terror attacks, pandemics, traffic increased among other aspects that could be prevented if private data was readily available (Mantelero). The dilemma continues.

As mentioned before, everything has a price, and technological advancement requires every person to pay with his privacy. At the moment, every traditional concept of privacy is eroded by digital technological advancements. Although, individuals should have the ability to control the collection and usage of their data. It is because, as mentioned before, personal information/data is the raw material for AI systems. Meaning that personal information is collected, created, processed, used, analyzed, transferred, shared, stored, and copied in different and unimaginable ways at high speed and quantity.

Technological advancement is growing each day, and, in a few years, there will be more personal data collected. There is no room clearly for getting the consent of the user to give them a suggestion on the restaurant that they want to visit (Jones). There will be more utilization of data by the AI systems, meaning the privacy policies will be just a requirement that will not have any impact. At this moment, one cannot predict what will happen to privacy, identity, personal data, and reputation in the digital world. The privacy laws in place are inadequate as they are on "notice and choice." Following this argument, it means that the laws will not address the rapid technological evolution in different technological fields. It means that the war is lost, but cybersecurity and related issues have been a concern that governments around the world are focusing on, due to the threats that technological advances pose not on individuals and governments. Well, this is not a simple topic as it has different issues that it needs, and as it does not have a simple yes or no answer. Everything is tied to the other.

Concluding, the final verdict on the matter is simple: privacy loss cannot be compromised in the place of technological advances. The privacy of an individual is very crucial and technological advances are dependent on private information. A critical aspect to understand is that the collection of personal information is not entirely for sinister purposes. Some corporations collect personal information to use it on AI systems so that they can make people’s lives better. However, this is a grey area: privacy loss means someone violating somebody’s else privacy, going through their personal information. However, nobody is going through someone’s personal information; in fact, individuals give out their personal information by allowing applications to access different personal information on their gadgets. Therefore, does it count when it is an Artificial Intelligence system that violates one’s privacy? The most important aspect is to understand is that while this paper is establishing that privacy is more important than technology advances, it means that people have to give up either their privacy or technology advances. Technological advances are not going anywhere, and personal information will be at risk as long as there are technological advances, thanks to the relationship between personal information and technological advances.

Works Cited

Finlay, Cliver. "A proposal for Training and Evaluation of The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) at the Iowa State University for University Employees and Staff of Research Experiences for undergrad (REU) Programs." 2019.

Garner, William. "FERPA, HIPAA, and Other Privacy Concerns in Online Education." EdMedia+ Innovate Learning. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), 2018.

Jones, Meg Leta, Ellen Kaufman, and Elizabeth Edenberg. "AI and the ethics of automating consent." IEEE Security & Privacy 16.3.2018: 64-72.

Mantelero, Alessandro. "AI and Big Data: A blueprint for human rights, social and ethical impact assessment." Computer Law & Security Review 34.4 (2018): 754-772.

Paul, Deanna. “Colleges Want Freshmen to Use Mental Health Apps. But Are They Risking Students’ Privacy?” Washington Post. 2 Jan. 2020.

Sacks, Samm. "New China Data Privacy Standard Looks More Far-Reaching than GDPR." Center for Strategic and International Studies 29.2018.