Internet Privacy Laws: Time for Change

With the Internet's rapidly increasing role in society today, privacy is becoming the most important issue being faced.  Internet privacy ranges from a variety of things including identity theft, children using chat rooms, companies using techniques to track Internet users' habits, personal information, and several other serious issues.  These are issues that both individuals and companies face together.  The laws that were put in place in the 1980's and 1990's are still the same ones being used today.  Many of the capabilities and uses of the Internet today were not as widespread or even beginning during the time of these laws.  With this being said, it is time for there to be new and improved rules and regulations to help protect online privacy.


In the article, "Privacy - Internet Law," on US Legal, it states, "Congress has been reluctant to enact legislation, relying upon a privacy law last revised in 1986 and passing only one new Internet privacy law in the 1990s" (Privacy - Internet Law).  It later goes on to state that there has only been two federal laws that make up the legislation on Internet privacy.  First, in 1986, Congress updated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was originally passed in 1968.  This updated ECPA protects the privacy of e-mail and other forms of communication.  It established rules for information access.  The problem that people run into with this being the primary law for Internet privacy is that it is outdated.  When the ECPA was enacted, e-mail and cell phone use was at a minimum and just beginning to take place, while other popular Internet applications today, like social networking cites, had not even been close to being started.  


In addition, really the only other privacy law pertaining to online activity is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998.  This act was passed to ensure that children participating in online activities would be protected.  Many websites required too much information from children, and this is something that could possibly pose as a threat to children in the midst of criminals, more importantly sexual predators.  


Since these acts were put into place, little has been done to protect the individual citizen's privacy on the Internet.  One would think that there would be new laws in place that are more relevant and specific considering how much the Internet has changed since then.  There was the Patriot Act of 2001, but that was put in place more so because of the terrorist attacks, not to help protect the individual citizen from more common, individually impacting crimes.  The Patriot Act gave the government more investigatory powers, including the power to intercept e-mail and track Internet usage from those individuals suspected of terrorist and criminal activities.  Even this has caused some major debate on whether this is completely ethical.  


In conclusion, with the Internet expanding and technology dominating the social and business aspects of life, new regulations need to be put into place in order to protect online privacy.  It is difficult to understand how certain rules and regulations can apply to things that were yet to be in existence when the laws were put into place.