Americans live in a service-oriented, computer-based society whose collective market place is fueled by the collection, use, exchange, and storage of information about people by government and business institutions. Consequently, individuals are having fewer face-to-face contacts in their relationships with these institutions while more decisions affecting their everyday lives are being made by strangers based upon information maintained in computer data systems. This being so, public concern about privacy, specifically the potential abuse and misuse of personal information by government and business, has increased substantially in recent years. There also exists the constant threat of information technology outstripping existing legal frameworks and outpacing the privacy expectations of citizens. More than ever, government and business policy makers will face the dilemma of balancing the legitimate needs of institutions for information about people with the privacy standing of the individual. Knowledge of public views are essential to this task. The purpose of this opinion research study is to learn the views of Arizona residents regarding their personal privacy and relationships with select privacy-intensive public and private institutions. The results provide empirical data for the privacy protection deliberations of the government and business policy makers who practice within Arizona. The results show personal privacy as an issue of serious public concern, with Arizona residents requesting further government laws and business policies and practices to protect their privacy. Arizona residents recognize the legitimate information needs of government and business institutions, but they expect protections against unwelcome, unfair, improper, and excessive collection and dissemination of personal information about them. Computers are perceived as threats to personal privacy, suggesting if institutions expect to be able to continue widespread applications of computers, measures must be taken to assure the public that the personal information stored in such systems are safeguarded from abuse and misuse. The results also show that there is a direct relationship between the degree of alienation or estrangement which individuals feel from government and business institutions and their attitudes toward privacy issues and perception of computer benefits and dangers. Consequently, to affect such attitudes will require sound measures.

No description available.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in the partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Commerce. Johannesburg 1996. / This paper addresses concerns surrounding information privacy and the secondary use of information in South African corporations. This study also attempts to assess the level of concern that management and information technology practitioners if! South African retail banks have about privacy issues. The research suggests that privacy is a huge concern internationally and may affect South African corporations if they do not follow certain policies and practices. Eleven in-person structured interviews were conducted at four banks. The research proposes a set of guidelines by which South African management and IT practitioners, who are involved with the identification and solution of some of the problems that may be presented by possible privacy legislation, will be able to assess their policies and practices against international practices and policies. The results inform IS managers and executives about appropriate business policies they can implement voluntarily to address public concerns about specific information practices that may be considered a threat to privacy. The findings suggest that the executives are deliberately avoiding confronting the issue of information privacy for as long as possible. The executives are adopting a wait-and-see attitude and will react 011 whatever legislation requires them to do. At the time of the report senior executives at banks were not accepting responsibility for information privacy policies and practices and were leaving this responsibility; to the middle level managers who implement their own practices based on their own needs. / GR2017

University of Macau / Faculty of Science and Technology. / Department of Computer and Information Science

This thesis examines the representations of surveillance in mainstream cinema. Using ideology critique it will show how filmic illustrations of monitoring depoliticize the relationship between surveillance and structural relations of power.In order to provide a foundation for this inquiry, a political economy critique of surveillance will be undertaken in four areas. Focusing on the workplace, consumer surveillance, urban policing and intelligence gathering, this thesis will contextualise surveillance as historically relevant and intimately connected with modern constructs such as the nation-state, military power and capitalist economic organisation. In recent years, the role of surveillance has been intensified in response to the challenges posed by globalization, the restructuring of capitalism in the 1980's and 90's and the declining legitimacy of nation-state governments. These developments are both aided by, and in turn promote, pervasive networks of surveillance. Driven by risk management and other forms of economic reasoning as organisational logic, developments in information communication technologies accelerate surveillance capabilities rendering them more invasive and intense. In this way, surveillance can be conceived of as complicit with prevailing relations of power on a macro, sociological level.In order to show how mainstream cinematic representations of surveillance ideologically obscure this relationship, this thesis begins with an overview of 30 popular films. It then moves to a comparison of four recent Hollywood portrayals of surveillance with the four areas of political economy critique identified above. This analysis will reveal that these films have a tendency to focus on sentimental themes such as individual heroism, antagonist versus protagonist struggles and romantic subplots, in a way which deflects attention from collective experience with surveillance webs. More pertinently, the narrative structures of these films feature dichotomies between malevolent and benevolent monitoring, aligning legitimate and benign surveillance with the state. At the same time, the accompanying imagery of surveillance devices fetishizes monitoring, deterministically glorifying technology as a powerful and omniscient force. The overall effect is to depoliticize monitoring as a natural part of the fabric of everyday life.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of History, June 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Global Affairs." Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-248).

Not available / text

The legal system and the social sciences share an interest in privacy but have developed separate conceptualizations of the concept. The result is two similar but conflicting theories of privacy that make different assumptions about how people behave and how that behavior can be controlled. The purpose of this study was to begin testing these theories by examining the operationalization of privacy through mandated standards intended to ensure privacy for the mentally ill. Specifically, the standards set in Wyatt v. Stickney, which reflect the idea that privacy is a sphere of space free from outside intrusion, were examined to see if they did indeed ensure privacy. Using two units in a facility that met the standards mandated by the court in Wyatt v. Stickney, the research examined staff and patient perceptions of privacy. Thirty-five patients were interviewed and twenty-four staff completed questionnaires on the overall habitability of the unit and patient privacy. Results indicated that the Wyatt court's operationalization of privacy as primarily a visual phenomena was inadequate and although the specific standards ordered to ensure privacy were reported to be effective by a simple majority of patients, overall patients reported a lack of privacy. Staff responses were generally in agreement with patients but they tended to use more extreme or stronger ratings. The present study also has implications for the legal conceptualization of privacy. It was found that privacy was perceived as important by patients; that autonomy as evidenced by control was an important issue for a minority of patients; and, the right of selective disclosure was not a major concern of patients. Needed future areas of research that were identified included: comparing privacy ratings across a variety of group living situations, comparing the mentally ill's conceptualizations of privacy from others, determining the effect of privacy on the therapeutic goals of an institution and therapeutic outcome and, determine the relative importance of privacy to the mentally ill.

Not available / text