COMPUTERS AND ELECTRONIC PRIVACY

According to mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind. This was both a boon and a curse for mortal man. On the one hand, fire served as the foundation for civilization; on the other, fire easily destroyed what man had built. Left unchecked, fire would injure or kill those who sought to control it. According to Sara Baase in A Gift of Fire, computers are similar to fire in that they are both a boon and a curse. They have permeated our lives far more quickly than most technologies. Today, it is difficult to live life in the United States indeed, in the developed world without interacting at some point with computers on a daily basis. Not only are the ubiquitous in the workplace and increasingly common throughout most of our homes, but they are also operating behind the scenes where many of us do not expect to find them. They are in thermostats, microwave ovens, and even in most automobiles. They track our purchases in stores, and with computers, it is possible to shop, buy, pay for and view or listen to music, books or movies on a desktop computer. Computers are also increasingly interconnected, so that information obtained for one purpose can be effortlessly and instantaneously sent to a different computer where it might be used for an entirely different purpose. While the government, business and healthcare industries have touted the benefits of being able to combine multiple databases a

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road judicial interpretations of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments have led to a de facto right to privacy, with particular emphasis given to the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure (Alderman & Kennedy, 1995). It is the right to privacy, and the right of individuals to control how information about them is used, that provides the basis for constitutional objections to electronic monitoring and electronic privacy. When a consumer conducts a transaction at a library or bookstore, and that transaction can be reported to the government in the name of national security regardless of whether any other evidence is present, as the Patriot Act allows, privacy rights are violated. Some libraries have responded by ceasing to keep data on file, and some bookstores have indicated that they will challenge requests for customer information. However, other companies regularly collect data and make it available to the government and others, including institutions for whom the data was not originally intended (Pike, 2002) INTERNET PRIVACY & MARKETING TO YOUNG PEOPLE There is a school of thought that holds that young people are particularly vulnerable to marketing campaigns. According to this line of reasoni

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