Just The Facts

JUST THE FACTS

Privacy refers to the ability to maintain control over personal information about oneself. Different countries have different views on what this means legally: The UK Calcutt Committee considers privacy rights of an individual as the protection from intrusion of personal matters, while the United States Supreme Court refers to privacy as the “penumbra”, or a constitutionally implied right, especially regarding contraceptives. Generally, the ability to gather and send information has a negative implications for retaining privacy. With new technology constantly on the rise, the line between safety and privacy is a gray area. A study has shown that finding the location of an anonymous phone interacting with local cellular towers can identify a person’s digital profile with 73-91 percent accuracy. National Data Privacy Day, or Data Protection Day to Europeans, is January 28th, and was created to raise awareness and promote privacy worldwide.

Statistics

• 12% of US adults are confident in the government’s ability to protect their data.
• 41% of US adults age 18-29 believe that the government has the right to access encrypted data during an investigation (as of 2016).
• US federal agencies and courts make 32,716 requests to access user data from Facebook, 16,823 requests to access user data from Google, and 3,726 requests to access user data from Snapchat.
• Facebook is the most popular social media site amongst US citizens, with 164.58 million users per month.
• More than half of online users are aged 34 or below.
• 5% of US adults are not concerned about online hackers accessing any of their private data.