Data Surveillance, Monitoring, and Spying: Personal Privacy in a Data-Gathering World - DATAVERSITY

Click to learn more about author Cathy Nolan. Americans have long been divided in their views about the trade-off between security needs and personal privacy including data privacy. Much of the attention has been on how government collects data or uses surveillance, though there are also significant concerns about how businesses use data. When a terrorist attack happens, people tend to favor more surveillance by the government but at the same time some people are becoming increasingly concerned about their privacy and protecting their civil liberties. New information about the extent that digital technologies have captured and sold a wide array of data about individual's habits, preferences, prejudices, and personalities have alerted people to the amount of data they have provided, either willingly or unwittingly, to data brokers.