After consideration of the case, it becomes obvious that Mr. Lambert and Mr. Doss had no actual right to intercept the e-mails of the contract employees they were supervising. There was no discussion of such a step with the higher managers and no threat to GSA that required taking such a step. If the employees whose messages were intercepted filed a lawsuit against Mr. Lambert and Mr. Doss, the latter would almost certainly be convicted for infringing the people’s privacy.
Drawing from this, privacy is of crucial importance for the development of the mankind. Defined as “the expectation that confidential personal information disclosed in a private place will not be disclosed to third parties, when that disclosure would cause either embarrassment or emotional distress to a person of reasonable sensitivities” (Standler, 2009), privacy is so important because it allow people to have freedom, one of the basic values of the modern society.
Moreover, on the basis of its importance, privacy is protected by the US laws and even the US Constitution. For example, Standler (2009) argues that titles 18, §1702, 39, §3623, 47, §605, 18, §2510, and 18, §2702 are some of the articles of the US Constitution that protect the right of citizens for privacy of conversations, telephone talks and radio messaging, while 18, §2702 (a) protects the right of people for privacy of e-mail messages (Standler, 2009).
Needless to say, privacy involves ethical and moral considerations. The former concern privacy as far as it is considered unethical and impolite in the human society to interfere with the business of another person if the latter does not ask about it. Reading somebody’s messages can also be referred to interfering into other people’s business, and can accordingly be called unethical. Morals should also be considered in this respect, as it can be perceived immoral to deceive people and secretly read their messages, irrespective of their relation to work or the people who read them.
Thus, the importance of privacy is obvious but law sometimes fails to protect it, and human beings have to stand for their privacy by various means including finding calm and remote places for private conversations, making sure that their telephones are not overheard, not allowing certain people to participate or at least be present at a private talk or at the private property. Often people resort to the use of weapon to protect their privacy, but this way is on the merge of crime and is not desirable in the modern society.
Based on the integral importance of privacy, the criminals also have the right for it. However, protecting criminals’ privacy makes it difficult to ensure the social safety and order. One of the ways that both respect privacy and attempt to provide public safety is the use of street cameras that can be called the acceptable infringement of privacy for the public good. Making a generalization, street cameras might be considered as the means that infringe the privacy rights of every person to the equally small extent, so that the overall effect of the street cameras’ use outweighs the harm caused by privacy infringement.
As a result, privacy is obviously one of the basic social values of today. It is protected by law and by people themselves when the law does not help. All people without exceptions have the right for privacy, but to protect the society from the negative effects of this right people have to sacrifice a part of everyone’s privacy for the benefit of the society as a whole.
References
Standler, R. (2009). Privacy Law in the USA. Web.