Public disclosure of private facts, E-Commerce

Introduction

Privacy is often defined as the “right to be left alone”, and The Fourth Amendment forms the basis of a “right to privacy,” as The enjoyment of financial and personal privacy is fundamental to a free and civil society. From a legal perspective, the right to privacy involves the "control" over one’s personal information and privileged communications.

However, everyone's privacy is under siege through the Internet. So, how privacy is threatened by technology? What are the key sources of privacy law? What are the elements of the main privacy torts? What are the major federal laws in the United States that affect personal privacy? Can we reverse it or make it right? Not every solution is perfect for now, but we still have to try. Moreover, when it comes to the law, quantifiable damages for recovery is necessary, otherwise, it will be difficult to get the balance.

Understanding The Threats

First, we have to know where and what are these threats. Threats to privacy existed even before the Internet such as papers are also been to record and save personal information. As the ICT(Information Communication Technology) has developed, personal information is saved on all types of devices including computers, phones, and tablets. Our privacy is mostly threatened by individuals(the other people) or a group of people such as governments, or even AI in the future. 

The Law

Although not every country is the same, in the United States, however, governmental privacy-related issues are concentrated at the federal level, based on the U.S. Constitution, Amendments, state constitutions, common law torts, federal and state statutes, and administrative agency rules.

Types of Torts

How do we consider one thing as a privacy tort? Intrusion? What are the intrusion behaviors? Public disclosure of private facts? What kind of facts are seen as private? Defamation? Misappropriation? Many terms are waiting for our precise definitions if we want to make them become the law. Otherwise, it will be hard to judge or charge against anyone with any law. Although either judge or charge against someone is not our major purpose, it likes the units or the libra we use as a standard or the tool to evaluate those torts. 

What Is Intrusion?

It's often defined as intentionally intruding, including physical or other related concerns. More precisely, it means the intrusion has to be intentional, at least in the common sense, the intrusion was a violation. Then, the one being violated must have had a reasonable expectation of privacy and being substantially intruded. For instance, people in public places have less expectation of privacy since they must assume they might be photographed or publicly recorded.

As we can see, the key terms here are intentional and reasonable expectation. So, beware to make your decisions. In recent decades, courts have expanded torts to include electronic property rights. However, in some situations such as a medic responding to an emergency fire call and the medic enters a person’s home.

Public Disclosure of Private Facts

It is publicly disclosing or transmitting highly private or personal information about another that causes damage to their reputation and highly offensive to a reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities. 

However, to prove for this tort, an intent to communicate the facts is necessary and offensive to a reasonable person. In addition, these facts disclosed have to be private or personal, or they may be considered as public. False light and the tort of defamation are also commonly confused. False light involves hurting a person emotionally by embarrassing them. Defamation is an intentional false message spreading, either written or spoken that harms a person’s reputation. Therefore, the threshold of the proof is different.

Examples Where Someone Was Injured Because of A Public Disclosure of Private Facts About Them

Taiwan pop star Show Luo shamed by ex’s breakup post. Having been unmasked as a serial love cheat and fan of orgies, the goody-two-shoes image of Taiwan mandopop star Show Luo is tattered beyond repair. 

In a post on Thursday, April 23rd, 2020, Show Luo's ex, Grace Chow confirmed she broke up earlier this year with Show Luo. In a blazing break-up letter, Chow detailed how her heart had been broken after scrolling through his phone and finding evidence galore of his many infidelities. A few days after the post, there was another rumor that he secretly built a swimming pool in a mansion and also asked many hot girls to his party. Taiwan pop star Show Luo’s private life was publicly disclosed due to his ex's public post. His career was hit hard after the news.

Another example was about the New York Post reported a story of Hunter, Joe Biden's second son, who was a director on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian-owned private energy company. The New York Post cited a purported email from Hunter Biden in August 2017 indicating he was receiving a $10m annual fee from a Chinese billionaire for introductions alone. Moreover, another purported email, which Fox News said it had confirmed, reportedly refers to a deal pursued by Hunter involving China's largest private energy firm. 

What Do The Examples Have in Common? 

They all publicly disclosed some private facts about a person and hurt their reputations or their careers. And, there are both public figures.

Learn from These Events

Although not every disclosure is bad, they all put a person, a group, or a company on the stage. On the stage, you can make it worse or reverse it to the strength of fighting back. It all depends on what you are plan to do or what you are deciding to do. It's your choice. Whatever comes our way, whatever battle we have raging inside us, we always have choices. It's the choices that make us who we are, and we can always choose to do what's right. 

