Less Privacy Is Good for Us (and You)

The article,"Less Privacy Is Good for Us (and You)," by Amitai Etzioni shows reader the complexity of privacy issues by giving multiple examples of the ways our privacy rights are violated. In my opinion, the most complex of the privacy issues given by Etzioni was the one about a mother's rights about being a carrier of HIV and passing it on to her baby by birth. The story is, mothers who have HIV may be able to avoid passing it to their children simply by not breast-feeding them and by giving the child AZT. In order for this to happen though, the mother must know she is infected with HIV, so she has to get some tests done. The problem with that is, some civil libertarians and gay activists "oppose such disclosure on the grounds that when infants are tested for HIV, in effect one finds out if the mother is a carrier, and thus her privacy is violated." To me, this is a load of crap. Seems to me all they are trying to do is protect the baby.

Also brought up, that I thought was interesting, was biometrics. Which would prohibit people who are trying to escape their past from creating a whole new identity. (Biometrics is like a camera that recognizes faces or fingerprint scanners.)

Another complexity would be the reason to violate someone's personal privacy because of danger to the individual or to the people around them. Like, someone committing a crime. The whole "search" the individual for weapons thing.