Deeper Understandings

It was an interesting week of research for me. I decided to continue my path of correlating the law and constitution to actual cases that have been heard about privacy issues. But the difference was in which laws. I decided examine all amendments cited in constitution cases not just the three I'm primarily concerned with. I did this to get an overall basis as to what constitutes privacy as embodied by the case law. From there I can make inferences to the specifics of my direction. Secondly, I went for the more practical approach to how privacy issues are being dealt with in the modern society with the instant communication on cell phones and the various social media outlets.

Surprisingly, there have been many privacy issues raised throughout case law. But, I found that the more over riding angle from about 1967 and Katz vs. United States is concept of 'reasonable expectation'. For example if you are doing something in your home, you could expect that what you do there is private. Doing the same thing on a public street corner, you do not have that expectation. This fundamental concept will be central to much of what I examine from here on out.

In the more modern sense of what currents and trends that I looked at, in contrasts nicely with the 'reasonable expectation', in that much of what information is shared is done so voluntarily. Or so it would seem. In legal circles it is referred to as 'terms of use'. Almost no one reads those when using Facebook, for example. In it there is an explicit consent that whatever you do there will be tracked. The same goes with your cable box by the cable company. They will track what you watch. This is all done in the interest of having you see what's more relevant to you. But, that info is stored, probably forever, so that your cumulative viewing habits always looked at to give you what you might want to watch. My next step is to look at how that could be used to do other things, predict other behavior or match it to psychological profiles....