Reference

Fourth Amendment. (n.d.). Retrieved December 26, 2020, from https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fourth_amendment

Kustron, K. G. (2015). Internet and Technology Law: A U.S. Perspective. Bookboon.

Quartly, J. (2020, April 25). Taiwan pop star Show Luo shamed by ex's breakup post: Taiwan News: 2020/04/24. Retrieved December 27, 2020, from https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3922139

Information Security, Enterprise Security, and Information Technology Security. The Three Main Areas of Accountability Regarding Information Security, E-Commerce

The management of information security relies on three distinct areas of accountability. They are enterprise security, information security, and information technology security. However, due to different organizational structures, they are not always well linked or coordinated.

What Is Information Security?

Information security, or so-called InfoSec, refers to the processes designed and deployed to protect sensitive business information from modification, disruption, destruction, and inspection. However, information security is often confused with cybersecurity. Information security is a crucial part of cybersecurity, but cybersecurity is a more general term that includes information security. The basic element is to preserve confidentiality and ensuring that information can only be accessed only by an authorized person. However, that's not enough. We also have to maintain integrity, to safeguard the accuracy and completeness of the information, thus no unauthorized changes are made. Besides, the final step is to ensure information is available for use when required. So, let's discuss each step.

ISO 27000

ISO/IEC 27000:2018 provides an overview of information security management systems (ISMS). It also provides terms and definitions commonly used in the ISMS family of standards such as authenticity(ensuring the genuine), Possession and Control(control of data creates the risk of loss of security), Utility(data availability), and Non-Repudiation.

What Is Enterprise Security?

Enterprise security, in short, is a multi-faceted concern that includes both the internal or proprietary business secrets such as hacking attacks, social engineering attacks, and phishing attacks, or physical aspects, kidnapping, or frauds, even unauthorized agents' spy activities such as installed on the telecom network or the local wifi channels. 

For instance, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn all be regulated by governments, and faced large fines if they lose the sensitive customer data to hackers. Keep these data to reliance on cloud infrastructure for business process support introduces new challenges to corporate security in IT. Moreover, the ability to access unencrypted passwords and login information can compromise not only individual accounts and data but also an entire corporate network if an intruder gains data center access.

In addition, all enterprises start with hiring people to work for them. Their human resources department takes all the necessary employment steps to ensure data privileges are appropriately limited. Enterprise security is focused on related data centers, networking, and servers, but they all closely connected with human resources. In social engineering attacks and phishing attacks like email encourage employees to click on links that download and install malware, they both weaknesses in human nature. However, even where physical access is tightly controlled, enterprise corporations still face hacking attacks from the farthest reaches around the globe. These attacks can be separated by different levels. From cyber-war to just criminal or publicity-seeking hackers, all possible to target the critical infrastructures of businesses like power stations, telecommunications, plants, or to steal credit card information and bank account access.

What Is Information Technology Security

Information technology security is a set of cybersecurity strategies that prevent unauthorized access to assets such as computers, networks, and data. It also keeps the integrity and confidentiality of sensitive information and blocks malicious access. Threats to IT security come in different forms such as malware, ransomware, spyware, and viruses.

Types of IT security are network security, internet security, endpoint security, application security, and the most popular recently, cloud security. 

What Are The Differences?

Although IT security and information security sound similar and often confused, they are different types of security. Information security refers to the processes and tools designed to protect sensitive business information, whereas IT security refers to securing digital data. 

One way to ascertain the similarities and differences among these terms is by asking what is being secured. For instance, information security is securing information and doesn’t necessarily have to involve technology while IT security is technology-specific. And, recall that enterprise security a multi-faceted concern, what is been protected is businesses and firms. So, its purpose is to secure all threats against the specific business, not just from hackers, but also from liars or even dumps.

Reference

Computer Security vs Information Security: What's the Difference? (n.d.). Retrieved December 29, 2020, from https://business.gmu.edu/blog/tech/2014/09/22/deciphering-itcyber-lexicon/?hvid=3jDqdK

Gelbstein, E. (2013). Information Security for Non-Technical Managers. Bookboon.

ISO/IEC 27000:2018. (2018, February 07). Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://www.iso.org/standard/73906.html

What Is IT Security? - Information Technology Security. (2020, December 16). Retrieved December 29, 2020, from https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/what-is-it-security.html

What Is Information Security (InfoSec)? (2020, December 14). Retrieved December 29, 2020, from https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/what-is-information-security-infosec.html