Recent advances in technology are a threat to people's right to privacy. Every year, technology for listening to, and looking at, people becomes more widely available, and is more efficient at getting into every corner of their lives. Even technology that was not made to spy on people, has put their lives on display in ways that are beyond their control. These types of technology help the invasion of privacy simply by making it easier than ever to access information that used to be private. In either case, what is most dangerous is not that the technology makes information available or accessible. Instead, the problem is that people want such information, and are willing to use it as they see fit. There is little hope that people will suddenly begin to respect privacy, or that people can make themselves secure from technology. There are also very few laws that specifically define, or defend, the individual's right to privacy. Therefore, it is necessary to recognize that a serious threat to privacy exists, and that something must be done about it.
Certainly it is not the technology itself that is the problem. Even when people had nothing but a portable camera and a telephone wiretap for spying, they could use them to break in on other people's privacy. Even today, the technology itself is not the real problem. Marx says that the technology "becomes ever more penetrating and intrusive," but he really means that people's ability to penetrate other people's lives intrusively is what becomes greater (311). Today's technology allows people to "gather information with laserlike specificity and sponge;like absorbency," and the forms of data available are more comprehensive than they ever were before (Marx, 311). Thus, controls on technology itself are not what is important.
It is, for example, important to note that it is the tools that were not made for spying that make much of the invasion of privacy possible. A cellul...