Why should you care?

“Why do I care?” you ask. Because it affects you. Even if you’re not a terrorist, intelligence organizations are screening your phone calls and your e-mails. Your constitutional rights are being affected, thrown out the window, stomped on, . Pointing fingers at the federal government isn’t entirely fair though. It has tried to protect us.

- The Financial Modernization Act of 1999 protects financial privacy.

- The Fair Credit Reporting Act enforces accuracy in consumer reports and ensures the privacy of the information in them.

- The Federal Trade Commission provides the Do Not Call Registry, which lets you register your phone number as one telemarketers cannot call.

- The Child On-Line Protection Act of 1998 required that “web publishers notify visitors about their collection of personal information and restricts the gathering and use of personal information from children 12 and under.” (LaRose 441)

- The Health Insurance and Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 “set a national standard for electronic transmission of health data” (La Rose 441), though it brought up the issue of privacy and control of one’s own medical records.

- The 2001 Data Quality Act allows more scrutiny of government data and may be extended to private databases (LaRose 441).

But is that enough? Nope. As described by Straubhaar and LaRose, online banking becomes problematic. If someone has a similar name or social as a person with bad credit, they could find themselves rejected by the bank. Or, worse, what happened to my own brother could happen to you. Someone named Carlos Canon was accidentally allowed access to Carlos Cannon’s bank account (look closely, there’s only one “n” in the middle, instead of two, how we spell it. Canon vs. Cannon. If you noticed it, you’re smarter than the bank.) and Single N subsequently cleaned out Double N’s savings.

Identity Theft is an increasingly large problem as well. With cookies being able to track information between websites, and companies like LexisNexis P-Trak releasing information, it’s easier for your birthday, phone numbers, addresses, credit card numbers and Social Security numbers to get into the wrong hands. (Calvert 296) This means that even if you’re name isn’t remotely similar to another person’s they might have the information required to buy whatever they want, no matter how expensive, or strange, it may be.

And then there’s that pesky Facebook. Sure, if you look at my own profile right now, you might only be able to figure out that I used to work at the Leach and that I like The Shawshank Redemption, but allow me to give you two cautionary tales. One is of a friend and former RA. He went to a party one night and took a picture with two people who were under 21. What he didn’t know was that these two people were resident of the building he lived in, and, even though they weren’t his residents, when the picture was posted on Facebook, his bosses found it and he was quickly fired. Another friend, a freshman, lived in Kellum Hall and had put her cell phone number and room number on her profile. Someone saw her picture and thought she was attractive and friended her. Then he started calling her. Then one day he called and said “he was driving by Kellum” and wanted to say hello. Then the phone hung up and someone knocked on her door. Her Facebook stalker quickly became the guy who showed up uninvited, let himself in and vastly overstayed his welcome.

In my last post I mentioned text trackers that companies use. FSU Housing has recently installed "terminals" (a fancy name for computers) at the front desk of all of the residence halls. These terminals have text trackers installed. That means everything someone types when logged in is monitored by housing, including user names and passwords, Social Security and credit card numbers. So, anyone who uses these terminals leaves their personal information to be read by whoever is monitoring the network that day or night.

Those last two examples might seem like something you bring upon yourself and, in part it is. But remember that, even if you’re not a terrorist, your right to privacy may not seem as secure as you thought it did. It might not be the government that’s watching you; it could be your boss, your friends, or even that sweaty guy down the hall.