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U.S. News & World Report; By David LaGesse
Published September 11, 2008

Lately, it seems like there is no more privacy. With the technological advances our country and world have made, our privacy seems to become less and less. Fifty--even fifteen years ago, people probably would have never even imagined that anyone with an internet connection could be looking down on their house, thanks to GoogleMaps. Along with these advancements, comes the need for more precaution. People know that they need to be careful, yet it seems they are becoming more and more reckless when it comes to protecting their privacy. With people posting pictures of themselves and information all over MySpace and with both young children and old adults lying about their ages on Facebook and chatrooms, it could seem that people have been helping to take their privacy from themselves, whether they intended to or not. However, I still think the government should be there to protect the rights of U.S. citizens. Privacy is something most people would say they value highly and we need the right laws to protect our privacy.

This short article I read explained how Google said that they were improving on their security and would be making the Internet safer, but really nothing they were doing would be helping much at all. Google would still have information about its users and be able to monitor searches.

In class, we were asked to propose a new Amendment that entitled us to our privacy, yet still balanced the needs of society. After writing my own and incorporating others' ideas, I ended up with:

It is the right of all U.S. citizens to maintain privacy in their home, possessions, and documents. There will be no search or investigation upon anyone without evidence or overwhelming suspicion of a crime committed by that person.

I realized just how difficult it is to write a law with no loopholes that still fits the needs of the people and the government. I think that if this law were to go through the process of judicial review, it would basically be rewritten. Obviously, I am not a lawmaker and I don't know how to create laws, but I do think that the Amendment promising our privacy should be revisited and altered. When it was written well over 200 years ago, there was never any thought that our country would be as it is today. Not that all of these advancements are bad, just the fact that they are so different from how times were when these laws were written. Back then, e-mail was unheard of and a message being sent instantly around the world was probably a crazy idea. But that's the way it is now, so you would think that would call for a refinement of our privacy laws.