2.1-2.17

2.1- Personal information means any information relating to or traceable to an individual person.

2.2- The term invisible information gathering describes collection of personal information about someone without the person’s knowledge, and an example of it is when a supermarket club kept a record of everything people bought with the club cards.

2.6- Two tools that people can use to protect their privacy on the web are using proxies and blocking cookies on your computer.

2.7- The difference between opt in and opt out policies are that under an opt-out policy one must check a box on a contract, membership form, or agreement, or call or write to the organization to request removal from distribution, while under an opt-in policy, personal information is not distributed to other businesses unless the consumer has specifically permitted disclosure.

2.8- Two government databases that probably have information about me are SSN database and the police database, and the benefits I get from these are that I can distinguish myself from others with my social security number, and they can tell I didn’t do a crime because they have me in the police database.

2.9- Two private databases that probably have information about me are the google database which logs the searches that I make, and my isps database which logs where I have been on the internet. The benefit I get from being in the google database is they know what to suggest to me for searches so I can be more efficient, and the same goes for the isp’s database as well as the fact that their advertising can be related to what I look at on the internet.

2.10- This was not a privacy violation because no specific information was given about any individual child or school and it was just done as a statistic of the whole, and it was probably used in a good way to make sure that children were not accessing sites that they were not supposed to. The filtering software has access to that data and it is not private.

2.11- The policy is good because where you live is very personal information that you would not want every person to know, which would be possible if they were able to reverse search your phone number. Also, a person’s cell phone is used for mostly private reasons and it should not be public information. The downsides are that it would be convenient to be able to get anybody’s cell phone off the internet. The availability to the web would make it available to everybody whereas a book could be more private.

2.12- This is less likely because computer files are easier to get than files on paper. Internet files are very easy to access and therefore easier to copy and get for personal use whereas paper files are more secure. The leakage could be prevented by a password being put on the files or the files could be encrypted.

2.13- The arguments in favor of the city government for this action would be that the city has the right to see who is not paying the license because they are violating the license policy and breaking the law. This is just a way to track down people who are not obeying the rules. The arguments against it would be that it was going into people private information, and it was going through individuals irs records which are personal to them. This application of computer matching should be permitted because if one person has to pay the license fee than everybody should and they should be able to know who does and who doesn’t.

2.14- I think that the arguments for this would be that the politicians views should be available to the people and that it would be able to show people what they actually support versus what they are saying they support to the people. The arguments are that the persons personal views are being exposed and they are supposed to be private, and also the information about how they feel about gay marriage could be used against them. I think the side against this is stronger because this is personal information about a person and their views and it should not be available to everybody. It would result in hate campaigns if their views were showed to the public.

2.15- Some advantages of the expanded databases are that the law enforcement would have information to all the insurance claims and so they would be able to see if anybody was doing insurance fraud or making bogus claims. This way its not restricted to just a certain number of people which makes it less objectable to claims of discrimination. The downsides are that even law enforcement would have information about your insurance claims and it is making this data able to be viewed by a lot of people rather than having it be private. If you are not doing anything wrong they still have information about the things that you needed to be covered by insurance which is personal to you.

2.16- The possible reasons for this could be that they would make sure only legal occupants of the United States were using the airlines of the country, and by having their social security number they would be able to evaluate if they were a flight risk. The risks are that they would essentially be able to track where you go if they know exactly who you are and they know where your flights go, and also the more people that have your social security number the more likely that it will get out and be leaked.

2.17- An example of a database whose access by law-enforcement agents without a court order seems inconsistent with the 4th amendment of the constitution would be the access to the insurance claims by a private investigator because those are supposed to be private.