Privacy: is it threatened?

It’s a sunny day and I am going to some shops with a few friends of mine. On the door is a warning citing: “this building has camera-protection”. Whatever I am going to do in the store, I will be watched. Because of the terrorist threat, the internet is watched carefully, so they can prevent the attacks from happening. But is that a valid reason to watch every visit to a website or every conversation with friends from school? What is the biggest threat on my privacy? Is there still any privacy, or is it starting to look like a Big Brother society? That are the main questions of this essay.

Having searched the internet for definitions of privacy, several meanings of the word came forward. The first was “the quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others”, or in short: the right to be alone.

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Privacy

Privacy

Do we still have such a right? In my opinion there is, but in a very limited amount. The only way to achieve this state is when you lock yourself in a room/house, with curtains closed and all plugs out of the sockets. Persons that find themselves in these conditions are recluses, and still have the ability to do this. But this state isn’t preferred by most of the people, including myself.

Another definition was “the state of being free from unsanctioned intrusion: a person's right to privacy.” This is where it is all about, this is the privacy that is discussed frequently nowadays, including in this essay. But thinking of this definition, made me afraid. It says free from unsanctioned intrusion, meaning that you are not free from sanctioned intrusion. So authorities got the right to intrude my privacy? If so, the world would certainly turn into...