This could extend beyond privacy rights and on to property rights. Some legal scholars see personal information as property (Spinello, 151). Therefore the Internet has the possibility of not only denying privacy rights, but property rights as well, breaking several Amendments. Personal records become more than information, they become property to be either protected or violated. Also, once personal information is regarded as a piece of property, that property carries an asset value. Protecting personal information and property becomes a financial responsibility. Revealing too much about someone to the public could potentially endanger his or her rights to privacy, property, and ownership.
This definition of privacy comes in the form of United States legislation, but there are many other places where the right to privacy can be sited. Dating all the way back to biblical times, biblical passages can be interpreted as pertaining to the realm of privacy. Included in the first pages of the Bible there is the feeling of shame as a violation of privacy (DeCew, 11). This feeling comes form when Eve eats the apple and they realized they are naked and are ashamed because they feel their privacy of body has been violated. We have been taught that our moral nature is linked to the realm of privacy.
With the strong emergence of the Internet, we must look beyond the traditional definitions of privacy and begin applying them to the web. Technology introduces a new threat to our privacy and has changed the nature of that threat (Rosenoer, 142). Much legislation has been made to protect our privacy online, but only as certain instances arise. For example, banks were divulging financial information and so the Right to Financial Privacy Act occurred in 1978. Another example would be the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 2001. This occurred because of multiple privacy infractions as well (Spinello, 157-159). When looking at the history of legislation, it seems as though legal measures have been unsystematic resulting in a very ad hoc approach to privacy instead of a coherent body of legislation clearly defining online privacy laws. One estimated reason for this would be that the government believes that privacy issues should remain in the private sector and not the government (Spinello, 160). Their aim is to let norms enforced by public pressure be the regulator of privacy on the Internet. This is a very heavy reliance on cyberethics and not enough emphasis on cyberlaw. When the laws are unclear, people are bound to push and challenge social norms and ethics. When no such laws exist about how much of ones personal information, property even, can be released publicly on the web, the sex offender criminal has no precedence to go by to know his or her own rights. Even though the Internet is fairly new when looking at the timeline of history, it will clearly only continue to grow and thrive therefore laws must be set. It is not enough to rely on public pressure as the enforcement to follow social norms. With no cyberlaws there can be no repercussions for breaking cyberethics. Those registered as sex offenders are completely vulnerable to violation of their privacy.
When the word security is applied to the Internet, two definitions come to mind. One involves the concerns that a system is vulnerable to viruses, worms, and other rogue programs. Having an insecure system make users’ information vulnerable to those who have no legitimate need for it. The definition more relevant to the topic at hand though is the security of one’s personal information (Langford, 80-81). Online users are concerned about loosing control over their personal information. This could potentially happen because an organization would claim that they have some legitimate need for that information in order to make important decisions that affect them personally or affect the common good. Sex offenders, like any other innocent citizen, understand that their personal information such as their criminal history can be made public to employers when making hiring decisions. But it’s easy to argue based on the loose definition of cyber privacy laws discussed so far that revealing information such as home and work addresses and a mug shot to the public is crossing the line.
With all of this information so open, the criminal could potentially be in danger. Someone seeking revenge on sex offenders have complete and easy access to what the person looks like, their full name, and, more importantly, where they live and work. Revealing this information could not only put the criminal at risk, but their family and coworkers too. There are countless reports of registered sex offenders being attacked. One such account happened on January 26, 2004 in Yonkers, New York. The man was who dies from multiple gunshot wounds was a fifty year old who has been released from prison three years earlier after serving time for third-degree rape. The report in the New York Times revealed that detectives hadn’t arrested anyone yet but they “knew who they were looking for” (Tavernise). This man and his family were at risk because. Having his personal information displayed online would have made it even easier for his killer to have found him and taken revenge. Registered sex offenders have served their time in prison and have paid their dues to society, yet they still remain with a stigma that can come back to haunt them and their families.
As a less severe consequence, the criminals’ dignity is also ruined. If a sex offender wants to start over with a clean slate, gaining friends would be hard to do if everyone knew that they were a sex offender. By posting all of this information about sex offenders and making it public and so readily available to the community, their privacy is being invaded and acts of slander and libel are being committed.
