Question

• Do you agree with Donohue’s assertion that “the Fourth Amendment doctrine no longer reflects how the world works”? It has been argued that we are living in a “post-privacy” world. Do you agree or disagree?

• Think about your own use of technology. How comfortable are you with having information about you collected online? Have your feelings about privacy online changed over time?

Answer 1

I agree with Donohue's assertion that the “the Fourth Amendment doctrine no longer reflects how the world works”.

The fourth amendment states that people have a right “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Technology today has enabled to store data about individuals and very effectively use the data for profiling purpose. This is a harbinger for a surveillance society wherein the state gets unprecedented access to individuals web behaviour, call records, text messages, likes, dislikes, political affiliations etc and thus be able to monitor it's citizens. Large corporations too share the powers of the state.

Post privacy is the notion that the total loss of privacy is inevitable. I agree to the fact that we are living in a post privacy world. Technology has seeped into every aspect of our lives. Individuals are willingly providing their private data such as email-id, phone number, location, preferences to access services over the internet. A built in constraint is created which says Unless these details are not provided services will not be accessible and customised offerings cannot be provided. Introduction of android based phones also has enabled collection of data about individuals at a granular level.

I am not comfortable with information about me being collected online. Privacy online has changed over time. As suggested in the previous paragraph, a built in constraint is created, which denies services unless private information is shared with the service provider. This was not the case earlier. Now there is also also a lot of networked connections between various providers and they share a common login, and activities that are performed in one platform is shared with the other platform also.