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Privacy

Is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively. The boundaries and content of what is considered private differ among cultures and individuals, but share basic common themes. Privacy is sometimes related to anonymity, the wish to remain unnoticed or unidentified in the public realm. When something is private to a person, it usually means there is something within them that is considered inherently special or personally sensitive. The degree to which private information is exposed therefore depends on how the public will receive this information, which differs between places and over time. Privacy can be seen as an aspect of security— one in which trade-offs between the interests of one group and another can become particularly clear.


Privacy Protection and the Law

Is the ability to control what information one reveals about oneself over the Internet, and to control who can access that information. These concerns include whether email can be stored or read by third parties without consent, or whether third parties can track the web sites someone has visited. Another concern is whether web sites which are visited collect, store, and possibly share personally identifiable information about users.

The relationship between collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, and the legal and political issues surrounding them.

While currently there is no national law to protect the privacy of the information you share online, federal law and state law do offer some protection to various kinds of personal information collected about you. At the national level, Congress has enacted laws as it perceived the need to arise. Therefore, you will see from the list below that you have privacy rights in specific kinds of information—information maintained about you in the health care system, your education records, the record of your video rentals, to name a few.