From looks at the given information, it would seem that divulging this information to the public is a violation of the criminals’ privacy rights. Privacy rights are not the only rights at stake here though. The people of the community have rights as well. The Declaration of Independence gave the people have the right to the pursuit of Happiness, which includes not living in fear. The pursuit of Happiness is a right that cannot be taken away from any citizen. Also included as rights that citizens have are the right to personal safety and a sense of security. The right to feel at ease in your own property and home is essential. Before homebuyers buy a home, do they not have the right to know the information of the safety of the area their home is in? The criminals are not the only ones who experience a violation of rights in this case.
Yes, the right to privacy and property does exist on the criminals’ side. However, sometimes one’s personal information must be sacrificed for the common good (Spinello, 151). Jeremy Betham and John Stuart Mill, the two British philosophers who developed utilitarianism (Spinello, 11) would argue that there would be utility in revealing the personal information about the criminals. Utility is the net benefits an action has. The benefits of revealing the information to benefit the innocent community members would outweigh the benefits of concealing the information and protecting criminals’ privacy. Based on this theory, it is morally right to make the sex offenders’ information public.
As mentioned earlier, security has two different definitions with regard to the Internet: the security of one’s machine and the security of one’s personal information. However, this security of one’s personal information can be given up to certain organizations to protect the common good. While some would believe that common good stops with employers, I would argue that making sex offenders’ personal information open to the public is not a breach of their privacy or security, but necessary for the common good in order for community member s to remain safe and secure. Also, just as the Fourth Amendment can be used to justify the right to privacy, it can also be used to justify the right to security. This includes having the feeling of security in your own home. Having access to certain personal information about the sex offenders in your area where you live is part of that security.
A counter argument could be made that argues that the right to privacy includes the “right to be let alone” (DeCew, 29) However, the two are completely separate. Privacy and autonomy are related, but separate when speaking of laws, enforcement, and ethics. Also, autonomy does not supersede the power of the judicial branch. Knowing this, it is easy to see that criminals’ “right to be let alone” is overcome by their status as criminals and sex offenders by the judicial branch. Based on judicial law’s power over the individual, criminals’ autonomy is superseded and their right to be let alone as well as their privacy rights are negated in order to ensure that the common people can feel secure in their own homes and neighborhoods.
Both the criminals and the members of the community have rights that need to be meet. At first glance, it seems as though the criminals’ privacy and property rights are being violated because of websites that show too much personal information with no consent and leave the criminals open to the possibility of danger and defamation in the form of libel and slander. In this case, the defamation exposed is accurate about the sex offenders, but the publicity of the information could affect the individual in a negative way. However, it is also true that it would benefit the common good for the sex offenders’ information to be released. The information would insure the security of the community and give residents peace of mind and allow them to take the precautions they feel are necessary to protect their families. Making their personal records public knowledge gives residents the security in their own homes that they have a right to. This security supersedes the right to the criminals’ security of information.
Two parties have conflicting rights and the line has to be drawn somewhere. The responsibility of drawing this line between the rights lies within unfortunately lies within the unknown and fairly new (judicially speaking) realm of cyberspace. Based on the necessity of protecting the common good, I believe the battle of conflicting privacy and security rights goes to the innocent public. Who’s job it is to regulate this release of information in cyberspace is in question.
The Internet is the scene of the crime when deciding how much information should be released. Because a webpage on the Internet is the media releasing the information, they are one ones who need to monitor it and therefore abide by the ethic and laws that apply to privacy rights, the right to the pursuit of Happiness, the rights to security, etc.
But who is “the Internet?” It is difficult to know not just what entity, but exactly who is physically responsible for upholding cyberlaws and practicing cyberethics. There are many possible culprits here: the Internet provider, the website owner, the original holder of the information, the list could go on. It could be the Internet provider’s responsibility to monitor the activity on his Internet and the websites on them. However if the provider is a large company such as Comcast, the entire company could be liable for potentially violating privacy rights. Another party to blame could be the webpage creator. This specific person or company created the means to expose the information to the public and purposely made it public and available. A final offender could be whoever originally held the information. Sure the webpage published the information, but is it truly their fault if the police department handed them the information and mug shots of sex offenders? There are many directions in which we could point fingers as to whose job it is to patrol the Internet and make sure all of the proper laws and ethics are being followed.
