Privacy and the Internet

I am writing this post based on a class lecture I just had in my political ethics course. Tonight we discussed the ethical decision of government to track or monitor political activity on the internet. Specific, we discussed how the government and political campaigns can monitor a person's political activity on the internet. Political campaigns are using banners to advertise their candidate on email homepages and various web sites that are frequented by their target audience. They know who their targeted audience is because they purchase list of emails from web sites that cater to a certain political message. Corporations do the same thing by monitoring their customer's shopping habits online. The corporations then use the lists and sell to marketers or other corporations. Basically, every step and move you make on the internet is being monitored.

The government monitors movement due to terrorists, as they should to keep our nation safe. As much as I hate having my personal life intruded on, I realize that the World Wide Web is exactly that - a wide open field of sites from around the world that can be accessed by anyone across the world. The government and other entities should have the right to monitor or track web site use.