Time for Change
Over the past few weeks my friend, and fellow MIT student, Akash G. Shah and I have been working on a paper for a class here at MIT. The class is called 6.805 Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier, and focuses on internet policy and privacy rights. We completed our paper, Time for Change: Why the Age of Digital Mail Requires New Legislation, yesterday.
If you have any interest in privacy on the internet, you might find it worthwhile. We had some good interviews, illustrated some interesting scenarios, and did some preliminary analysis. The main idea is that email is no longer just text based messages. Everyday people use email more and more like a digital filing cabinet, storing large quantities of personal, senstive, and privaate data. That information should remain private, and people expect it to. Currently laws that regulate electronic communications are not adequate to protect the privacy of Americans. This is why we feel it is Time for Change.
It is scary how the internet has become a huge filing cabinet. Now, working in the so-called-real world. It is dangerous to send emails as you are then leaving a paper trail behind. People are fired because of cursing in emails or bad-mouthing their superiors to friends via email.
It is not even just email – it is even over instant message. Everything is tracked, logged and is no longer private. Anything that you put on the internet is at risk to be used in the future – for better or for worse.