A) 2 Websites Annotated:
I found the following websites by conducting an advanced search on Google and dogpile using the keywords Internet, privacy, and websites. I then searched through the results to find the most relevant web pages.
Citation:
Privacy.org; The Site for News, Information, and Action. 18 November 2008. The Electronic Privacy Information Center and Privacy International. 23 November 2008 [http://privacy.org/].
Author: The Electronic Privacy Information Center is a public interest research center in Washington D.C. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values. Privacy International is a human rights group formed in the 90’s to protect people from privacy invasions by governments and corporations. Privacy International is based in London, England, but also has an office in Washington D.C. Privacy international works worldwide to protect people from privacy violations. Both of the authors of this website are very credible which makes me feel that the information on this website is very trustworthy.
Audience: This web page is aimed towards an educated tech savvy audience. Many of the articles and cases on the website use technological jargon that the average Joe would not understand. The reader would also have to have some background using computers in order to understand many of the issues that are discussed on this page pertaining to privacy.
Summary: This web page contains posts of current privacy issues. Many of the issues are related to the Internet while some are not. This web page contains a vast amount of information about current privacy issues as well as past issues. Each of the posts contain links to the full text of the article as well as the source of the information. This page also contains an archive containing past privacy news stories and cases, which could be useful when searching for information from a certain time period. At the very top the page also contains a search box that allows visitors to search the entire collection of information on the web page.
Critical Comment and Relevance: I felt that this website would be very helpful in my research, it contained a lot of articles, rulings, and new stories about the Internet an privacy. It would give many a lot of real life privacy issues that the Internet has created. The only draw back of the website was that it is not very aesthetically pleasing. The website is very boring, it is not very eye catching, and for a tech related website it looks very low quality, almost like someone made it that did not know what they were doing.
Citation:
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse; Nonprofit Consumer Information and Advocacy Organization. February 2008. Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. 23 November 2008 {http://www.privacyrights.org/Media/media.htm].
Author: The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse is the author of this website. The PRC is a non profit consumer organization from San Diego California. The PRC is grant supported and serves individuals through out the U.S. The PRC has received many awards for their work to protect individuals privacy rights. After reading the PRC’s credentials I feel that their web page is a very reputable source of information for my research.
Audience: This website does a great job of breaking down the very difficult to understand legal descriptions of privacy rights into language that the everyday person can understand. Since the sight has broken things down into layman’s terms I feel that it is meant for the average person to use. Even though it is for the average person it would still be helpful for a person to have some knowledge about the Internet, since some of the information on the web page is pertaining to the Internet and privacy.
Summary: This website contains a lot of information about individuals privacy rights in general, but it also has a lot of information that focuses on Internet privacy. As with the previous website it contains articles, news stories, and past legislation about Internet privacy issues. Unlike the previous web site this one has several different fact sheets that breaks down the privacy rights that certain groups have when using the Internet, for example it has a fact sheet on children’s Internet privacy rights, Workplace privacy, and Privacy in Cyberspace in general. This site also contains links to past speeches about events pertaining to Internet privacy.
Critical Comment and Relevance: After looking through this website I feel that it will be very helpful with my research on the effects of the Internet on privacy. This web site contains a lot of credible information on this topic. The only downside I found to this website was that it did not contain as much current information as the previous one. This site had a lot more information about past issues with privacy and the Internet, but not as much about what is going on currently with privacy issues and the Internet.
B) Research Question – How has the Internet compromised users’ privacy?
I originally came up with this resarch question after seeing many of the present issues with privacy and the internet. I wanted to look into the problems that the internet has created for users privacy. I felt that this was a research topic that effects many peoples’ lives around the world and that it will only continue to become a bigger problem as technology continues to advance. After finding and looking throug various sources of information on this topic I can conclude that the internet compromises user privacy on a daily basis and will only contiue to do so as we become more an more dependant on it in the future, unless something is done to control it.
C) Webpage Link – http://student.uncw.edu/lcp7462/LindseyPopesAnnotatedBibliography.html