Little law is written pertaining to regulation of the Internet and whom the responsibility lies with. It seems as though, yet again, the government has left this up to the private sector. This would be perfectly fine, except the judicial branch has made no laws requiring the private sector to take a stance on the issue. Other nations such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Germany have strong privacy legislation, but the United States is certainly not on the forefront of this movement. The privacy Act of 1974 obviously does not pertain much to cyber privacy but regardless, has been criticized for having too many loopholes and lacking adequate enforcement (Langford, 86). It is difficult enough taking old legislation and trying to apply it to cyberspace, but with the state of the existing privacy and security legislation it is even more difficult. Because technology outpaces the law (Langford, 123), the law may never be able to effectively operate when it comes to matters of cyberspace.
With such little legislation, it is difficult to determine who is responsible for regulation and, ultimately, for making the decision about how much information can be publicly known about sex offenders. All in all, it is the publisher of the information that is ultimately responsible for revealing the correct amount of information about the sex offenders. Whoever published information usually answer to an editor who decides what is published and revealed on their webpage or not. In this case, because the publisher and the editor are the same party it is a mute point, but editors can or cannot be held responsible depending on what is reasonable (Rosenoer, 125). For example, it is almost not feasibly possible for an editor to be able to go through and scan say millions of posts a day to determine if anything illegal and slanderous was published. Since the editor and publisher in this case are the same, it is the publisher who has control and holds responsibility to publish the correct amount of information about the criminal’s personal records to the public.
But before we can hold these people accountable, a decision must be made as to what they’re accountable for. Although homeowners and, more broadly, citizens have these rights, prisoners, non-citizens, and criminals are treated differently. It’s almost as if they are in “bad standing” with the United States and therefore are on probation and not granted the same liberties as the rest of us.
Defamation of someone is legal is the information is “fair comment” and in public interest. It is also legal if made under the protection of privilege, such as criminal libel (Langford, 118). I would argue that because a certain person choose to act out in a criminal way, others have the right to protect themselves against said criminal and thus the information is not defamation at all, but is actually fair and necessary in order for the public to insure security.
Therefore regardless of the weak, wishy-washy laws involving cyberspace, the laws on the privacy rights, property rights, and the defamation of criminals is clear in law and precedence. If the information revealed online was that of an innocent citizen who requires full legal protection, the case would be different. However, since the peoples whose privacy at stake are registered sex offenders, they have certain rights relinquished in order to secure the common good of the community. The right to privacy can be described as a right to exclude others form some property. The criminal record belongs to the police, not the individual. And their personal information, such as their home address, is handed over to the public in order to protect the common good. People have the right for their actions to be free from scrutiny or judgment (DeCew, 64), but not when those actions are illegal.
So it is perfectly legal what the publishers of sex offender search sites such as watchdog.com (www.familywatchdog.com) are doing. Keep in mind though that the publishers of the website are those responsible for the information. When the police made the legal decision to release the information, it is legal for a sex offender locator website such as watchdog.com to publish this information for the common good. However, although there is not crime in operating a website such as watchdog.com, if it were to be found that too much information was discovered by the publisher and released to the public, the fault would be in the hands of the publisher. If criminal privacy rights were crossed and too much information were published, such as who their phone numbers, social security numbers, or even who they’re children are and where the go to school, the publisher would be found liable and guilty of intruding on privacy rights, even the little privacy rights that criminals still hold onto. It is the publishers’ of the websites responsibility to regulate the information and monitor it to insure that only information that is legal and pertinent to the common good of the public is published and released to the public.
Based on the given proof, regardless of the counterarguments revealed, I believe that it is perfectly ok for website creators to release such information, for the website host to allow it, and for the police to release the information in the first place. Not only have I proved that it’s legal, but I have also showed that it is ethical. For the good of the entire community, privacy rights of sex offender criminals much be but on hold. The general public’s rights outweigh the rights of the criminals. Although criminals are still citizens, they gave up their right to privacy when they committed the crime. Not only is it perfectly ethical for the criminals’ information to be posted, but also it is also ethical for community members to view this information and use it to take the necessary precautions to protect themselves.
Bibliography
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Langford, D. (2000). Internet Ethics. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
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Rosenoer, J. (1997). Cyberlaw: the Laws of the Internet. New York: Springer
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Spinello, R. (2006). Cyberethics: Morality and Law in Cyberspace. Sudbury,
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(2005-2010). Retrieved June 13, 2010, from http://www.familywatchdog.us/
