Research Paper on:
Privacy Issues and IT

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
they want faster access. Where businesses once thought it was a boon to be able to store and retrieve their data more easily in a computer, today they want more  speed, more options, more capacity. A speakerphone once gave businesses the luxury of having several people involved in a conversation simultaneously but today they need video conferencing. The invention of  the pager once allowed business people as well as individuals to be alerted when an urgent conversation was needed; today people walk around with a cellular phone attached to their  waist or carried in a pocket or purse. One of the most interesting paradoxes concerning information technology is the controversy it brings about. Many individuals, for example, see it  as some sort of a curse, it is an invasion of privacy. The amount of crime as a result of the enormous amount of personal information stored in store computers,  work computers and on the Internet has certainly attested to the danger. The question has been asked - who owns that information. Bradford asks: "What prevents marketers, or the government,  from compiling an elaborate database on the entire population, complete with information about peoples medical treatment, what they purchase, where they travel, the Internet sites they visit, the content of  their electronic mail and telephone conversations, and nearly every other aspect of their individual lives?" (1999, p. 620). Bradford goes on to assert that such a database would  be easy to compile given the information technology systems that already exist. The data are all there and they keep growing. Not only that, the data become more easily accessible  with every advance made in information technology systems. Information becomes more easily transferable as well as less expensive to analyze, transfer and disseminate (Bradford, 1999). Bradford also reported that Cate,