InfoSys 205
Written Assignment #1
DUE: March 8, 2005
Over the past few weeks, a number of interesting events have taken place that
relate to the problems of information and privacy in the digital age. For example:
1. On February 15th,
a state appellate court in Florida ruled that a wife who installed monitoring
software on her husband’s computer to intercept his on-line chats with a
woman with whom he was playing Yahoo Dominoes had violated the state’s
wiretapping law, and that the contents of the chats could not be used as
evidence in their on-going divorce proceeding.
2. On February 27th,
The New York Times reported on a hacker’s successful breach of
Paris Hilton’s Sidekick and the subsequent publication on the Web of its
contents, including emails, photos and the telephone numbers of other
celebrities.
3.
Last week, consumer financial data warehouse giant
ChoicePoint, Inc., announced that criminals posing as “legitimate
buyers” of data had obtained records of over 145,000 people.
Does the
Please write a 1 ½ page (double-spaced) paper analyzing the
three items, along with your recommendations on how the regulation of
information privacy ought to be addressed.
Your paper should take the following form:
A.
By way
of introduction summarize the three items described above, based on the
attached articles (1 paragraph).
B.
Taken
together, discuss what the three suggest about the current state of information
privacy and the role of government in regulating it (3/4ths of a page).
C.
Based on
these particular items, what you believe needs to be done (1/2 page).
Notes:
1. Here are the links for the articles:
John Schwartz, “Some Sympathy
for
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/weekinreview/27paris.html?
Declan McCullagh, “Court: Wife Broke Law with Spyware,” CNET News.Com, February 15th, 2005
http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-5577979.html