Prior the terrorist events that took place on September 11 (9/11), privacy was of minimal concern to most people. Of course they were concerned about identity theft and credit scores, but that paled in comparison to the fear that was generated by events on 9/11, which opened the gateway for new levels of privacy encroachments and examination that many are not comfortable with in their day-to-day lives. Ultimately, the argument comes down to whether people are for or against privacy loss in the wake of an ever-increasing terror threat. As Solove (2008) describes it in his article many individuals have chosen to accept an infringement on their privacy rights in order to be secure in the threat to terrorist activities. Although …show more content…
However, the scope of this tradeoff has overreached their expectations of reasonable privacy infringement and this balance between security and personal privacy has become the hallmark of the privacy debate. In fact, the events of 9/11 helped to solidify the already growing situation in which technology developments were making information gathering simpler and existing laws for information gathering were undergoing drastic changes (Shamsi & Abado, …show more content…
After the attacks of 9/11, nearly 263 government agencies were reorganized as well as the creation of the Department of Homeland security, which nearly doubled the intelligence budget from 2001 (Freedman, 2011). Much of the technology used in surveillance efforts is off-the-shelf and is lacking in innovation. Moreover, the technological boom in the private sector has afforded the Government many avenues in which to collect information on private citizen including social media, cell phone records, GPS information, financial records, medical information and other third-party services that are capable of storing gigabytes of information on an individual (Shamsi & Abado, 2011). This notion leads to the issues of that information’s security