A Privacy Hazard

The link to the article can be found here.

Unit 5

This article has some useful context of a real-life situation where the civil right of privacy is challenged. A theft of credit card, personal, and debit card information affected Target's holiday shoppers that were shopping between the times of November 27 and December 17. There is an estimate of 70 million customers who were affected by this scam. Some customers had all three items - credit card, personal, and debit card information - stolen, but some only had their one or two of the three stolen. The fact being that the right of privacy of an estimated 70 million people was breached by thieves. Target recently came out with a plan to deal with quite a large problem that happened over the holidays. 

Target, like a responsible company would do, has decided to offer free credit surveillance to any customers that feel like their privacy is at risk. They have offered suggestions to their customers in order to help them keep their information private: watch for mysterious purchases, notify their banks, and possibly change their pin numbers. They are continuing to correct the situation at hand, but in the mean time, they hope their customers can trust that they will handle the situation. 

I thought this article was interesting regarding that our class recently talked about civil rights and civil liberties. We talked about how government has created civil liberties to ensure certain aspects of human interaction are protected. We also talked about civil rights: the things you are entitled to for merely being a citizen. I think it is interesting that our civil rights can be challenged more often because of individuals in our society who don't support the ideology of such. When events like this occur, it is important that we learn. I think this article can teach us somethings about privacy, the most notable being the fact of late: the right to privacy, along with our other civil rights, won't always be protected. 

An individual or a group is bound do go against the morals of society. It is our responsibility as citizens to try our best to not let that happen. Of course, the government is there to help protect our rights; this explains why we use jails and prisons. Since we as a society have little control on what an individual or a group of individuals decides to do against the law, we must be cautious; when our rights are challenged, we must be smart. The security of the rights of an individual must be controlled by that individual. Sure society and government can help, but if a change is to occur or a decision is to be made to aid the assurance of security, it is up to the individual to see to it.