Question

Name two nonprofit organizations that support privacy rights. What are some of the issues they are currently fighting? Describe at least three of these issues.

Answer 1

Privacy rights have long been debated for in most countries post globalization and the emergence of the information and technology industry.

Post the IT sector evolving privacy has been a problem for many people once, they realized that government agencies were tracking and controlling their movements. Further tech giants such as Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have had to explain their stand before the congress on data privacy of the people.

While advocating for privacy rights and equality, many nonprofit organizations have developed, to create awareness among people who previously believed that this wasn't necessary.

In light of this, two nonprofit organizations which have supported privacy rights across the world are Wiki Leaks and EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Centre). Both of these are organizations which have highlighted the importance of privacy in the lives of people and particularly paid attention to electronic privacy respectively.

Some of the Problems which these organizations have are as follows:-

The Governments being reluctant and against these organizations:-

WikiLeaks has seen wide spread government reluctance once they revealed that the government was using snooping tools on normal citizens without having informed any one of them respectively. The government on its part said that this was necessary for them to be able to crack various criminal and terrorist cases proactively than to reactively sit and respond when such things occurred in the society.

Lack of Crowd Funding:-

These organizations do not sell anything but also have operational costs which must necessarily be met for their individual survival. These are sponsored therefore by selective people and any problems with this hampers the goals of the organization altogether. Also at times financers may want to use these companies to spread messages that are often not true. Thus the choice at times for these organizations comes down to negotiation between survival and ethics.

Public Reluctance:-

Since, the governments of countries do not necessarily take these organizations seriously at times, the reaction which the general public has is also a lot more similar.

Public reluctance leads to a situation in which people who are unaware of their rights often think that it is ok even if these rights are violated as long as they get the benefits they currently are.

Facebook is one such big example in which though it has violated and accepted that it has at times been vulnerable towards data privacy. Yet people are reluctant to leave and still believe that it is ok. Thus the message not spreading properly.

Please feel free to ask your doubts in the comments section