Proper Data Protection Free Essay Example, 2000 words

Each milestone in technology poses a new threat to privacy and personal safety. Smart cards with integrated circuits and high functional value are highly secure. Smart cards can serve as medical insurance cards, identification cards, credit cards and in fact, one single card can combine massive amounts of information about an individual. Unfortunately, this too is considered an infringement of privacy because one single card can provide an entire personal database of an individual (HRIS, 2003). While smart cards increase efficiency, it poses a threat to the right of self-decision and self-control over one s personal information. Epstein (2006) contends it would require a great deal of chasing of people urging them to take smart cards. These cards are just like a chip and pin card and not biometrically secure. It is not a major step towards reducing social security frauds and is not even considered cost-effective in the long-run. The wireless technology used in smart cards could make it easy for thieves to extract information through portable scanners and electronically picking pockets. Germans claim that smart cards contain a digital signature algorithm, which makes it difficult to counterfeit other cards by extracting data from the original card (Koprowski, 2005). We will write a custom essay sample on Proper Data Protection or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now Banking would not be possible without IT and yet IT enables theft of account data as was the case with Bank of America and Time Warner in 2005 (Gleason, 2006). Electronic security systems have embedded flaws. The same technology that promotes online shopping also allows criminals to buy a list of credit cards and social security numbers from the black market. The effects of technology and ethics are hard to predict and are irreversible. Errors made by the computerized system make it difficult to identify the person responsible for it and accountability is affected. The error could be caused by the poor user interface, lack of proper training, errors in software but nobody is willing to accept responsibility.