![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Preface
I keep threatening to do a essay on the concept of nationalism and how it relates to current events. I've got more reading to do yet. In the meantime, I'm going to run a series of essays on information security and risk. This series of essays is actually a term paper from my Informationn Ethics class that I've split into several parts.
PS: UCLA admission's committee. If you're reading this, you have discovered a certain applicant's pseudonym. Feel free to wander. It's up to you to decide if I'm the real deal, or what Andy Warhol once called a Honky Bullshitter.
Introduction
Information specialists today practice their profession in a world of dangerous information. Currently, there are overlapping trends to control information both for perceived security and for reasons of privacy. At the same time, modern commerce possesses an insatiable thirst for personal information. The collection and aggregation of personal information can also be used for purposes of epidemiology and to provide better service in both the commercial and the government realms. Information professionals must strike a balance between protecting information and facilitating its retrieval.
The professional codes of most information organizations stress public service, intellectual freedom, and respect for individual privacy. The ethical code for the Association of Record Managers and Administrators(ARMA) goes as far to state that the free flow of information is necessary for a democratic society. Meanwhile, the American Library Association's code of ethics opposes censorship and emphasizes a commitment to intellectual freedom. However, information professionals now face strong pressure to suppress information or to closely follow their patrons' consumption of information. Since 2001, concern for security has become pervasive in the realms of government and technology R&D. At the same time, the proliferation of fraud using personal information has led to increased concern over personal records in many industries. All this concern rests on the concept of dangerous information. The question, though, it what makes information dangerous? Under what circumstances can information harm through disclosure?
( Read more... )
